As America gets ready to embark on its 250th birthday celebrations, it’s a good time to assess and appreciate how lucky we are, with constitutional protections of speech and gun rights. Nothing puts that into context as clearly as a look around at the rest of the world.
Speaking of birthdays, the Canadian Liberal Government’s gun ban and confiscation scheme will be marking its sixth later this spring. According to figures released this year, a test run or “pilot program” for Phase Two, the confiscation from individual gun owners, netted a grand total of 25 guns surrendered from 16 people – not quite the avalanche of firearms that the feds were “confident” would be collected. Federal Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree, who has previously exposed himself as not much of a believer in his government’s gun-ban-and-grab, said of the lackluster result that “[a]s an overall pilot, I believe it is successful,” and that anyways, the pilot wasn’t about “quantitative” results.
So, it’s full speed ahead. On January 17, Anandasangaree announced the launch of the Phase Two gun confiscation program nationwide. A press release described the “Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program (ASFCP)” as “voluntary” and providing law-abiding gun owners with “fair compensation,” but strictly speaking, neither of those is likely to be true.
Under the government interpretation of “voluntary,” participation in the “buyback” program is voluntary but “compliance with the law is not.” Gun owners who don’t want to sell their guns to the government are “non-compliant” and face potential “criminal liability.” And while owners are “encouraged to submit a declaration as early as possible to ensure they receive compensation,” the government website on the launch emphasizes that “submitting a declaration does not guarantee you will receive compensation” (bold in the original).
Apart from creative redefinitions of “voluntary” and “compensation,” the government hasn’t shared much about how Phase Two will work. According to the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), Minister Anandasangaree has advised that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) “will be implementing the buyback program,” although the CSSA predicts the gun collections will be “carried out through the RCMP, the police of jurisdiction, or a mobile collection unit, depending on where” the affected gun owner lives.
An analysis titled Liberals Still Clueless on How to Execute Firearm Confiscations by Canadian gun rights website The GunBlog.ca listed several of the remaining informational gaps. The government has yet to explain how it will enforce the seizures, given that there’s no registry of many of the rifles and shotguns it wants to confiscate; how it will enforce seizures that owners oppose; how it will enforce a scheme that many provinces (and law enforcement) oppose; how and which “confiscation agents will visit homes, or if/when police will be involved” and the role “mobile-collection units” will play; and what the timeline for compensation will be “in case anyone does actually get paid.”
What this inept fumbling around has created is an ideologically neutral reason for other governments and agencies to opt out and stand back.
Several provinces have previously made it very evident that they will not be enabling the confiscation scheme because of fundamental objections to the principles underlying the federal confiscation. In December, for example, the Province of Alberta – where ten percent of the adult population is licensed to use and own firearms – announced a new motion under the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act. Once passed by the legislature, it would “instruct all provincial entities, including law-enforcement agencies such as municipal police services and the RCMP, to decline to enforce or implement the federal gun seizure program.” Describing the rationale, Premier Danielle Smith stated, “Alberta will not stand by while responsible gun owners are treated like criminals. This motion is about using every legal tool we have to protect their rights, uphold public safety and push back on federal overreach into provincial jurisdiction.”
In Manitoba, where Premier Wab Kinew has lately confirmed that his province will also not participate in the federal gun grab (“we’re not going to play ball with them on that”), the justification was operational disorganization. “It’s a federal government program that doesn’t appear to be very efficient, doesn’t appear to be well run, and so for us, looking at that, why would we want to take on that whole headache?” This “is not a good program to get involved with,” Kinew said, adding that “[i]f we’re looking at taking away weapons from criminals, from people who are causing violence in our streets, I’m all for that. But this program doesn’t look like it’s going to achieve that end. Instead, it’s going to create other issues around administration and cost.”
The police agency for Canada’s biggest city, the Toronto Police Service, made much the same point about poor logistics in a statement last week regarding its decision not to get involved. As reported by CTV News, the agency explained that “[n]o operationally viable plan was presented. We must focus our efforts where they have the greatest public safety impact, including targeting criminals who use illegal firearms, particularly those entering Canada from the United States.” Last fall, the law enforcement agency for the province, the Ontario Provincial Police, had already stepped back from any involvement.
All of this is only substantiates the public perception that the Liberal government’s gun grab is a gigantic failure in everything except burning through millions of taxpayer dollars. Noah Schwartz, a political science professor studying gun control policy, was quoted as saying that the federal government has “lost the framing war on this…To be honest, if I was advising the prime minister, I would say make this go away as quickly as possible.”
And if the politicians don’t make it go away, the citizens themselves might make tracks. Readers may recall the case of Jon Richelieu-Booth, the British IT professional who faced multiple arrests and police harassment at home due to social media posts of photos of him target-shooting at a range while on vacation in America (ironically, over the July 4th weekend). “I posted the picture of the gun because I thought it was cool, I was really excited about the experience I had,” he said, but the posts were used as evidence in criminal charges: suspicion of possessing a firearm, stalking, and a public order offense. All were eventually dropped, but nonetheless, Richelieu-Booth says he endured multiple police visits to his home, spent time in jail, had his home searched and property seized, and couldn’t work. The experience changed him. “I’ve always believed in truth and justice and I guess the American way. You’re a great country, you’ve got freedom of speech, you can… handle those guns.” What was happening in his country was “very alarming,” but “I’ve got to have faith that … the world will come back from this.”
Scott Witner for Truth About Guns writes that “Richelieu-Booth has since stated that he no longer sees a future for himself in the UK” and “has begun exploring the possibility of seeking asylum in the United States. He has reportedly reached out to the offices of Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, hoping to argue that his prosecution stems from speech-based and political persecution.”
As Witner observes, that outcome – the excessive police response over a harmless photo – “did not appear overnight. It arrived one regulation at a time.” The theme is the invidious creep of increasingly draconian restrictions that eventually hollow-out fundamental freedoms. Canadians – who are much more likely to die by government-sanctioned “medically assisted dying” than because of a firearm – should take heed, and it’s a lesson for Americans as well.
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