Gun rights organizations have long warned against the incremental nature of gun control.
The theory—indeed, it occurs in practice, too—is that gun-ban advocates will work to pass the most “supportable” bill possible that isn’t, on the surface, devastating to the Second Amendment. The trick is that once they have that law on the books, it’s much easier to amend that law to make it into something more restrictive that never would have had the support to pass in the first place.
Gun bans are an excellent example, and Canada’s banned gun list is the best example of all. In recent days as the Justin Trudeau government comes to an end, Liberals added another 179 makes and models of firearms to the country’s banned “assault-style” firearms list.
According to a report at nationalpost.com, the list of newly prohibited firearms includes dozens of variations of the M1 carbine, a historic semi-automatic rifle that was widely deployed to U.S. soldiers during World War II. The change means that owners of any of the newly prohibited weapons cannot use, sell or loan them, nor can they be bought or imported.
Liberals say they targeted firearms that were semi-automatic models with sustained rapid-fire capability and large magazine capacity—aka, common semi-auto firearms with normal-capacity magazines. Current firearm laws already limit magazine capacity to five for nearly all semi-automatic rifles, and pistol magazine capacity is limited to 10.
The government also announced that it was extending the amnesty period—again—for owners of banned firearms until March 1, 2026. tThe government still hasn’t been able to set a date nor the details for the second phase of the restrictive program, nor has it announced how much compensation will be offered to owners of now-prohibited weapons.
“I myself have been frustrated that we couldn’t move faster on a program,” Associate Public Safety Minister Rachel Bendayan said. “The reality is we want to do it right. There are enormous complexities involved in getting a system set up to be able to compensate Canadians, but also protect their personal information.”
It seems ironic that the Canadian government would be willing to strip citizens of their right to bear arms but at least act like they are interested in protecting gun owners’ personal information. Alas, that’s what you get when you don’t have a Second Amendment to protect your right to keep and bear arms.
While the debate is ongoing about how serious President Donald Trump is about making Canada our 51st state, the latest gun-ban movements in the country are certainly cautionary and should remind us all that once a banned list is made, it’s easy to add more and more guns to that list. You can bet that groups like Everytown, Violence Policy Center, and Brady are well aware of that as they push for banning firearms not only federally but in states throughout the nation.
