The federal handgun freeze took effect Friday, and Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro says it will ruin firearms-related businesses.
Canadians interested in becoming new handgun owners are unable to do so, Shandro said.
“Sadly, with no new purchases being made, ranges, sport shooting clubs and firearms-related businesses will slowly be forced to shut down, compromising livelihoods and recreational opportunities for tens of thousands of Canadians,” he said in a statement.
“This freeze led to a massive surge in handgun purchases from law-abiding firearms owners as they sought to make legal purchases for the last time. Ironically, there are now more legally owned handguns than ever before in Canadian history,” he continued.
The Liberals in May announced their plan to implement a freeze on importing, buying, selling or transferring handguns. The government also tabled the required regulatory amendments in the House of Commons and the Senate.
The measure is a response to rising gun crime — though stats show most firearms-related offences are not from legally owned or purchased weapons.
The Counter Signal reported in September that most guns being seized in Toronto are smuggled into Canada from the US. A Toronto Police Service Twitter post shows that 55 of 77 guns seized by Toronto police from June to August were not legal to own in Canada, meaning they were illegally smuggled.
Speaking from Vancouver on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said the regulations had come into effect.
“We have frozen the market for handguns in this country,” Trudeau said. “This is one of the strongest actions we’ve taken on gun violence in a generation.”
Shandro said the Trudeau Liberals “pretend” the handgun is about safety and deliberately conflate “legal handgun ownership with the violence that we see in many urban centres across Canada.”
“In reality, the handguns used to perpetrate criminal acts in our urban centres are typically illegally obtained and are smuggled across the U.S. border by weapons traffickers,” he said.
“The federal government’s real goal is to scapegoat handgun owners and use wedge politics to appeal to a narrow base of voters who wish to see legal firearm ownership in this country eliminated entirely.”
Federal Conservative public safety critic Raquel Dancho said the handgun freeze is taking effect while a parliamentary committee studies the accompanying legislation revealing that the Liberals aren’t serious about consulting experts.
“We are in the midst of an extensive committee study into their current legislation on gun control and we are hearing from experts across the country that there is clearly a division on what experts believe should be done about firearms.”
