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Earlier this week, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino appeared before Canadians to defend amendments to Bill C-21. And, more importantly from his standpoint, to inform us that he and the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau have no intention of banning hunting guns, that no hunting guns were being banned by the amendments, and that statements to the contrary constituted fear-mongering.
The credibility of Mendicino’s statements is suspect, to say the least. Mendicino wants the Canadian public to believe that the Liberal amendments to C-21 are all about keeping dangerous “weapons of war” out of our communities and that the amendments specifically target such firearms. However, reality is vastly different from what Mendicino would have Canadians believe.
For those unfamiliar, Bill C-21 is the piece of legislation that will bring into law the “freeze” on legal importation, sales and transfers of handguns in Canada. The bill was recently being studied in committee when at the last minute, Mendicino and the Trudeau Liberals introduced a series of amendments they claim will merely make their May 2020 OIC ban of numerous models of semi-automatic rifles law, and allow it to be “evergreen”; meaning that it will always be an expanding list to which they can add whichever model of rifle they wish, whenever they wish.
Mendicino and the Liberals maintain this provision as absolutely necessary to keep rifles like the AR-15 “off the streets”, as they are weapons of war that have “no place in our communities,” as Mendicino recently put it.
This is all very interesting since at no time have Canadians who own AR-15s been rampaging in the streets, and as an aside, no AR-15 has ever been used in an actual war. In fact, federal law requires they be under lock and key unless being used at a government-approved range for target shooting with federally mandated five-shot magazines.
Violation of these conditions can yield a legal owner 10 years in a federal institution as an unwilling guest of the king. So, what we have with the AR-15 is a case of Schrodinger’s rifle; according to the Liberals’ rules and if we choose to believe their dogma: it’s both locked up and on the streets at the same time.
When it comes to having no place in our communities, Mendicino and the Liberals’ position on this is also a bit contradictory.
The AR-15 is arguably one of the most popular target rifles extant, and is issued to a large number of police agencies in our communities. The rifle itself has been commercially available for almost 60 years and is a product of the late 1950s/early 1960s “space age” when futuristic designs and materials were both explored and all the rage.
In all that time, it has only featured in two or three acts of criminality in Canada. Indeed, there is only one fatal incident in Canada in which AR-style rifles were involved. And ironically, the only people shot and killed by such a rifle were an 18-month-old Ontario baby and his abductor father, shot by police, during an Amber Alert for said baby in late 2020 (the officers involved have since been charged with manslaughter).
In addition to that, other citizens, as well as a police officer, narrowly escaped death and or grievous bodily harm from AR-style rifles when, again in 2020, Nova Scotia RCMP officers shot up a firehall where community members were sheltering from a killer’s rampage; and then astonishingly drove off without checking on the people they fired upon.
But, that aside, Mendicino and the Liberals maintain that the current ban is all about such rifles. However, the amendments the Liberals put forth for C-21 say otherwise.
As they stand, the amendments will ban all semi-automatic long guns capable of accepting detachable magazines, rifles that exceed 10, 000 joules in terms of projectile energy, and by name, rifles of historic and technical significance, such as the M1 Garand.
The result of the amendments is that numerous common hunting firearms stand to become prohibited weapons and banned by Mendicino and the Liberals.
For example, the Weatherby Mark V bolt action hunting rifle, which is synonymous with African safaris, has been listed as prohibited by name because the Liberals maintain it is too powerful for Canadians to be trusted to use safely.
This has the effect of prohibiting all Mark V rifles, regardless of whether they are chambered in cartridges for hunting elephants or deer. Other bolt-action hunting rifles made by CZ and Mauser are condemned to the same fate, as well as the Ruger No. 1 single-shot rifle.
Closer to home and those with more limited budgets, the Remington 7400 and Browning BAR, fairly popular semi-automatic hunting rifles, judging from the numbers seen at rifle ranges as deer season approaches, also have not escaped Mendicino’s ban by amendment. As semi-automatic rifles, both are “capable” of accepting detachable magazines, and therefore both will be banned. The same goes for numerous semi-automatic .22 rimfire rifles such as the Ruger 10-22 which is arguably the most popular such rifle in existence.
Despite what Mendicino, the Liberals and their supporters say, the real-world truth is that the amendments capture these and many other hunting guns in the ban net.
Consequently, one has to wonder about Mendicino’s position and statements on the matter. There are three possibilities, and none speak well to Mendicino’s credibility.
First, Mendicino could simply really be that ignorant of Canadian gun law and firearms in general. Second, he is inept enough not to understand the scope of the amendments that have been introduced (see above). And third, he is simply being dishonest about the scope and intent of the amendments, which admittedly is a hard one to avoid given that they were introduced at the last possible moment, for a bill that had nothing to do with rifles, and for which approval was cynically granted by a Liberal Party chair over the protests of committee members that the amendments were a complete surprise and without opportunity for examination and debate.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Mendicino and the Liberals continue to proclaim that they are not banning hunting guns, and that nothing in the amendments affects target shooters and hunters because they (Liberals) have nothing but the greatest respect for hunters and target shooters. And, there it is, that pesky little matter of credibility, or lack thereof … again.
George Fritz
Greater Sudbury