The Canadian government is expanding its ban on assault-style firearms, adding hundreds of new models and variants. Lawful owners will be granted amnesty while disposing of their firearms through a buyback program, with compensation amounts to be announced in January 2025. The move has been met with both support from gun-control advocates and criticism from gun rights groups and the Conservative Party.
Full article:https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada- ... -1.7135321The Canadian government is expanding its list of banned firearms, adding hundreds of additional makes, models and their variants, effective immediately.
Lawful owners of these newly prohibited firearms will be granted amnesty from criminal liability, with strict conditions, while they take the steps required to comply, ahead of disposing of their firearms through the still-yet-to-be-implemented buyback program.
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Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc made the announcement alongside Public Services and Procurement Minister Jean-Yves Duclos and Defence Minister Bill Blair, in Ottawa on Thursday.
"The best thing we can do to honour the memories of those we lost in mass shootings, is to act on gun control and to restrict access to the very weapons used to commit these horrible crimes," LeBlanc said.
"Our goal is to ensure that no community, no family, is devastated by mass shootings in Canada again."
Prohibited firearms cannot be bought, sold, lent, or imported.
Thursday's announcement specifically revises the classification of "104 families of assault-style firearms, encompassing 324 unique makes and models and their variants," according to government officials that briefed reporters.
The affected firearms all have semi-automatic action with sustained rapid-fire capability, according to the government, and will have to be disposed of within the amnesty period, which expires on Oct. 30, 2025.
The federal Liberals also intend to move forward with additional regulatory and legislative measures in the days and months ahead.
This will include tabling regulations on Dec. 13 to strengthen Canada's gun classification regime. And, building on the controversial Bill C-21 that passed Parliament in December 2023, the government's promising to table "additional measures" to address the rates of gun violence in situations of gender-based and intimate partner violence, in January 2025.
"We will also introduce further regulations on red and yellow flag laws early this spring, and regulations on large capacity magazines no later than March," LeBlanc said.
Blair also revealed that federal government is in talks with Ukrainian officials about shipping the firearms the government eventually intends to collect, to assist in Ukraine's war effort.
That let's out Canada for immigration from TOS.
