GUNTER: Trudeau’s plan for misguided gun ban? Mail them in

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Here’s another example (as if more were needed) of the Trudeau government’s stubborn commitment to a useless, woke idea coupled with utter administrative incompetence.

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After mass murderer Gabriel Wortman (who got his jollies dressing up as a Mountie), killed 22 people in Nova Scotia in April 2020, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau banned upwards of 150,000 rifles and shotguns because they looked scary, like military-style weapons.

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Never mind that none of Wortman’s five guns was acquired legally here in Canada. Three of his guns were smuggled in from the States, one was bought on the black market in this country and one was lifted from the hands of a Mountie he killed while careening around central Nova Scotia on his random killing spree.

Never mind that a ban on legal guns is never going to prevent the repeat of a mass shooting committed with illegal guns. Justin Trudeau, ever the political opportunist, pounced on the tragedy to justify one of his obsessive goals – confiscating thousands of law-abiding owners’ guns.

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Of course, it would have made more sense to set law enforcement agencies the task of stemming the flow of illegal guns coming into this country. But Trudeau chose the political alternative – making a big splashy announcement that would have no practical effect on violent crime.

The feds’ ban was immediate. Owners of the forbidden models had to keep them stored under lock and key. They could not shoot them, not even on their own property. And they certainly couldn’t transport them or will them to their heirs or sell them.

They were given two years to turn them in to the government for whatever compensation the government chose to pay.

However, we are now exactly four years out from the ban, yet not a single gun has been confiscated. Forty-two million dollars has been spent already and Ottawa has been unable to devise a plan for collecting the covered rifles and shotguns.

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The Trudeau government simply can’t figure out how to take away that many guns from that many legitimate owners.

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(Here’s a little something to chew over. While these supposedly “dangerous” killing machines have remained in private hands for four years – and will remain there for at least another year – their possession by ordinary Canadians has not led to a rise in crime. That probably tells us more about the uselessness of the ban than anything.)

The RCMP doesn’t want the task of accepting these freight loads of banned guns at their detachments. Ditto most urban police services. In Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick, where the provinces pay for RCMP to be the local police in smaller centres, the provincial governments told Ottawa they will not allow a nickel of the RCMP budgets they finance to be used for confiscations.

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So the Libs hit on the bright idea that the owners of banned weapons could simply mail them in. Once the feds received and destroyed them, the government would mail out a compensation cheque.

Except, as Nicolas Johnson at thegunblog.ca quickly pointed out, the Liberals had made these guns prohibited and it is illegal to send prohibited weapons by mail. Moreover, Canada Post felt it was too dangerous for their employees.

Never ones to admit their mistakes, the Liberals last week simply decreed new postal regulations to permit the shipping of prohibited weapons.

But as Johnson points out, the logic of this amounts to: “Yesterday, posting these goods was too dangerous, so they were prohibited! Today: Posting these goods is safe. Mandatory!”

The reason there was a postal ban in the first place was to prevent smuggling and illegal sales. That might still be achieved by permitting guns to be mailed only to the govt. However, what about theft? Hundreds of thousands of well-maintained, private firearms will be a very tempting target for the very people who are the problem in the first place – criminals with guns.

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