Matt Gurney: The Liberals’ useless ‘assault weapons’ ban

The crackdown on legal firearms ownership, which was announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on May 1, is another shining moment in the long history of dysfunctional Canadian gun control proposals. It will accomplish nothing in particular, but will come at considerable public expense. It will not improve public safety, nor will it will please either side of this contentious debate.

What it will do is give both Liberals and Conservatives an opportunity to fundraise off the issue — one could be forgiven for wondering if that’s literally the only point to any of this. So, again: a textbook example of Canadian gun control politics.

The government announced that it is “banning“ 1,500 different kinds of “assault weapons.” That sounds impressive. It’s not — not a ban, and not impressive. It’s really 11 types of rifles, each with many, many different versions produced by different manufacturers — that’s where the 1,500 figure comes from. None of the weapons are a true military-type rifle, capable of fully automatic fire or equipped with high-capacity magazines, which have been banned in Canada for decades. The list is really a grab bag of fairly mundane semi-automatic rifles. It’s hardly an exhaustive list — many other comparable rifles were unaffected by the announcement. The only real thing that binds these rifles together is a link to prominent mass shootings (and even that isn’t the case for all of them).

In short, the Liberals have “banned” some guns, ignored a bunch of other comparable ones and called it a day. This is going to outrage the gun owners and the shooting industry, infuriate the anti-gun activists and do little else.

Kurgen

Article URL : https://nationalpost.com/opinion/matt-gurney-the-liberals-useless-assault-weapons-ban