GUN BANS: Pandering to the outrage mob

Tracey Wilson is the VP of Public Relations for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, a registered lobbyist. She’s an avid hunter and sport shooter. She resides in Ottawa and enjoys spending time with her children and grandson at the range and hunting camp.

Canadian gun owners find themselves in turmoil, once again being threatened with forced confiscation of their legally acquired property. Why? Because we have a Liberal government, again, who will do anything they think pleases their voters and possibly gains them a wedge issue to add more voters onto their team, by any means necessary.

The 30th anniversary of Canada’s worst multiple victim mass shooting has come and gone. The memorials to the 14 women who lost their lives on December 6, 1989 were packed with people, standing in solidarity, honouring these victims. This is as it should be.

So why bans now? One answer–the outrage mob, and the Liberals are happy to bend a knee to it. Anti-gun lobby groups have been applying tremendous pressure on the government to ban semi-auto firearms for months leading up to the anniversary; it’s paid off. They have a promise from the Liberal elite that they will finally punish gun owners for that decades-old-crime by banning the type of gun used in the shooting, and others like it. The “list” of guns on the government’s radar has not been published as of yet, but gun owners wait with bated breath to see if theirs are on the list.

The idea of picking and choosing guns from a list due to their notoriety shows Canadians this isn’t about public safety; it’s about pacifying the rage mob. The infamous Ruger Mini 14 that was used that fateful day was never again used in a mass shooting, in fact mass shootings are rare in Canada and hunters and ranchers have used the Mini 14 for decades since then without issue. It’s a semi auto, magazine-fed hunting style rifle that is affordable, easy to clean and reliable. It functions the same as any other semi auto rifle, and in Canada they are all pinned to a maximum of five rounds of ammunition.

So, the Liberal plan is to skim through the FRT (Firearms Reference Table), a list of guns in Canada, consult with the  outrage mob, and pluck this gun or that one and put them on “the list” according to their notoriety alone. Imagine crafting policy about anything else in this manner.

What of drunk driving? Ban the Toyota Corolla or the Honda Civic because they are involved in the most fatal accidents? Or maybe ban Vodka and Whiskey because they are the vector most often used? This kind of policy development almost seems infantile to those who understand what they are actually doing.

The outlier here is the AR-15, likely the most misunderstood rifle of all time, a gun that has never been used for a mass shooting in this country.  We found one case of it being used in a crime. Louise Russo was shot during a botched mob hit at a North York sandwich shop in 2004. The mob hitman used a stolen AR-15. No licensed gun owner has ever committed a crime with one, ever, and no mass shootings were ever committed with one in Canada. But rest assured it’s on “the list”. 80,000 AR-15’s are owned across Canada by licensed, RCMP-vetted gun owners, every one of them registered, pinned to a maximum of five rounds and are confined to be used solely at RCMP approved ranges. Their downfall is their notoriety, nothing more.

The biggest tragedy of this entire mess is the resources and focus wasted on buying legal guns out of the safes of gun owners rather than investing that $600 million-plus in a credible way to combat crime.

None of that matters to a government who is content to trade it’s integrity, and your safety, for political cheap points. We are witnessing political theatre replacing evidence-based policy decisions.

The outrage mob celebrates, and Trudeau’s administration panders to them despite knowing better.