OT: Canadain Firearm Buy Back Program

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Western provinces are taking a stand for gun owners​

Saskatchewan has just expanded its provincial firearms office, putting public safety and protecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners front and centre as the federal government continues to curtail lawful gun ownership in this country. Saskatchewan’s approach has been celebrated by firearms advocates – Andrew welcomes to the show the province’s firearms commissioner, Robert Freberg, and chief firearms officer, Murray Cowan, to explain why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVIh5B4lSCE

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Liberals Plan Election Season Gun Grab, Want Canada Post To Help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmZtXb63vQw

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Saskatchewan MLAs Pass Unanimous Motion Asking Feds to Hand Over Gun Policy

Saskatchewan unanimously passed a motion this week calling on the Canadian government to hand over gun policy to the province, as it works to protect firearm users from federal Liberal Party attacks and further dismantle the national anti-gun regime.
Unanimous Support

All 40 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) in Regina who were present on April 25 voted in favour of the private member’s motion by MLA Fred Bradshaw.

Source: Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly – Debates and Proceedings

“That this Assembly calls upon the Government of Canada to devolve all the relevant parts of the Firearms Act to the province of Saskatchewan in order to allow it to administer and regulate legal firearms possession.”
—Private Member’s Motion By Saskatchewan MLA Fred Bradshaw, Passed on 25 April 2024

Why It Matters

The national anti-gun regime designed by the Liberals is unraveling as provinces, police and the public work to subvert the Liberal attacks against government-licensed firearm users.

Saskatchewan and Alberta are leading provincial opposition to the expanding Liberal crackdowns on honest citizens across Canada.
Since Bradshaw proposed his motion last year, the Liberals and their allies in parliament passed Bill C-21 as their newest law to criminalize lawful firearm users and confiscate our gear.

Premier Scott Moe: Protecting Gun Rights

“Our government remains committed to protecting the rights of law-abiding firearms owners and will continue to stand up against Bill C-21 while supporting initiatives aimed at the illegal use of firearms in our province,” Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said on his personal account on the X platform.

Saskatchewan Party Caucus Statement

Source: Saskatchewan Party Caucus

Saskatchewan Government Passes Motion to Protect Firearms Owners’ Rights

Today, a Private Member’s Motion by Carrot River Valley MLA Fred Bradshaw calling on the Government of Canada to devolve all parts of The Firearms Act to the province of Saskatchewan in order to allow it to administer and regulate legal firearms possession was passed in the Saskatchewan Legislature.

The motion was introduced in response to the federal Liberal government’s Bill C-21, which criminalizes tens of thousands of Saskatchewan residents while accomplishing nothing to enhance public safety. The federal government decided through this bill that legally owned and used handguns could no longer be imported, purchased, or transferred, and effectively reduced the value of these firearms to nothing. This is despite the fact that most handgun crime is committed using illegally trafficked and acquired handguns.

“Our government will not allow the federal Liberal government to trample on the rights of law-abiding firearms owners,” said Bradshaw. “I am proud to be part of a government that will stand up for these rights and protect the rights of Saskatchewan’s many legal firearms owners.”

Last year, the Government of Saskatchewan passed The Saskatchewan Firearms Act to establish licensing requirements for seizure agents involved in firearms expropriation, require and oversee fair compensation for any firearms being seized, and require forensic and ballistic testing of seized firearms.

The Government of Saskatchewan will not stand idly by as the federal government brands thousands of law-abiding citizens as criminals. While the Government of Saskatchewan does not support Bill C-21 and its unjust punishment of law-abiding citizens, we fully support initiatives aimed at reducing the criminal and illegal use of firearms, preventing gang violence, and stopping the smuggling and sale of illegal firearms.

“Many rural residents across the province depend on firearms to protect their livestock and to hunt,” said Ray Orb, Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities President. “Responsible firearm owners who practice gun safety and abide by the licensing requirements legislated by the Government of Saskatchewan should not be criminalized.”

With the passing of this motion, the Government of Saskatchewan continues to stand up for the rights of Saskatchewan’s law-abiding firearms owners.

https://thegunblog.ca/2024/04/28/saskatchewan-mlas-pass-unanimous-motion-asking-feds-to-hand-over-gun-policy/

[IronNoggin]

So, what happened to Canada’s gun control emergency?

