TheGunBlog.ca — The Liberal Party of Canada may further restrict hunters and sport shooters living in cities if it wins next month’s election, Bill Blair, the Liberal minister of gun bans, told CBC Radio One today.
The party is looking at “additional restrictions on where a firearm can be possessed or stored within a municipality,” Blair told CBC’s The Current as part of a candidate panel. He promoted the new regulations against PAL holders as anti-theft measures.
Massive Liberal Gun Bans
The Liberals have said previously they plan to ban home gun ownership in certain areas.
‘The Proposal Is a Ban on Private Ownership,’ Government MP Says
Blair in June outlined goals for the biggest instant gun confiscations in Canadian history if the Liberals win the election, starting with the owners of 200,000 rifles/shotguns before going after handgunners.
Everyone is banned already from having any gun in any place unless they have a firearm licence authorized by the federal police. Anyone caught with any firearm without permission faces jail.
Restore Justice
Restoring justice for Canada’s 2.2 million men and women with a licence is the top election issue for many voters. Hunting and shooting are at the heart of Canadian culture and heritage.
Election 2019: Three Realities and Four Possible Outcomes
The Conservative Party is the only major federal party to oppose confiscation targeting honest men and women. Police across Canada also oppose the idea.
https://twitter.com/TheGunBlog/status/1174020358871158785
See also: Canadian Gun Owners Guide to Election 2019
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CBC Activism
The CBC, the state media, used today’s interview to repeatedly push for bans. It sounded less like journalism and more like activism.
Is gun violence on your mind as the election looms? On air in ET in a moment, we’re asking @billblair, @andrewcash and @tomdingwallajax what their parties plan to do to curb it.
— The Current on CBC Radio (@TheCurrentCBC) September 17, 2019
The radio show, hosted by Laura Lynch, was speaking to a panel of candidates from the three largest political parties:
- Liberal Party: Bill Blair
- Conservative Party: Tom Dingwall
- New Democratic Party: Andrew Cash
Blair is the former chief of police of Toronto. Dingwall is a police officer in Ajax, Ontario.
Excerpts
CBC: The Current radio excerpts transcribed by TheGunBlog.ca, starting at 5:45.
CBC: [On a handgun ban] Will the Liberals introduce that?
Blair: … We’re prepared to take the steps that are necessary to make it more difficult for criminals to get their hands on firearms, particularly handguns, …
CBC: Are we talking about a handgun ban?
Blair: We’re talking about restrictions on firearms which will make them far more difficult for criminals to gain access to.
Let me just give you some examples.
One of the things we are seeing is quite a few number of handguns are getting into the hands of criminals as a result of theft. They’re being stolen from retailers across the country and from private homes.
So the storage of those weapons is absolutely critical to make sure that they’re more difficult to steal.
And yet our current laws do not provide firearm owners with enough information about what they need to do to keep their weapons secure.
CBC: I don’t hear a handgun ban in there anywhere.
Blair: What you’re hearing is we are looking at all the measures which will be effective at keeping our communities safe and making it far more difficult for criminals to gain access to guns.
That can include by the way — within a city, and Mayor Tory and I have been discussing this — additional restrictions on where a firearm can be possessed or stored within a municipality to make it far more difficult for people in those municipalities to gain access criminally to guns.
…
CBC: Would the Conservatives support a handgun ban?
Dingwall: Absolutely not. And I can tell you why.
A handgun ban is simply a way of not addressing the real issue here. The real issue is illegal guns coming across the border, it’s gang violence, it’s violent crime, and it’s an inability of our current government to address those issues.
We know that having a handgun ban will not prevent guns from coming across the border. These people are already breaking the law.
So to say that we’re going to prohibit guns from being in Toronto, it’s already illegal for anyone to carry a handgun.
CBC: But why not take a step that can get some of them off the streets with a ban, what’s the problem with doing that?
Dingwall: Because it isn’t the legal gun owners that are walking down the streets of Toronto shooting people.
It’s a distraction technique. It’s an attempt to make people feel safe, but in reality a handgun ban will not make people safe.
Criminals do not have borders. If you say you can’t have handguns in Toronto, what about Peel, what about York? Do you think that they can’t simply go to Peel or York and find a handgun if they want to, or cross the border and buy one?
…
Cash: I don’t think we need guns in our cities. …
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