"When the US sneezes ..."

What with the latest round of gun control laws and regulations coming out of Ottawa, it's been pretty easy to focus on our news here in Canada. The impending handgun transfer/import freeze, the impending magazine capacity regulations—these affect us directly, and perhaps almost immediately (although, it seems, maybe not, since the wheels of law grind so slow ...).

However, there's been plenty of news from the US in recent weeks as well, particularly in the wake of recent gun crime. Of course the big item is impending gun control legislation from American federal politicians, with the House of Representatives passing a very restrictive bill (text here) that would have brought in storage requirements, required buyers to be 21 years old before purchasing a semi-auto rifle, banned bump stocks, banned high-capacity magazines, and tightened up rules and penalties around so-called ghost guns and illicit firearms sales.

From there, the ball went into the court of the US Senate, where Republicans and Democrats ended up agreeing on a deal that was mostly focused at ending straw purchasing and illegal firearms sales, enhancing background checks, beefing up school security and funding mental health programs.

Maybe that doesn't sound like much, in the end, but the fact that the House of Representatives was willing to pass the stiffest gun control legislation Americans have seen since Clinton's Assault Weapons Ban shows which way the wind is blowing down there!

Perhaps another recent news item is more likely to impact us here in Canada. The US Fish and Wildlife Service is aiming to ban lead shot use on a few blocks of federal public land. Not the whole country, mind you—just a selection of wildlife refuges in three states, as far as we've seen so far.

Doesn't sound like much of a big deal, nothing that would affect Canadians ... until you remember that in the final days of the Obama regime, USFWS tried to enact a massive lead shot ban, which would have affected 68 national wildlife refuges, covering 150 million combined acres of land and water. Trump reversed this as soon as he got into the White House, but make no mistake: the USFWS and the environmentalist lobby wants lead shot and bullets gone, and when it happens, hunting ammunition pricing is going to increase a lot, even more than the massive jumps in the past three years. And of course, if these kinds of laws pass in the US, we'll see similar moves in Canada. Remember, when America sneezes, Canada catches a cold.

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