The federal government announced new gun control measures Thursday, adding several hundred models and variants to its list of banned weapons.
“These firearms can no longer be legally used, sold or imported in Canada,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters.
The announcement comes one day before the 35th anniversary of the massacre at École Polytechnique de Montréal. Radio-Canada first reported the news earlier Thursday.
The new measures, which are effective immediately, list more than 300 makes and models of assault-style firearms as prohibited weapons.
There will be an amnesty period until Oct. 30 of next year for current owners to comply with the ban. The new models will be part of the government’s planned buy-back program — the program still has not collected a single gun.
Edit: According to Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc, the list of newly banned guns is currently unavailable and its exact date of release is undefined.
The RCMP stated that the list of banned guns would be available “very shortly”. Exactly where the list of banned guns would be available to read was not disclosed.
Edit 2: List of banned guns is at this link
As someone who supports strong gun controls but also has an RPAL license, I shake my head at this.
They’re mostly banning guns based on looks, not on actual functionality or ease of modification. Worse, they’re banning specific make and model, meaning that someone else can make an identical gun and legally sell it, until the next list comes out.
It’s showmanship, and it’s preventing meaningful improvements.
Reading the list it looks like they just looked up Call of Duty and Battlefield and copied everything into alphabetical order. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next round includes some fictional guns.
Fun fact, the H&K G11 is prohibited by name in Canada. Only 1000 prototypes were ever produced, exclusively for military trials in Germany, and the project was mothballed in the early 90s after the Warsaw Pact dissolved.
I think I see your point, but, as a person with an RPAL, what does ‘meaningful improvement’ look like to you?
(FYI - I don’t actually own guns. I got my license because I thought I was going to inherit my dad’s guns when he died, and then…well, there’s a whole story)
Here’s the first thing: Education. Education on how hard it is to actually get a gun in this country. I was genuinely shocked (in a good way!) when I went through the requirements. It’s not ‘slightly harder than the USA’ which is what I think most Canadians expect, it’s a completely different process.
I think that if more Canadians understood what they need to go through to get a gun (the course, the licensing, the waiting periods, the background tracking, the storage and transportation requirements, etc.), there would be less demand for “STRONGER GUN LAWS” that aren’t meaningful.
Second thing: Better border controls. Because let’s be clear - nearly all gun crime in Canada is carried out with unregistered illegally imported guns, mostly by people who don’t have licenses to start with.
Third. Actually, this is something Bill 21 got right. Make it easier to block or strip licenses from people who have any history of violence. We could do better here. If a domestic partner files battery charges but then drops them, that should be a HUGE HUGE RED FLAG!
I was very pleased to discover that I couldn’t get my license without approval of my wife (or hypothetical ex-partners), but we could do better.
As for banning guns and accessories, make the bans functional rather than aesthetic. Ban guns that can be converted to auto-fire with a 3D-printed cap. Ban long guns that share a magazine with a pistol (which can have a larger magazine). Ban guns that are designed for concealed carry. (I guess they did this by banning all handguns, but it was inadvertent).
I’m sure others could add more refinements, but it comes down to this: The more I learned about gun laws in Canada, the more I realized that the restrictions brought in by the Liberals have been legal theatre, rather than safety-driven legislation.
I agree with you fully on that point.
In my mind, the penalties for being caught with an illegal firearm should be far more severe. It should be a long, mandatory prison sentence. This seems like an obvious first step. I don’t see how further restricting legal owners will solve the sorts of problems that we want solved when we think about gun crime.