That deafening silence coming from north of the border is the sound of anti-gunners’ apparent shock that good Canadians are not sheepishly handing over their firearms to government agents in exchange for a small check.
The public rejection of the “buyback” is so thunderous that CNN recently took note. The outlet, which generally caters to gun control forces, had to admit that the push is all but failing.
Proponents call the ban a buyback even though it certainly is not
“The buyback has also been met with friction in western Canada,” CNN reported. “The province of Alberta has said it won’t participate in the buyback and barred its police forces from taking part. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have also said they won’t participate.”
The program’s framework, called a “buyback” even though the government never owned the weapons it wanted to confiscate, was initiated last month.
Any citizen who owns one of the 2,500 banned makes and models must hand them over by March 31 to possibly receive compensation. If a person misses that deadline, they still have until October 30, 2026, to give up or destroy their prohibited firearms.
Officials have a plan to work around local opposition to firearm confiscation
Possession of one of the thousands of banned firearms after that date carries the risk of criminal charges.
CNN reported that Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Gary Anandasangaree, remains in charge of the program even in the aftermath of a leaked audio scandal. He questioned on tape last September the officials’ ability to carry out the buyback.
Anandasangaree later dismissed his words as “misguided.”
Canada has nowhere near the estimated 500 million firearms in circulation in the U.S., but its numbers are significant. The country reportedly has 2 million registered and 10 million unregistered weapons, according to a 2017 report from the Small Arms Survey research group.
CNN spoke with Alberta’s Chief Firearms Officer Teri Bryant, who confirmed that his province is bucking Ottawa’s confiscation program.
“We’ve made it clear from the beginning,” he noted. “We weren’t gonna participate in this scheme. And they’ve had six years: if they really thought this was so important, they would have set up some kind of a mechanism.”
Bryant’s words were countered by a statement from the Ministry of Public Safety to the outlet. Spokesperson Simon Lafortune told CNN that the federal government would work around local authorities and send “mobile collection units” to confiscate firearms from their lawful owners.
“The decision of local police forces to not administer the collection of firearms will not prevent the federal government from collecting them through these MCUs,” the spokesperson said.
That’s all well and good, but there may be trouble in Alberta.
Bryant explained to CNN that the MCUs will need permission to go door-to-door grabbing guns.
“Those mobile collection units would need a seizure agent license from us,” he said. “They haven’t applied for one.”
For its part, the news network cited numbers from Australia’s confiscation program some three decades ago to support the idea that buybacks reduce mass shootings.
The network could not present specific numbers showing that homicide or suicide rates declined due to confiscation. However, it reported that the number of legal gun owners in Australia declined by a whopping 50%.
CNN interviewed anti-gun activist Wendy Cukier, who tried to explain why stripping firearms from the people is the way of the future. She claimed that “Canadians do not feel civilians should have access to semi-automatic military-style firearms, period.”
On the other side, Rod Giltaca is the CEO of the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights. “We are not anti-regulation. We just want to make sure that those regulations have a demonstrable effect on public safety, and if they’re just there to punish law-abiding gun owners, then they should be withdrawn.”
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