WELLINGTON COUNTY – Michael Chong, MP for Wellington-Halton Hills, said the recent ban on firearms doesn’t make any sense and ignores the true issues.
On May 1, the federal government announced a ban on approximately 1,500 makes and models of “assault-style” firearms. The first issue Chong has with this is there isn’t a legal definition of what constitutes an assault-style firearm.
“They are banning firearms based on how they look and keeping legal other firearms that have the same functionality,” Chong said in a phone interview. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
The other issue he has is how this ban was passed. A regulatory change was made through an order-in-council which bypasses debate in parliament or any review in the senate.
“This should be debated in parliament but because parliament has been suspended and the House of Commons is suspended, we’re not able to do that,” Chong said. “The government took advantage of the House of Commons suspension to do this.”
Chong said he feels this was done as a political response to the Nova Scotia shootings and does not address what he sees as the main issue causing gun violence.
“The announcement didn’t address what appears to be the fundamental problem which is illegal firearms from the United States smuggled into Canada that seem to increasingly be used in crimes,” Chong said.
“What data we do have points to the problem of illegal guns being smuggled into Canada and that was true in the case of Nova Scotia and it’s also true of the gun violence that takes place in our larger cities.”
Andrew Vincent, web director of the Guelph Rod & Gun Club and competitive sport shooter, said he feels this ban criminalizes lawful gun owners.
“This only affects people with firearms licences,” Vincent said. “It doesn’t do anything to affect criminals and it doesn’t do anything to affect gun smugglers.”
As web director, Vincent handles emails from members and said no one is happy about this regulatory change.
“It makes for a really good sound bite to say we’re banning assault weapons,” Vincent said. “It seems very disingenuous and I think the average Canadian firearms owner is going to be unhappy with that because you have the government using our tax dollars to threaten to confiscate our property.”
Vincent said he is particularly troubled with the bypassing of parliament through the order-in-council. He said he feels it should have been debated and received input from elected members.
“As a government that claims to believe in the democratic process and believe in fact-based policy, doing this through debate in the house would be a great first step,” Vincent said.
The next step for firearms owners is to see if there will be a buyback program or if they will be grandfathered in and allowed to keep them. This was not addressed in the regulatory change because both must be passed through legislation.
For the time being, Chong said the government needs to come forward with strong policies that address illegal gun smuggling from the United States.
“Firearms owners use their firearms responsibly and are not the cause of tragedies that we see in our cities and rural areas and the tragedy we saw in Nova Scotia,” Chong said.
