Canada Plans Complete Freeze On Handgun Ownership

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced legislation to freeze handgun purchases and a “buy back” of military-style semi-automatic firearms Monday, according to a press release.

The legislation would prohibit future sales and importation of handguns, require all long gun magazines to be altered to hold no more than five rounds, ban sales and transfers of “high-capacity” magazines and establish a “buy back program” for banned military-style semiautomatic firearms, including the AR-15.

“Today, we’re proposing some of the strongest measures in Canadian history to keep guns out of our communities and build a safer future for everyone,” Trudeau said in the press release.

“I don’t understand any buy back proposals are lawful, since the government never owned the property in the first place,” Mark Oliva of the National Shooting Sports Foundation told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “What this proposal is, is government confiscation of private property.”

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Canada passed legislation in May 2020 banning over 1,500 types of firearms after an April 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia killed 23 people.

“The legislation we introduced today is part of our comprehensive strategy to promote safe and responsible gun laws, invest in law enforcement to stop organized crime and illegal gun smuggling at the border, and to invest in communities to address root causes and prevent gun crime from occurring in the first place,” Canada’s minister of public safety, Marco E. L. Mendicino, said in the release.

The regulations will be implemented in the fall of 2022, according to the release.

“We recognize that the vast majority of gun owners use them safely and in accordance with the law, but other than using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives,” Trudeau said in a Monday press conference.

Prime Minister Trudeau’s office did not respond to requests for comment from TheDCNF.