Canada has prohibited certain firearms, but struggles to implement collection process
The action was the federal government’s response to a mass shooting in Nova Scotia in which 22 people were killed over April 18-19, 2020.
The killer, dressed as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer and driving a car rigged to look like a patrol car, used an AR-style rifle smuggled into Canada from the United States.
Four years later, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party struggles to keep control in Parliament, both sides of the debate anticipate the possible end of the program even before the first gun has been surrendered.
One gun control activist has criticized the buyback program as too weak.
Nathalie Provost is the spokesperson for PolyRemembers, a group formed after the Dec. 6, 1989, mass shooting at the Polytechnique engineering school in Montreal that killed 14.
Provost, a survivor of that crime, did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
In a Sept. 11 press release, she called on the government to eliminate exemptions to the ban, accelerate completion of the buyback, and close loopholes in the law.
“Even the mandatory buyback program … will lose all of its meaning if current [gun] owners … can simply take the money from the buyback to purchase [guns] that remain legal or new models introduced … by manufacturers seeking to increase their sales and profits,” Provost wrote.
Under the program, certain semiautomatic rifles, so-called assault weapons, were banned.
Rifles such as the AR-15, AK-47, and similar types can no longer be bought, sold, imported, or even transported in Canada. The plan calls for owners of the now-illegal guns to sell them to the federal government.
The government established a two-year amnesty period during which owners must securely store their prohibited firearms until the logistics of the buyback program are worked out.
In 2022, the amnesty period was extended to October 2025.
James Bachynsky, president of the Calgary Shooting Center since 2011, says the Nova Scotia shooting was simply used as an excuse for the Liberal Party to institute a ban it wanted all along.
Bachynsky said the ban would not have prevented the killings in Nova Scotia.
He pointed out that the killer had violated several laws before he fired his first shot. From smuggling guns into the country to impersonating a police officer, the shooter could have been charged with a crime without ever putting his finger on a trigger, he said.