OTTAWA — Most house owners of what Canada calls “military-style assault weapons” can be required to show over their firearms to a authorities buyback program beneath laws launched on Monday, which might tighten the nation’s already stringent management of firearms.
The Canadian authorities additionally introduced new laws that may ban the sale, buy, importation or switch of handguns. “We’re capping the variety of handguns on this nation,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated on Monday.
The handgun gross sales ban and the proposed assault weapons regulation are the newest in a sequence of steps Mr. Trudeau has taken to limit firearms since 22 individuals had been killed in rural Nova Scotia by a gunman in 2020, within the deadliest rampage within the nation’s historical past. The laws, which may apply to tens of 1000’s of firearms, is anticipated to move.
“As a authorities, as a society, we’ve a accountability to behave to stop extra tragedies,” Mr. Trudeau instructed reporters on Monday. He additionally stated: “We want solely look south of the border to know that if we don’t take motion, firmly and quickly, it will get worse and worse and harder to counter.”
The buyback proposal comes as one other mass capturing in the US has reignited an usually searing debate on gun violence. Final week a gunman used a military-style rifle to kill 19 kids and two lecturers within the city of Uvalde, Tex. Solely 10 days earlier, a teenage gunman entranced by a white supremacist ideology opened fireplace at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., killing 10 individuals and injuring three extra, virtually all of them Black.
After 20 kids and 6 adults had been massacred in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary College in Newtown, Conn., there have been widespread calls in the US for stronger controls on highly effective firearms, however many Republicans aligned with the gun foyer refused to even enable a vote on any proposed laws. American lawmakers have failed to revive restrictions on military-style semiautomatic weapons that expired in 2004.
Mr. Trudeau’s program echoes a semiautomatic weapons ban and buyback program launched by New Zealand in 2019, after a lone gunman stormed two mosques, killing 51 individuals and injuring dozens of others in Christchurch. After a mass capturing in 1996 wherein a gunman killed 35 individuals within the city of Port Arthur, Australia, the federal government there collected greater than 650,000 semiautomatic rifles and plenty of shotguns after they had been banned beneath new laws.
Marco Mendicino, Canada’s public security minister, stated the buybacks ought to start by the tip of the 12 months.
The Small Arms Survey, a nonprofit group primarily based in Switzerland, estimated in 2017 that there have been 12.7 million authorized and unlawful weapons in civilian fingers in Canada, or 34.7 firearms per 100 individuals. In the US, it estimates, there have been greater than 300 million weapons in circulation, or 120.5 firearms per 100 individuals.
Quickly after the lethal 2020 rampage in Nova Scotia, Mr. Trudeau used a cupboard order to announce it will ban greater than 1,500 fashions of rifles, together with the AR-15, a well-liked military-style semiautomatic rifle. However in the long run, it allowed house owners to maintain their rifles, if that they had a allow — however may now not use them, commerce them or promote them besides, with permission, to patrons outdoors Canada.
The federal government adopted that up in 2021 with a sweeping bundle of proposed adjustments to gun legal guidelines. That invoice, which expired earlier than making its method via Parliament, disenchanted teams calling for tighter gun controls by making participation within the buyback program voluntary.
Computerized weapons have lengthy been banned for civilians in Canada, and magazines for semiautomatic weapons are restricted: no gun might shoot greater than 5 rounds with out reloading.
The regulation launched on Monday fulfills a pledge made by Mr. Trudeau final 12 months to drive house owners of military-style rifles to show them in for destruction. Mr. Trudeau’s proposal will enable some exemptions, however these weapons have to be modified by the federal government to make them completely inoperable.
There may be, although, no authorized definition of a “military-style assault weapon.” Mr. Trudeau stated the federal government would search to provide you with one that would not be simply circumvented by gun makers.
Till then, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will proceed to judge weapons on a model-by-model foundation to see in the event that they belong on the ever increasing banned record launched by Mr. Trudeau in 2020.
Most rifles and shotguns in Canada, other than automated weapons and handguns, have been comparatively loosely regulated. The earlier Conservative authorities closed a registry for such weapons that was arrange after a person killed 14 younger ladies and injured 13 others in 1989 on the École Polytechnique engineering college in Montreal.
The registry’s database was plagued with technical issues, and it was deeply unpopular in rural areas. Mr. Trudeau has not heeded calls from gun management teams to resume it.
In contrast with searching rifles, there are comparatively few authorized handguns in Canada and their use has lengthy been closely restricted. Other than members of the police, border businesses, the navy and a few non-public safety guards, handgun customers might fireplace their weapons solely at capturing ranges, and the weapons should in any other case be saved in locked containers at their houses.
Mr. Trudeau’s earlier legislative try would have allowed provinces to ban all handguns inside their borders, an concept that swiftly led to issues from gun management teams in regards to the improvement of a patchwork system nationally. On Monday he acknowledged these criticisms.
“We determined to take a brand new route, one thing that may deal with this situation at a nationwide stage,” he stated.
Whereas Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Occasion doesn’t maintain a voting majority within the Home of Commons, the left-leaning New Democratic Occasion has lengthy pushed for tighter gun controls and is anticipated to help the brand new measure, permitting it to beat any potential opposition from the Conservatives.
Handguns account for near 60 % of firearms-related crimes in Canada, in response to a report launched final week by Statistics Canada, the census company. Charges of demise linked to gun violence are far decrease in Canada than in the US.
The company is pushing for extra complete assortment of information on weapons. Whereas the police have lengthy held that almost all unlawful firearms, notably handguns, are smuggled in from the US, not a lot is understood in regards to the origins of weapons utilized in crimes.
The shooter in Nova Scotia used two weapons that are actually banned; each had been smuggled in from the US.
Different measures within the sweeping invoice, which amends a number of items of laws, embrace making it a criminal offense to change a rifle to extend its capability; growing the penalties for gun smuggling; and giving police energy to grab weapons from individuals whom a decide has decided to be liable to hurting themselves or others.
