Justin Trudeau announced the tabling of new legislation that would ban the legal purchase of all handguns in Canada.
“We’re introducing legislation to implement a national freeze on handgun ownership,” Trudeau said.
“What this means is it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada. In other words, we’re capping the market for handguns.”
“… And we will require the permanent altercation of long-gun magazines so they can never hold more than five rounds.”
Trudeau further announced additional measures. He claimed that besides sports shooting and hunting, “there’s no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives.”
Conservatives were quick to criticize the announcement today, suggesting these laws will only encourage more illegal guns to be in circulation.
Following Trudeau’s speech, public safety minister Marco Mendicino stepped up to the podium to announce that he is not waiting for legislation to pass before making related changes.
“Today, we table changes to regulations under the Firearms Act to bring these changes into force as soon as possible,” he said.
Recently, Mendicino also introduced several stricter gun laws that came into effect on May 18 — including what appears to be a side-door gun registry database.
Following this and the tragic mass shooting in Texas, USA, Trudeau promised even more gun control.
One reporter asked Trudeau if this would lead to an outright handgun ban, but naturally, Trudeau dodged the question.
However, he did promise that there would be a mandatory assault-style weapons buy-back program that would start in the fall of this year.
Given this trend, it’s reasonable to assume mandatory gun buy-back for handguns is coming next, much like Australia did in the 90s, though there are reportedly hundreds of thousands of guns in circulation.
