Canada has had strict gun control enforced since the 1970s. The first Trudeau government enacted the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1977 in the name of curbing crime. But has it worked? Several studies have found that gun control has had no impact on reducing homicide and robbery rates, and one such study even found that it may have actually increased robberies involving firearms.
In 2012, another study looked at gun control laws passed in Canada between 1974 and 2008. It found no evidence that these laws had a beneficial effect on firearm related homicide rates. According to the study, other more salient factors were found to be associated with homicide rates, such as median age, unemployment, immigration rates, poverty, population per police officer, and incarceration rates. A 2013 study of the 1995 Firearms Act reported little evidence that it significantly reduced rates of lethal gun violence against women. This was the principal demographic identified by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in announcing his Government’s May 2020 Order banning 1,500 kinds of military style semi-automatic rifles. Yet the current Trudeau regime is doubling down and forcing more strict gun control and outright confiscation.
The Trudeau government now plans to confiscate formerly legal guns from Canadians and then, absurdly, donate them to Ukraine in its war against Russia. This is part of a new raft of gun confiscation orders coming down from an increasingly authoritarian government. A total of 324 “unique makes and models of assault-style firearms would be added to the list of prohibited firearms in Canada,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced at a recent press conference.
Tory opposition leader Pierre Poilievre calls the move a “stunt” that attacks licensed and law-abiding hunters and sport shooters. Trudeau’s policies have “caused a 116% hike in gunviolence in nine years” wrote Poilievre on his X page: "He still has not implemented his long-promised ‘gun ban,’ and now he’s promising a new one while he reduces prison sentences for rampant gun criminals and allows 99% of shipping containers to go uninspected.”
Tony Bernardo, CEO of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, says that it is ridiculous to send these firearms to Ukraine: “These are not weapons of war. Ukraine wants cruise missiles. They don’t want Canadian sporting arms…This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. If the guns were weapons of war, they wouldn’t have been allowed into Canada…They’re giving them to Ukraine, and Ukraine doesn’t want them…They’re .22—are they being sent there for shooting tin cans?”
Ukraine is fighting off invasion by a superpower. Canadian hunting rifles are not what they need.
The guns Trudeau is using force to take from citizens are not even “assault-style” firearms. “Assault” weapons have purely cosmetic features that do not make them more powerful or enable them to fire more quickly. They are not weapons of war. Likewise the AR-15 is not a military grade assault rifle.The AR in its name stands for “ArmaLite Rifle,” which is Colt Manufacturing LLC’s way of honouring the company that created it back in the 1950’s.
Bernardo suspects this was a last-ditch effort for the Trudeau regime to “punt their useless pots down the street” before the next federal election – which is set for next October, but could come sooner in the event of a successful non-confidence vote, for which Poilievre has been pushing.
The last time the Trudeau regime tried to expropriate guns from licensed owners, it caused illegal firearms crimes to skyrocket. Their woeful but much trumpeted gun buyback program has to date not collected a single firearm. “Buyback” itself is a leftist trick, since the government never owned these guns in the first place it is not in a position to buy anything “back.”
The real question then is this: Given a domestic historical record clearly demonstrating the lack of a causal nexus between gun control and crime reduction, why is the Trudeau regime so intent upon taking firearms out of the hands of law-abiding Canadians? What is Justin Trudeau and the left’s true endgame? To find the answer, let us take a brief walk through the history of gun control, both in Canada and globally over the last century or so.
Gun confiscation holds a special place in the halls of political repression. The true, gruesome history of gun control gives us a refresher on how gun confiscation has helped authoritarians consolidate state power.
The Soviet Union left its mark as one of the deadliest political regimes of the 20th century, and indeed in the entire history of mankind. However, it could not have committed such atrocities without a total monopoly on coercion.
Lenin’s ideas manifested themselves in military form once the Military Revolutionary Committee was created in 1917. Despite its ostensible revolutionary nature, these military forces soon morphed into simply another enforcement arm of the State. To maintain its iron grip, the Soviets turned to the most proven form of suppression – gun confiscation. In December of 1918, the Council of People’s Commissar, via actions similar to the Liberals’ recent Order in Council, mandated that all Soviet citizens surrender their firearms under threat of criminal prosecution. Only Communist Party affiliates maintained privileged access to firearms. In the end, it is estimated that at least 15 million people perished under Soviet rule.
Soviet satellite states such as Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, and others imposed similar restrictions on gun possession.
What about the Nazi regime in Germany?
The pro-gun control side claims that gun rights were actually expanded under Nazi rule, but there is more to this story. The marginal liberalization in gun laws specifically favoured the German populace. In 1938, Hitler signed a new Gun Control Act. By that time, just as in Canada, legislative debate of such laws was obsolete. Hitler’s enemies had been removed from society, some restrictions could be slightly liberalized, especially for Party members. But Jews were prohibited from working in the firearms industry, and .22 caliber hollow-point ammunition was banned entirely. Consequently, the Jews were disarmed and could not fight back.
Earlier, the Weimar Republic passed gun registration laws. The Nazis later exploited his guncontrol framework to disarm Jews and subject them to one of the most horrific genocides in human history.
Cuba provides yet another case study in gun confiscation. Once one of Latin America’s most prosperous nations, Cuba succumbed to socialism after Castro seized power in 1959. Just as in Nazi Germany, Castro took advantage of existing firearm registration lists. Once Batista was deposed, Castro took power and in a famous speech exclaimed: “Guns? For what? To fight against whom? Against the Revolutionary government that has the support of the people?”
Gun confiscation soon followed. The Castro government began targeting rival revolutionary groups who fought the Batista regime but were non-Communists. Then, Castro broadened the legal definition of “rival revolutionaries” to disarm most Cuban civilians. Estimates point to 141,000 Cubans murdered by the Castro regime, with millions more fleeing to the U.S. to escape such tyranny.
It is well known that the Venezuelan government has eviscerated property rights and fundamental civil liberties in the crisis-beleaguered country. But how has this government been able to maintain its power? The Venezuelan government’s civilian disarmament campaign is an oft overlooked source of human rights violations in that country.
The Venezuelan government under Chavez, who became a close friend and puppet of Castro, started by passing the Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law. Since then, the law has been expanded so that the Venezuelan Armed Forces have the power to register, control, and confiscate firearms. Despite the gun ban there, crime rates continue to skyrocket. Venezuelans now have no way to defend themselves against a government that muzzles their speech, expropriates their wealth, debases their currency, and starves them to death.
Justin Trudeau is also an admitted admirer of the CCP and of Fidel Castro. The Trudeau Liberals exploited the coronavirus pandemic as a convenient means of taking authoritarian control and suppressing dissent. They engineered a coalition with the NDP in 2021, giving them years of undemocratic rule, which they have used to pass laws criminalizing speech, prohibiting access to news over social media, to ban production of oil and gas energy essential to the nation’s economy, to flood the nation with millions of third world migrants, and to give billions of taxpayer dollars to support foreign wars and woke globalist causes.
Based on the history that we have shown, is it too absurd to think that our democratically elected but now autocratic Liberal government is confiscating guns in order to prevent armed resistance by Canadians?
Canadians must all seriously ponder what is now happening under the Trudeau Liberals, who are using a panic-driven state of constant emergency to re-shape Canada into a post-nation state bearing no resemblance to the libertarian, Christian, constitutional democracy it was just a few scant years ago.
Even if you are, like me, not a gun owner, you must support private gun ownership. A gun is nothing more or less than a species of private property. As we have seen, historically, totalitarian regimes come for the guns first, and then seize everything else later — food, land, and even, our very lives.
