Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino does not rule out the possibility of a national gun ban in Canada, saying the federal government is leaving “all options on the table.”
In an interview with CTV’s question period, Mendicino said the recently introduced gun control bill in Ottawa is a “step in the right direction” to mitigating gun violence across the country, but it will not eliminate it. problem as a whole.
“The C-21 bill, while an important step and the most ambitious step of a generation, alone will not eradicate armed violence. We need to invest in our police, we need to make sure that we are protecting our borders, we need to introduce a smart weapons policy and we also need to make sure that we are tackling gun crime at its root cause, ”he said.
“It’s not about choosing one. It’s about doing them all at once.”
On Monday, Ottawa announced the proposed legislation, which in part puts a national freeze on the import, purchase, sale or transfer of weapons.
It does not directly ban firearms, allowing current owners to continue to own and use them, but it aims to restrict their number to Canada.
Among other things, it would also allow gun licenses for people who commit domestic violence to be revoked, provide more tools to investigate gun crimes, strengthen border measures to prevent gun smuggling, and create a new one. “Red Flag” law that obliges people who consider themselves a danger to themselves or others to hand over their firearms to the police.
Critics of the bill, specifically the freezing of handguns, say it is unfairly aimed at legal and highly verified firearms owners rather than criminals who obtain weapons illegally.
Mendicino refuted this claim.
“Bill C-21 is not aimed at law-abiding gun owners, but at gunpoint violence, organized crime,” he said.
“I have a great deal of respect for law-abiding gun owners and have been associated with them and visited some of the constituencies of my fellow opposition members to speak with them. But the fact is that Statistics Canada reports that the Armed violence is on the rise, specifically armed violence is on the rise. “
The federal government had previously pledged to work province by province on the ban on handguns, which gun control advocates argued would only create a mosaic system of different approaches.
In 2020, Ottawa banned 1,500 assault-style weapons and at the same time announced an upcoming repurchase program.
Asked when the repurchase program would begin, Mendicino said they were determined to begin the process “later this year.”
With files from The Canadian Press.