New Parliamentary Petition To End Handgun Transfer Freeze

The Trudeau Liberals have once again enacted gun control legislation targeting legal firearms owners, this time with a handgun sales ban, and once again, there's a parliamentary petition underway, asking the feds to reverse their decision.

The Canadian federal government announced a freeze on handgun transfers back on the October 21, 2022 weekend. As of end-of-day that Friday, the only handgun sales allowed in Canada were very specific situations: security guards, Olympic athletes, and other individuals named under a very narrow list of circumstances. Although there were questions as to whether the government had followed parliamentary procedure, the Canadian Firearms Program centre in Miramichi stopped processing handgun transfers that weekend.

Now, there's a parliamentary petition launched that asks the government to reverse that move. It's sponsored by Conservative MP Tako Van Popta. The petition actually opened back in August, but there's certainly more interest in it now that the Liberal transfer ban has actually been enacted. In August, the transfer ban timeframe was not known.

Here's the text of the petition:

Petition to the House of Commons
Whereas:
The proposed freeze on the sale and transfer of handguns is an ineffective way to combat gun crime;
These regulations disproportionality target law-abiding firearms owners who are already among the most vetted in Canadian society, are subject to daily screening, and are statistically less likely to commit crimes than those who do not hold firearms licenses;
The Government of Canada should be focusing its resources on effective means of fighting gun crime;
Australian National Firearms Agreement of 1996 had no statistically observable additional impact on suicide or assault mortality attributable to firearms in Australia;
In 2019, it was reported that Canadians spent over two billion dollars on firearms, ammunition, and accessories specifically for sport shooting in one year; and
If the government changes the terms or refuses to issue a gun owners' license or firearms registration, the Firearms Act says the gun owners can seek recourse through a Section 74 challenge.
We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to:

1. Immediately repeal the proposed freeze on handguns;
2. Amend Bill C-21 to no longer ban replica firearms i.e. airguns;
3. Immediately repeal the proposed “expiration” of restricted certificates upon reclassification of firearms;
4. Direct resources to border security to better combat gun smuggling;
5. Direct resources to combatting the prevalence of Ghost Gun manufacturing; and
6. Establish common sense firearms laws that protect legal firearms owners.

At time of writing, the petition had just under 2,800 signatures. It closes December 8.

Canadian firearms owners should be familiar with parliamentary petitions by now; see our coverage of the past few high-profile petitions dealing with gun control here. Note that since the Trudeau government took power, there seems to have been no visible changes in government policy based on these petitions, but many firearms owners still believe these petitions are an important tool in their interaction with government.

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