OTTAWA (CU)_Just a week ago, nineteen students and two students were fatally shot at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, triggering passionate debate on US gun laws. While US President Joe Biden calls for “action” to make America “Safer”, in neighbouring Canada, a bill has been introduced to ban the sale of handguns.
Canada already had much tougher restrictions on gun ownership compared to the US, and the AR-15 rifle, the type of gun used in the Texas shooting, was banned from being used or sold in the country a couple of years ago. However, Bill C-21, proposes a “national freeze” on handgun ownership, with a mandatory programme to be launched to buy back and compensate owners of such weapons. Moreover, those involved in acts of criminal harassment and domestic violence will have their firearms licenses revoked under the new legislation.
“The day this legislation goes into effect it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns in Canada,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters. “Other than using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives,” he added.
If passed, the bill would come into effect in autumn. It proposes permanent alterations to long-gun magazines, so they can never hold more than five rounds at any given time. The legislation will prohibit the sale or transferring of large capacity magazines, while gun smugglers and traffickers will face stricter sentences under the proposed law. It would provide law enforcement with access to tools like wiretapping, which involves the secret monitoring of communications by a third-party, to stop gun crime.
According to PM Trudeau’s office, there has been a 71 per cent increase in the registered handguns in Canada to 1.1 million between 2010 and 2020. However, the country’s stricter gun laws have limited criminal activity, with one in 200,000 people are killed by firearms in Canada in 2021, compared to four in 100,000 in the US, according to figures published by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
