By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Canada’s effort to collect firearms which have been banned by the government has hit an embarrassing snag which one U.S.-based gun rights organization suggests is an indication that gun owners in that country are sending a message to the government.
According to the National Post, a six-week “pilot program” which hoped to bring in up to 200 firearms on the banned list only collected 25 guns, roughly 12 percent of what was anticipated. The Public Safety Department said the guns were destroyed.
The National Post report said some provinces have “outright rejected” participating in the “buyback” program. The story quoted Saddam Khussain, a spokesperson for the provincial solicitor general in Ontario, explaining how police in his province are not convinced it will have “meaningful public safety results.”
Tracey Wilson with the Canadian Coalition of Firearm Rights reportedly called the buyback project “logistically impossible.”
And on Wednesday, a major U.S. gun rights group, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), took a swing at the buyback idea, calling it “nonsense.”
“It looks like Canadian gun owners are having none of this buyback foolishness, at least for the time being,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Now Canadian officials are claiming the pilot program merely needs to be clarified, and that more instructions are necessary to ‘facilitate participation.’ They’re trying to put a happy face on a clearly sad effort to disarm the nation’s law-abiding gun owners.”
“No matter how the Canadian government portrays this outrage,” Gottlieb observed, “it amounts to compensated confiscation. Citizens are required to turn in their banned firearms and get a check from the government, or they could face legal consequences. The Canadians call this a ‘buyback,’ but the government never owned those guns in the first place. The term creates a false impression that fundamental rights come from government, and can be rescinded essentially on a whim.”
The U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment stands in the way of a national gun buyback, and with an estimated 400 million guns in private ownership in this country, banning whole classes of firearms and convincing people to surrender them in exchange for cash would be impossible.
Among the provinces reportedly rejecting the national buyback are, the National Post indicated, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Alberta and New Brunswick. British Columbia, however, reportedly supports the program, and will let local police agencies “determine their participation.”
Writing at the National Post, Tasha Kheiriddin observed, “Opponents of the expropriation program say it criminalizes law-abiding gun owners. They claim that most of the 2,500 prohibited firearms are used for recreational hunting or sports purposes. Bad actors who use guns for criminal or other purposes will just ignore the program altogether. They may not be the type who want to be on the government’s radar.”
The sentiment is similar to that found among Second Amendment activists in the U.S. They contend that “gun buyback” efforts staged around the country are essentially publicity stunts which do not reduce crime.
“Nonsense like this,” CCRKBA’s Gottlieb stated, “underscores the importance of our Second Amendment here in the United States, and all of the right-to-bear-arms provisions in a majority of state constitutions. Truly free people should never be required to surrender their arms, no matter how much money the government offers in compensation, because it reduces a right to the level of a government regulated privilege. Fundamental rights, whether specifically delineated in a constitution or not, can never be for sale at any price. Our fellow gun owners north of the border obviously understand this by not participating in the test run. If the government in Ottawa doesn’t see what happened, they are deaf, dumb and blind.”
