A new legislative salvo was fired last week between provincial and federal governments over firearms ideologies.
The Alberta Firearms Act found its first target in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s gun control efforts, such as federally-funded gun buybacks coordinated between local municipalities and the RCMP.
They’ll need a note from the province.
The new regulation restricts municipalities and police from entering into agreements about guns with the federal government without written go-ahead from Alberta’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General Tyler Shandro before accepting federal funding to enforce a “federal firearms confiscation program,” said a release from Shandro’s office.
The regulation requires written approval from Alberta’s minister of Justice and Attorney General before entering into such arrangements.
“This action demonstrates that Alberta stands unequivocally with law-abiding firearms owners, but there is more to do. Stay tuned,” said Shandro.
A national handgun freeze was first announced in May, 2022, part of Bill C-21, the strongest gun control measures in over 40 years, in what the Liberal government characterized as a “comprehensive plan to tackle gun violence.” Over 1,800 assault weapons have been banned in connection with the bill.
“One life taken by gun violence is one too many. We will continue to work with provinces, territories, Indigenous communities, and municipalities to keep Canadians safe. We will continue to do whatever it takes to keep guns out of our communities and build a safer country, for everyone,” said a release from the Prime Minister’s office in October, 2022.
Personal property
Behind barred windows, rows of many varieties of guns await buyers at Sights & Arms in St. Albert.
There, Randy Simonneau joins a chorus of Alberta firearms rights advocates saying the proposed gun buy-backs are actually confiscations.
“They call it gun buy back, but they never owned it in the first place,” he said.
“It’s personal property. Seizing personal property, that’s really what they’re trying to do.”
Simonneau contends that it’s obvious that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is going after the good guys—the hunters and the sport shooters. And that, he says, is wrong—and it won’t prevent crime.
Mass shootings and school slaughters are almost a daily occurrence in the United States, where a majority of illicit weapons used in criminal shootings in Canada come from.
But those disturbing mass events can’t be blamed on guns, he said.
“You can’t blame the tool. It’s the bad person who’s doing it—somebody with mental illness, somebody with a very distinct motive. Those are the people you have to go after—and that’s exactly the opposite of what the Liberal government is trying to do,” he said.
Instead of getting tough on guns, the government should get tough on crime, he said, pointing to shootings in Toronto.
“Those are jailbirds,” Simonneau said.
“They don’t spend enough time in jail. I can see why the government is trying to cut costs, because jailing somebody costs a lot of money, right?”
Simonneau said the government is trying to make it look like they are doing something about mass shootings, so they go after the good guys.
Another gun owner who asked not to be named said it’s like someone else tears down the Henday doing 170 clicks, but other more conscientious drivers get the ticket.
The bottom line is personal property, Simonneau said.
“The government should not be able to tell you what you can own and what you can’t. That would be like them telling you you can’t drive your car anymore, you’ve got to ride a bicycle.”
MP Michael Cooper hailed the the UCP provincial government’s passage of the Alberta Firearms Act.
“This is reasonable legislation by the Alberta government to defend the province’s jurisdiction when it comes to property and civil rights of Albertans, in light of an unprecedented attack by the federal Liberal government on law-abiding firearms owners across Canada and in Alberta,” Cooper said.
Public safety should be the cornerstone and overriding factor in all decisions related to firearms programming, said Teri Bryant, chief firearms officer for the province.
“The federal firearms confiscation program will not improve public safety. The Alberta Chief Firearms Office calls on the federal government to put public safety first by focusing on the criminal misuse of firearms rather than on law-abiding firearms owners,” Bryant said.
Laying the foundation, the province’s Municipal Government (Firearms) Amendment Act of 2020 amended the Municipal Government Act to prevent municipalities from passing firearms bylaws unless authorized by the province.
The regulation does not impact “normal police activity,” such as having to confiscate a firearm as part of an investigation, the release said.
Gun statistics
Handguns were used in 59 per cent of violent crime involving firearms between 2009 and 2020, and there are 70 per cent more handguns in Canada today than in 2010.
There were over 3,500 reported thefts of firearms in 2018.
One in three women and girls killed by an abuser is murdered with a gun.
Ottawa has banned than 1,500 different kinds of assault-style firearms from use or sale in Canada since May 2020, and has frozen the importation of handguns.
On their website, Guncontrol.ca, the Coalition for Gun Control is a supports a ban on civilian possession of military assault weapons, and a ban on civilian possession of handguns with some limited exceptions.
Gun violence is present in many cases of domestic violence, with degrees ranging from intimidation and control to homicide, the CGC says.
“Studies and coroner inquests have shown that rates of homicide in domestic violence situations increase significantly when there is a firearm in the home,” the site says, while acknowledging that long guns are the guns most likely to be used in domestic violence situations.
“Our government is taking Canada’s most significant action on gun violence in a generation,” said federal public safety Minister Marco Mendicino.
“We made a commitment to Canadians that we would act – and we are. The national freeze will tackle the alarming role of handguns in crime, gender-based violence, and more. We are using all tools at our disposal to fight gun violence and will not rest until all Canadians feel safe in their communities,” Mendicino said.
Alberta’s UCP government produced bullet points of their own. According to last week’s release from Shandro, there are 341,988 possession/acquisition licence holders the province; Albertans own the second-highest number of firearms classified as restricted or prohibited by the federal government.
There are 127 approved shooting ranges and more than 650 firearms-related businesses in Alberta.
An estimated 30,000 Albertans complete mandatory firearms safety course training annually as a first step to obtaining their firearms licence.
In 2021, that number jumped to 38,000.
