I get it that most people don’t give two shits about gun owners or our concerns but man the way Bill C71 which was just proposed by the federal Liberal government sucks. Most of it is window dressing and stuff that’s already being done like checking people’s PALs before purchasing firearms, more background checks (I guess once a day through the RCMP database is not good enough?) but what really irks me is the ability for the RCMP to classify firearms anyway they want.
In 2014, the RCMP classified the CZ 858 & Swiss Arms rifles as prohibited, even though both were available legally for sale for over 10 years. At the time the only options given to gun owners were to turn in the firearms for destruction (with no compensation), now the Liberals are creating a new prohibited class just for those rifles, that sounds good except in Ontario the CFO doesn’t allow most ranges to fire prohibited weapons.
Sigh when will people acknowledge that there are no simple answers to life’s problems, gun crime in Canada is already extremely low, you’re 10x more likely to die from a drunk driver than be killed by a gun yet it’s not politically expedient to tackle that issue. Let’s see how this plays out, something tells me that it will not be fun to be a gun owner for the next little while…
Wrapping up law abiding gun owners in even more rules and regulations is not going to increase public safety. As it is I applaud Canada for having focus on background checks and ensuring proper licensing but the new rules seem excessive. Can Canadian gun owners lobby government to overturn all this red tape? I feel for you …
Unfortunately in the parliamentary system of government, if a party has the majority of the seats and the vote is whipped, the party leadership can push through whatever they want. I’ve already written my federal representative, I’ve spoken to her many times in the past and hope she responds to my latest email. Perhaps I’ll pay a visit to her office on the weekend to see if anyone’s around to chat too.