a department were originally from Canada, they would have to manually dig
up each case to find out.

IS IT EASY TO STEAL A GUN?

The failures of the government to ascertain weapons does not stop there;
according to research by Dennis Young, Canadian police and public agencies
has had nearly a thousand firearms “lost or stolen” from them since 2005 to
2019. Given that the goal of these bans is to prevent legal guns from being
stolen and used illegally, it seems contradictory that there is no push for laws
to limit these specific cases as well.

Granted, guns being stolen is always a crime; firearms being stolen from
law abiding citizens means that the gun owner was the victim of a crime and
was not the criminal themselves. However, the way Canadian gun laws are
written makes it quite difficult to steal firearms from citizens. The firearms
act decrees that all restricted firearms (ergo all handguns) must be stored
unloaded, disabled via cable or trigger lock, and locked inside of a durable
case, safe, or vault. Add to that that there are few restricted firearms licensees
(compared to non-restricted) in all of Canada means that the chances of
breaking into a house and stealing a gun were exceptionally low to begin with.

6¢

An elderly Quebec couple dug a secret
chamber behind their basement library
where they hid more than 80 illegal
guns destined for the black market.

 

WILL ILLEGAL GUN OWNERS STOP?
“Well, it must at least deter criminals, right?” Take this shortlist of illegal gun
busts and apply that same question:

Five are arrested in a northwest Edmonton house with three guns, body
armor, 26 grams of methamphetamine, 34 outstanding warrants, and multiple
theft-related offenses under $5,000. VPD recover $1.6 million in fentanyl, a
kilo of cocaine, eight handguns, and several other drugs in a single bust. An
elderly Quebec couple dug a secret chamber behind their basement library
where they hid more than 80 guns destined for the black market. Police in
Windsor, Ontario complete a “high-level drug trafficking” bust through a
simultaneous three location raid, arresting seven people and recovering more
than $1 million in “illicit materials,” plus multiple firearms. Finally, a single
Toronto raid netted $18 million in drugs plus 65 guns.

It bears mentioning that all of these occurred in the last year and most in
the past three months. | suspect none of them would have been deterred by,
nay, considerate of a municipal handgun ban.

ve
re
yr

Still, this wreckage of a bill should at least please the anti-gun lobby,
right? Wrong. One prominent gun control activist called it a “huge win for the
gun lobby,” while the editorial board of The Star wasted not a second to say
that this bill does not go nearly far enough. How is it that a bill that absolutely
decimates legal gun ownership still does not please the anti-gun movement?
This bill is so lackluster that it fails to address the previous criticisms leveled
by the RCMP union at the preceding gun ban.

An opinion that has been kicked around is that PM Trudeau is paving the
way for a spring election and greasing the wheels with a politically popular
move; seeing as most Canadians have little to no knowledge of firearms or
laws, this approach may well work. Plus, as Trudeau’s approval rating on the
most salient issue of the day (coronavirus vaccines) is dropping, a popular
distractor may help people forget about his previous misdeeds.

Ps

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