How Canada's largest gun control effort in decades is missing the mark
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Canada recently banned 2,500 models of "assault-style" firearms - but a plan to buy-back tens of thousands of guns fell short by half.
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How Canada's largest gun control effort in decades is missing the mark 12 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on Google Nadine Yousif Senior Canada reporter, Montreal, Quebec Heidi Rathjen has been calling for a ban on assault-style rifles since 1989, when a gunman opened fire on her classmates at Montreal's École Polytechnique. The shooting, in which 14 women were killed and more than a dozen injured, was a turning point for Canada, changing how the country viewed gun violence. More than two decades later, after another deadly mass shooting in 2020, Ottawa did roll out a ban on some 2,500 models of such "assault-style" weapons. But a scheme designed to buy back these now-prohibited guns from their owners has had a bumpy roll out, and the programme looks likely to miss the mark. Many legal gun owners are distrustful of the process, two provinces have refused to take part, and even gun control activists like Rathjen say the federal efforts, though a win for public safety, are flawed because the ban does not apply widely enough. "Without a comprehensive ban on assault weapons, there is no ban… and the money will be wasted," said Rathjen, a spokesperson for gun control advocacy group PolySeSouvient. Even Canada's own minister of public safety, Gary Anandasangaree, was caught criticising his government's plan in an audio clip leaked to the Toronto Star. "Don't ask me to explain the logic to you on this," he told a Toronto man in a secretly recorded conversation late last year, when pressed on programme's value when most gun crimes in Canada are committed with illegal weapons. Anandasangaree later said his comments were "misguided", and that he believes in the programme's importance. So why is Canada struggling with a measure that saw success in places like Australia - where 650,000 firearms were bought back and destroyed after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, according to figures by the Australian government - and New Zealand, which collected around 56,000 firearms...
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