OTTAWA – Most owners of what Canada calls “military-style assault weapons” would be forced to transfer their firearms to a government buyback program under legislation introduced on Monday, which would tighten the country’s already strict firearms controls. .
The Canadian government also immediately imposed new regulations banning the sale, purchase, import or transfer of handguns.
“As a government, as a society, we have a responsibility to act to prevent more tragedies,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Monday. He also said: “We only need to look south of the border to know that if we don’t take strong and swift action, it will get worse and worse and harder to fight.”
The proposed assault weapons law is the latest in a series of steps Mr Trudeau has taken to curb firearms since 22 people were killed by a gunman in rural Nova Scotia in 2020, in the deadliest disaster in the history of the nation. country. The legislation, which could apply to tens of thousands of firearms, is expected to be passed.
The buyback proposal comes as another mass shooting in the United States has sparked an often scorching debate over gun violence. Last week, a gunman used a military-style rifle to kill 19 children and two teachers in the town of Uvalde, Texas. Just 10 days earlier, a shooter of a teenager captivated by a white supremacist ideology opened fire at a grocery store in Buffalo, NY. 10 people and three more injured, almost all black.
After 20 children and six adults were massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, there was widespread demand in the United States for tougher controls on high-powered firearms, but many Republicans behind the gun lobby refused to do so. just allow a vote. on any proposed legislation. US lawmakers have failed to reinstate restrictions on military-style semiautomatic weapons, which expired in 2004.
Mr Trudeau’s program mirrors a semi-automatic weapons ban and buyback program launched by New Zealand in 2019 after a lone gunman stormed two mosques, killing 51 and injuring dozens of others in Christchurch. After a mass shooting in 1996 in which a gunman killed 35 people in the city of Port Arthur, Australia, the government collected more than 650,000 semi-automatic rifles and many shotguns after they were banned under new legislation.
Marco Mendicino, Canada’s public security minister, said the buybacks should begin by the end of the year.
The Small Arms Survey, a nonprofit based in Switzerland, estimated in 2017 that there were 12.7 million legal and illegal weapons in civilian hands in Canada, or 34.7 firearms per 100 people. In the United States, it was estimated that there were more than 300 million guns in circulation, or 120.5 firearms per 100 people.
Shortly after the deadly 2020 eruption in Nova Scotia, Mr. Trudeau used a cabinet order to announce it would ban more than 1,500 models of rifles, including the AR-15, a popular military-style semi-automatic rifle. But in the end it allowed owners to keep their guns, if they had a license – but could no longer use, trade, or sell them except, with permission, to purchasers outside of Canada.
The government followed that up in 2021 with a sweeping package of proposed changes to gun laws. That bill, which expired before it was passed by parliament, disappointed groups who called for tighter arms controls by making participation in the buyback program voluntary.
Automatic weapons have long been banned from civilians in Canada, and semi-automatic magazines are subject to restrictions: No weapon can fire more than five rounds without reloading.
The law, introduced on Monday, fulfills a promise Trudeau made last year to force owners of military-style rifles to surrender them for destruction. Mr Trudeau’s proposal will allow for some exceptions, but those weapons must be modified by the government to make them permanently unusable.
However, there is no legal definition of a “military-style assault weapon.” Mr Trudeau said the government would try to come up with one that can’t be easily circumvented by arms manufacturers.
Until then, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will continue to evaluate weapons model-by-model to see if they belong on the ever-growing list of banned bans introduced by Mr. Trudeau in 2020.
Most rifles and shotguns in Canada, aside from automatic weapons and pistols, are relatively loosely regulated. The previous Conservative government shut down a registry for such weapons that had been set up after a man murdered 14 young women and injured 13 others at the École Polytechnique technical school in Montreal in 1989.
The registry’s database was plagued with technical difficulties and was highly unpopular in rural areas. mr. Trudeau has not heeded calls from gun control groups to extend it.
Compared to shotguns, there are relatively few legal handguns in Canada and their use has been severely restricted for a long time. Aside from members of the police, border agencies, the military and some private security guards, small arms users are only allowed to fire their weapons at firing ranges, otherwise the weapons must be kept in locked containers near their homes.
Mr. Trudeau’s earlier effort is said to have enabled counties to ban all handguns within their borders, an idea that quickly sparked concerns from gun control groups over the development of a national patchwork system. On Monday, he acknowledged that criticism.
“We decided to take a new path, something that would address this issue at a national level,” he said.
Although Mr Trudeau’s Liberal party does not have a majority in the House of Commons, the left-leaning New Democratic Party has long pushed for tougher gun controls and is expected to support the new measure, cutting any potential opposition from the Conservatives.
According to a report released last week by Statistics Canada, the census bureau, small arms are responsible for nearly 60 percent of firearms-related crimes in Canada. The death rate from gun violence is much lower in Canada than in the United States.
The agency is pushing for a more comprehensive collection of data on weapons. While police have long believed that most illegal firearms, especially handguns, are smuggled into the United States, not much is known about the origins of weapons used in crime.
The gunman in Nova Scotia used two weapons that are now banned; both were smuggled in from the United States.
Other measures in the sweeping law, which amends several pieces of legislation, include making it a crime to modify a rifle to increase its capacity; increasing penalties for arms smuggling; and giving police powers to confiscate weapons from people who a judge has determined are at risk of harming themselves or others.