(Ottawa) Bill C-21 goes too far, says the Canadian Coalition for Gun Rights. She denounces an amendment tabled last week that would constitute “the largest firearms ban in Canadian history” and accuses the Liberal government of playing politics on the backs of hunters.
“It captures pretty much everything that I personally own and I have quite an extensive collection,” Tracy Wilson, who is the coalition’s vice president for public relations, told a press conference Wednesday.
The amendment tabled in committee last week adds specifications to the definition of a prohibited firearm. Semi-automatic weapons, including shotguns, whose magazine can be modified to hold more than five cartridges are banned, as are those that can fire projectiles with a muzzle energy of more than 10,000 joules and those whose inner surface of the barrel is 20 millimeters or more.
SKS rifles, a popular hunting weapon, could be banned, according to the Canadian Coalition for Gun Rights.
In an interview with The Canadian Press on Tuesday, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said the government only wants to strengthen a regulatory ban on assault weapons like the AR-15 by including that definition in the bill. C-21.
“The government has no intention – no intention at all – of going after long guns and shotguns,” he said.
The idea is to ensure that firearms manufacturers cannot circumvent the ban by modifying their models to be able to sell them on the Canadian market.
“If they wanted it to affect only certain calibers, they should have named them,” said M.me Wilson. The problem is that they name the make and model, and that includes all guns of that model. »
In May 2020, the Liberal government declared a ban on over 1,500 models of firearms and variants of what it considers assault weapons like the AR-15 and Ruger Mini-14. Bill C-21 seeks to make this ban permanent.
The Canadian Coalition for Gun Rights has the support of the Conservatives, who also believe that the definition proposed by the Liberals prohibits hundreds of thousands of firearms, including many non-restricted firearms.
With The Canadian Press