There will be no end of opinions, analyses and online rants outlining what the federal government got wrong with the proposed gun-control measures laid out last week by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The debate, as are all discussions related to firearms, will be heated and polarized. Familiar talking points will be dusted off, reframed and re-amplified. The timing of the announcement — hard on the heels of yet another mass shooting in the U.S., this time involving more than two dozen elementary school children — will be criticized for being opportunistic and cynical.
What will get much less attention, as the volume of the shouting continues to increase and the entrenchment of positions deepens, is just how much there is about the Liberals’ new Bill C-21 that is decidedly right.
SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau laid out new gun-control measures last week.
Most notably, Bill C-21 proposes a hard nationwide freeze on the import, sale and transfer of handguns. Existing owners of handguns will be able to keep their weapons — the use of which, under current laws, is essentially limited to target shooting at secure gun ranges — but they will not be allowed to sell or "gift" them, and sales of new handguns will cease.
That means the number of new handguns entering the segment of the population that uses guns for criminal purposes will be reduced significantly; it won’t be halted completely, owing to the cross-border smuggling and domestic theft that are bound to continue. But over the longer term, the availability of handguns to criminals will be markedly curtailed, which is significant because handguns have increasingly become a weapon of choice in Canadian homicides and other shootings.
Handguns are, for all intents and purposes, weapons whose purpose is the infliction of harm on human beings. They aren’t sufficiently accurate to be used in hunting, where the ability to hit a target from long range is of paramount importance. They are, however, easy to carry and conceal, and can cause grievous harm when fired in close quarters.
Fewer handguns in the hands of Canadians, criminal and otherwise, is an outcome to which we all should aspire, and Bill C-21 is a substantial improvement over the Liberals’ last attempt at handgun control, a tepid and pointless discussion in 2021 of the possibility of giving provinces and individual municipalities the option of outlawing handguns if they so desired.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES
Bill C-21 proposes a hard nationwide freeze on the import, sale and transfer of handguns.
Also of note in Bill C-21 is a provision that would allow for the immediate removal of firearms licences from those who commit domestic violence or engage in criminal harassment, and would allow the courts to demand people considered a danger to themselves or others to surrender their weapons to police.
The new law would also ban the sale and transfer of high-capacity magazines for long guns, and would require existing magazines to be altered so they cannot hold more than five rounds.
These are all common-sense measures that will not prevent Canadians from acquiring, owning and using firearms for lawful and reasonable purposes.
"This is a concrete and real national measure that will go a long way towards keeping Canadians safe," Mr. Trudeau said in unveiling the bill. "Other than using firearms for sport shooting and for hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives."
Despite the inevitable rhetoric from Canadian gun enthusiasts inclined to echo the Second Amendment-twisting sentiments of the U.S. lobbyists who successfully stymie every American attempt to stem the bloody tide of mass shootings, there is nothing in Canada’s latest gun-legislation effort that is worthy of outrage.
