Sheila Gunn Reid: Seven years of delays undermine Ottawa's case for gun bans
Earlier this week, the Ministry of Public Safety extended the gun ban amnesty until 90 days after the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights' challenge is heard by the Supreme Court.
On Friday's Rebel Roundtable livestream,
@TheMenzoid and
@SheilaGunnReid were joined by lawyer Ian Runkle to discuss the future of the Liberal gun bans, which, with this latest extension, may not take effect until 7.5 years after they were first imposed.
“This is one of those times when I’m actually cheering for government ineptitude,” said Sheila, “because it’s going to be real hard for them to make the case for pressing public safety when 7.5 years later the vast majority of us still hold these firearms and… there’s three quarters of a decade of data saying we haven’t been committing the crimes with them.”
Ian pointed out that extending the amnesty was likely a strategic move by the government, as the alternative may have been the courts suspending the operation of the order-in-council, which would have permitted the use, purchase, and sale of the affected firearms during that period.
“The government took this step, not to do us a favour — not to be like, ‘Alright, we’re going to be fair to gun owners’ — but because they really feared the alternative if they made the court step in,” he said. “They’re really not treating gun owners fairly at all, and they haven’t at any step in this process.”
Ian argued that the ban is especially unfair given that the group most affected is sports shooters, not criminals.
“They [sports shooters] have never been the problem,” said Ian. “But they want to eliminate sports shooting as a step toward later… making further bans.”