Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino just isn’t ruling out the potential for a nationwide ban on handguns in Canada, saying the federal authorities is leaving “all decisions on the desk.”
In an interview on CTV’s Question Interval, Mendicino talked about Ottawa’s newly launched gun-control bill is a “step within the becoming route” to mitigate gun violence all through the nation nevertheless it is not going to take away the problem altogether.
“Bill C-21, whereas it is a necessary stride and primarily essentially the most formidable in a period, by itself, just isn’t going to eradicate gun violence. Now we have now to spend cash on our police, now we have now to make sure that we’re defending our borders, now we have now to introduce smart gun protection and we moreover should be certain that we’re addressing gun crime at its root set off,” he talked about.
“It is not about selecting one. It’s about doing all of them on the an identical time.”
On Monday, Ottawa launched the proposed legal guidelines, which partially locations a nationwide freeze on importing, looking for, selling or in every other case transferring handguns.
It doesn’t outright ban the firearm, allowing current owners to proceed to personal and use them, nevertheless objectives to restrict the amount already in Canada.
Amongst completely different measures, it’s going to moreover enable the elimination of gun licenses from people who commit acts of dwelling violence, current further devices to analysis firearm crimes, strengthen border measures to cease firearm smuggling, and create a model new “crimson flag” regulation requiring people who have in mind themselves a hazard to themselves or others to surrender their firearms to police.
Critics of the bill, and notably the handgun freeze, say it unfairly targets highly-vetted, licensed firearm owners in its place of criminals who pay money for weapons illegally.
Mendicino refuted this assertion.
“Bill C-21 doesn’t aim law-abiding gun owners, it targets handgun violence, it targets organized crime,” he talked about.
“I’ve monumental respect for law-abiding gun owners and have engaged with them and I’ve visited just a few of my opposition colleagues’ ridings to talk with them. Nevertheless the reality of the matter stays that Statistics Canada research that gun violence is on the rise, handgun violence notably is on the rise.”
The federal authorities had beforehand devoted to work provinces-by-province on handgun bans, which gun-control advocates argued would solely create a patchwork system of differing approaches.
In 2020, Ottawa banned 1,500 assault-style weapons and on the an identical time launched a forthcoming buyback program.
Requested when the buyback program would start, Mendicino talked about they’re determined to begin the tactic “by the tip of this yr.”
With data from The Canadian Press.