Canada Banning Handgun Imports

Ministers Marco Mendicino and Melanie Joly announced this morning that as of August 19th, the legal importation of handguns will cease, due to Minister Joly no longer issuing importation permits for legal handgun shipments. This will ban the legal importation of handguns to Canada.

The Ministers repeatedly referenced the "uptick" in handgun sales that occurred after Minister Mendicino announced this government's intent to "freeze" handgun sales with Bill C-21, announced in May of this year, expressing the importation ban's intent to curtail that increase in sales by preventing any new handguns from legally entering Canada, and taking advantage of the fact that there are no legal handguns manufactured in Canada. Minister Mendicino repeatedly referenced 55,000 as the average number of new handguns registered in Canada annually and stated that this importation ban would bring the so-called "freeze" into effect immediately; preventing any more handguns from being legally imported and registered.

Why curtailing the sale of legal, registered handguns to licensed individuals is a priority for this government was not addressed. Neither was the matter of how ceasing to issue importation permits for registered handguns to licensed businesses would appreciably reduce the number of handguns in criminal possession, given the vast majority of handguns in criminal possession were not imported and registered legally with an importation permit, but rather smuggled in from America or 3D printed domestically.

But Minister Mendicino also used the campaign-style press conference to repeat his claim that the Conservatives were to blame for this uptick in sales. He referenced Liberal MP Talib Noormohamed's attempt to fast-track a regulatory amendment to ban handgun registration transfers by obtaining unanimous consent from the Standing Committee on Public Safety, and claimed that instead of "building bridges" with the government on this, the CPC instead chose to "put up barriers" when they refused to provide that unanimous consent - forcing the regulatory change through the normal 30-day consultation period required by parliamentary process.

When asked why this importation ban wasn't passed immediately alongside Bill C-21, Minister Mendicino deflected back to familiar speaking points; repeating past government efforts and choosing instead to re-iterate funding announcements made earlier this week. He similarly skated around the question when asked if the importation ban would include handgun parts, in order to prevent the illegal assembly of 3D-printed handguns; a situation that's becoming seemingly more common as 3D printing technology improves and becomes more accessible.

This latest announcement demonstrates that the Trudeau Liberals continue to conflate licensed gun owners (who quite literally receive daily criminal record checks) with hardened criminals using guns to commit crimes. Rather than spending their time and our taxpayer resources working on the interdiction of illegal gun smuggling or the more recent trend of 3D printing illegal guns, ineffective policies like this show an appetite instead for attention-grabbing headlines intended to sway low-information voters by leveraging the complexity of the Canadian gun laws against the fulcrum of US tragedies. As a result of this politically-driven strategy, gun crime in Canada has and will continue to rise, until the government stops using licensed gun owners as a proverbial whipping boy for political gain, and refocusses its crime prevention efforts on stopping the criminals committing these crimes.