The situation was urgent, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said four years ago, nearly to the day. There was no time to go through Parliament – Canadian lives were at stake – which is why his government had to implement gun control changes immediately through an order-in-council. With essentially a stroke of his pen, Mr. Trudeau banned the sale, import, transfer and use of 1,500 of what he called “military-style assault rifles” (a made-up designation; he might as well called them “scary looking monster guns”).

The announcement came in the wake of the horrific mass shooting in Nova Scotia, where a gunman killed 22 people – notably, with weapons he obtained illegally. The government’s announcement, however, was about prohibiting the legal ownership of certain semi-automatic firearms.

“There’s no place for these weapons. They’re the choice of people who engage in mass murder,” then-public safety minister Bill Blair said. “Banning assault-style firearms will save Canadian lives.” (In practice, firearm-related homicide actually increased 23 per cent in Canada from 2020 to 2022.)

The government gave itself two years to develop a buyback program, which would offer owners fair compensation for their newly prohibited weapons and grant them amnesty for their possession in the interim. (The buyback was actually a 2019 campaign promise.) The government extended that deadline first in March, 2022, to “address issues that have been identified since 2020,” and then again in October, 2023, for another two years.

The status quo, then, is that these deadly weapons, for which Mr. Trudeau said there is “no use, and no place” in Canada, and which needed to be banned immediately, can remain in Canadians’ hands and homes until October, 2025. The ban is still technically in place, meaning that legal gun owners can’t actually use the prohibited weapons in any way, but that won’t affect – and hasn’t affected – rates of firearm-related violent crimes, which reached record levels in 2022. But that makes sense when most of the crimes committed with firearms are committed by those who obtain them illegally. Indeed, according to Statistics Canada, “the firearms used in homicides [in 2022] were rarely legal firearms used by their legal owners who were in good standing.”

The government’s 2020 order-in-council appeared to be modelled after a similar move made by New Zealand following a tragic mass shooting there, at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019. New Zealand’s government, unlike Canada’s, acted swiftly: Its buyback program began just four months later and it ran until the end of the year, at which point the government said it had collected more than 60,000 guns and nearly 200,000 illegal parts. The cost was considerable (initial compensation was the equivalent of about $84-million) and gun crime continues to be a problem (proponents of the buyback say it could take a decade to see its effects), but the execution of its buyback demonstrated, at the very least, a genuine desire on the part of the government to act – and a capacity to do so.

The Trudeau government, by comparison, excels at making announcements, and trips over its laces when it comes to implementation (see: pharmacare, defence procurement, appointing judges, vaccine development, dental care). On the gun file, it already fell on its face trying to defend a couple of amendments to its gun control legislation, tabled in November of 2023, that would have outlawed a number of popular hunting rifles. Then-public safety minister Marco Mendicino insisted that the Conservatives were engaging in “disinformation” about the amendments, since, according to him, they only targeted “assault-style firearms, not hunting rifles.” The government later acknowledged that, whoops, the amendments would’ve actually banned a number of guns frequently used by hunters, and walked the changes back.

Now the government is facing another obstacle with its very-much-still-theoretical buyback program. According to reporting by CBC News, Canada Post said in a recent letter that it will not participate in the collection of prohibited weapons out of concern about potential conflicts between its staff and gun-owners. Federal sources told the CBC that using Canada Post would be the easiest and most cost-effective option, though there are still other methods to consider; New Zealand set up collection points all over the country, but that route obviously comes with security concerns, which invariably hike up costs.

The good news for the government is that it has given itself two more years to figure it all out, even though there wasn’t a moment to spare back in 2020. Indeed, it was too risky to allow these deadly firearms to remain on our streets (though technically, they were never allowed on the streets), but apparently not risky enough to actually find a way to confiscate them. This is another job well done for this government, if the job was making an announcement and then flailing aimlessly for the next several years.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-so-what-happened-to-canadas-gun-control-emergency/

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Alberta Mocks Trudeau on Failed Gun Buyback

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7VfhWuM-X4

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Alberta Mocks Trudeau on Failed Gun Buyback

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7VfhWuM-X4

I vote for Daniel Smith for Deputy PM!!!

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A culture of safety

Ottawa claims firearm owners need to be closely monitored to ensure public safety. Supposedly, public safety requires not only licencing and gun registration but also nightly checks by the police (“continuous eligibility screening”), and, even that’s not enough, because the Liberals sporadically impose ever increasing restrictions and prohibitions.

