Canada Proposes Law to Ban Handgun Sales, Buy Back ‘Military-Style Assault Weapons’
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Canada on Monday introduced legislation that would ban the sale, purchase, importation, or transfer of handguns in the country and would require most owners of “military-style assault weapons” to turn in their firearms to a government buyback program.
“We are capping the number of handguns in this country,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
Trudeau said the government plans to draft a legal definition of a “military-style assault weapon” that would not be easy for gun makers to evade, the New York Times reported. The term is often applied to the AR-15, which has been used in a series of recent high-profile mass shootings. However, the AR-15 is semi-automatic, firing one round for each pull of the trigger, while most military-issued rifles have fully automatic capability.
The proposal would allow some exemptions, but exempted weapons would be required to be modified by the government to make them permanently inoperable.
The legislation also includes provisions that would make it a crime to modify a rifle to increase its capacity, increase penalties for gun smuggling, and give police the authority to seize guns from individuals whom a judge has found to be at risk of hurting themselves or others.
The measure is expected to pass with support from members of Trudeau’s Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party.
The proposal comes two years after the country’s deadliest mass shooting, in which a man killed 22 people in Nova Scotia with two weapons that are now banned in Canada, both of which were smuggled in from the U.S. Shortly after the massacre, Trudeau used a cabinet order to announce the country would ban more than 1,500 models of rifles, including the AR-15. However, owners were allowed to keep the rifles but were banned from using them, trading them, or selling them, except to buyers outside of Canada with permission.
Canada’s latest proposal comes as a bipartisan group of American lawmakers is meeting to try to find common ground on potential gun-control measures in the U.S. after a shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 students and two teachers dead last week, just ten days after a gunman killed ten people in a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store.
“As a government, as a society, we have a responsibility to act to prevent more tragedies,” Trudeau said Monday, according to the New York Times.
“We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action, firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter,” he added.
Canada’s buybacks could begin by the end of the year, the country’s public safety minister said.
