Canada would implement a “national freeze” on gun ownership and force owners of “military-style assault weapons” to sell their weapons to the government under newly introduced legislation, the government said. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“As a government, as a society, we have a responsibility to act to prevent further tragedies,” Trudeau said.
The proposals, which are expected to pass, come in the wake of last week’s deadly massacre in Uvalde, Texas, which killed 21 people, and a tragedy in 2020 in rural Nova Scotia where they died 22 people in the deadliest shooting in Canada.
The arms purchase plan is based on other successful efforts in the wake of national tragedies.
In 2019, New Zealand banned semi-automatic weapons and repurchased weapons following attacks on two mosques in Christchurch that killed 51 people.
Following a 1996 shooting in Port Arthur, Australia, the government collected more than 650,000 semi-automatic rifles and numerous shotguns following the ban on these weapons.
Government arms purchases could begin later this year.
According to Canadian legislation, people could not buy, sell, import or transfer handguns, and those who are shown to have committed domestic violence or criminal harassment such as harassment could have their gun license revoked. .
The bill, known as the C-21, would also require long-range magazines to be permanently altered to have no more than five bullets.
“Apart from using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason why anyone in Canada should need weapons in their daily lives,” the prime minister added on Monday.
Canada already has stricter gun laws than the United States. The United States has never agreed to buy large-scale assault weapons like other nations, but it did temporarily ban semi-automatic weapons, even though the ban expired in 2004.
President Biden has said he believes he and Senate Republicans like minority leader Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn of Texas can reach a “rational” agreement on gun control legislation, though both men have strongly opposed past attempts at gun control.
Previous attempts at arms control in Canada have been criticized. A past version of the repurchase program, where surrendering weapons was voluntary, was not approved in 2021 and was heavily criticized by arms control groups for not going far enough.
“It was a total failure,” Heidi Rathjen of PolyRemembers, a group of survivors of the 1989 École Polytechnique shooting, told The Globe and Mail, calling the attempt “an empty casing that was designed to make the “Talk to politicians.”
Arms control has long been a priority for the Liberal government of Trudeau, which has spent more than $ 920 million since 2016 in efforts to restrict access.
In 2020, Canada banned more than 1,500 types of assault weapons, including the rifle mark used in the 2017 Quebec mosque shooting.
Earlier this month, it also introduced rules requiring companies to keep detailed records of arms sales, verify customer identities, and make sure they are licensed to carry weapons.
Critics have accused Trudeau of retrieving a national long-arms record that ended the previous Harper administration.