Balderdash

Ottawa can only get away with such outlandish claims because Canadians do not know their own history. In reality, Canadian firearms owners have created a culture of safety. Not only are accidental firearms deaths quite rare, but firearms owners contribute to society in many ways.

Canadian firearms owners have long been among the most patriotic and most responsible of citizens. Not only were firearms owners foremost among the patriots who volunteered to fight during both World Wars, as well as in Korea and Afghanistan, but they were also responsible for pioneering a uniquely successful model for wildlife conservation, the North American Wildlife Conservation Model. A model that relies upon wide-spread civilian gun ownership.

Hunters are the best conservationists

The North American Wildlife Conservation Model is the most successful approach to conserving and enhancing wildlife in the world. Canadian fish and game organizations were among the leaders. The success of this approach relies upon widespread hunting opportunity. Instead of banning hunting in order to “protect” wildlife, wildlife is made available for general hunting. For more details, check out Val Geist‘s publications.

When general hunting is the rule, as in North America, every hunter has a vested interest in protecting the vulnerable animals from poaching or environmental degradation. Hunting is only allowed under strict regulations based upon ecological rules that guarantee healthy wildlife populations. The result is that hunters are the driving force behind wildlife conservation.

Hunting bans fail to protect wildlife

Either one of two things will happen. Removing the pressure from hunting removes the limits to population growth of the protected species until the species destroys its habitat. As well, the unrestrained growth of any population (deer, bears, elephants) imposes a cost on the immediate neighbors of the protected area. Farms may be devastated by voracious wildlife, lives may be lost in road accidents (ungulates are serious traffic hazards), or hikers or outdoor workers may be injured or killed by aggressive bears. In Africa villages are trampled by rampaging elephants. With no legal recourse, locals may kill protected animals to defend their families.

Hunting bans also stimulate poaching. Bans increase the economic value of a “protected species” so illegal markets expand – whether bear gall bladders or ivory tusks. Both in North America and Africa, hunting bans have failed again and again. The failure of the ban on ivory is a sad commentary on such schemes.

North American Wildlife Conservation Model

In contrast, the only successful approach to wildlife conservation is the North American Wildlife Conservation Model. This approach was originated by big game hunters, led by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell, who led the campaign for conservation. In doing so, they created the modern hunting culture of “Fair Chase.” Fair chase refers to the pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper or unfair advantage over the game animals. Thanks to hunter organizations, all Canadian provinces and states in the US instituted hunting regulations that protect and enhance wildlife across the continent.

The North American Wildlife Conservation Model relies upon widespread hunting opportunities and civilian gun ownership. Recognizing the vital importance of firearm safety, North American fish and game organizations have been among the first to introduce and promote a culture of safety which begins with regulations. But doesn’t end there.

Fish and game clubs and the culture of safety

Realizing that government regulations alone would never guarantee hunter safety, Firearm organizations, including Canadian fish and game clubs, knew they had to install the culture of safety in the hearts and minds of civilian firearm owners. Such efforts relied upon a longstanding tradition of responsible firearms ownership.

With the increase in hunter numbers after World War II, the National Rifle Association in the US, building upon decades of involvement with marksmanship training, launched the first hunter safety program in 1951. American and Canadian fish and game clubs followed suit, quickly ramping up efforts to teach firearms safety, first introducing voluntary courses, and later pressuring provincial governments to mandate safety courses as part of hunting licences.By the mid-1970s, almost all provincial and territorial governments required hunters to take a firearm safety course as part of hunter safety training. In 1957 Ontario introduced a hunter safety training course. British Columbia mandated hunter safety classes (including firearms safety instruction) for new hunters in 1974.

The results of the resulting culture of safety are readily seen in the plummeting numbers of accidental firearms deaths in Canada.

Number of accidental deaths in 2022

Rate per 100,000 Target population

Motor vehicles 1,752 4.7 39 million

Falls 7,603 19.5 39 million

Poisonings 5,882 15.1 39 million

Motorcycles 200 24 800,000 registered motorcycles/mopeds

Pedal cycles 74 1.23 6 million active cyclists

Firearms 11 0.28 4 million firearms owners [est]

https://justiceforgunowners.ca/a-culture-of-safety/