Bill Blair, Minister of Public Safety, insists Canada must ban assault-style rifles like the AR-15 because “assault-style rifles are military weapons designed to hunt people, and not animals.”
Prime Minister Trudeau says nobody needs a gun “designed to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time.”
The Liberals are so driven in making Canadians afraid of law-abiding licensed firearms owners that they can’t be bothered finding evidence. They have committed to banning ‘Military-Style Assault Rifles’ (a term not defined in Canada) despite the fact that real assault rifles are already prohibited in Canada and that the overwhelming evidence shows the issue is with criminals and illegal firearms.
In an effort to find out if Blair and Trudeau’s inflammatory political rhetoric had any basis in fact, Glen Motz, MP for Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner, submitted an Order Paper Question (OPQ) on January 27, 2020, to find out how many times an AR-15 was used in murders, attempted murders and armed robberies in Canada. He requested the data from the following agencies:
- Public Safety Canada
- Canada Border Services Agency
- Correctional Service of Canada and
- Royal Canadian Mounted Police
On March 13, 2020, the government tabled their shockingly short response to Motz’s request in the House of Commons. (Read the complete OPQ request here. He sought far more information than just crime with AR-15s:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSSA/PDF/Glen-Motz-TIP-Response.pdf)
The governments stunning lack of data to Motz’s series of questions shines a light on how seriously the government takes the issue of “assault-style rifles” and the crimes committed with them by licensed gun owners in Canada.
Their responses:
“Public Safety Canada does not track the requested information.”
Corrections Service Canada does not track the type of weapon used to commit murder or manslaughter.
CBSA doesn’t track how many “irregular” immigrants are convicted of murder or manslaughter.
The most revealing and distressing answer from the RCMP is that while the information might be available somewhere, it will take too long and be too difficult to track down, so they won’t bother.
“The information requested is not captured in a central records management system. As a result, the RCMP cannot obtain the information without an extensive review of all the systems across the country, which would take a significant amount of resources and time.”
(Under Parliamentary rules, departments and agencies must respond to QP requests within 45 days.)
So where is the evidence to defend the government’s plan to seize and destroy the property of tens of thousands of Canadians?
According to four government agencies, including the RCMP, the data does not exist. It confirms that the departments and agencies leading efforts for a gun ban have no evidence to support the Liberals’ misguided approach to public safety.
It would be reasonable to assume that if this was an urgent public safety issue, one that can only be solved by confiscating legally-owned firearms and potentially costing taxpayers billions of dollars, the government would be able to produce ample evidence of the risk to public safety.
If this was an urgent public safety issue, why did Bill Blair and the Liberal Party insist on waiting until after the 2019 federal election to even contemplate seizing and destroying these guns?
This information from MP Motz provides confirmation that the Liberals are not basing their decisions on evidence, but on crass politics. During a time of crisis and pending economic uncertainty, a government devoid of evidence poses a risk to all Canadians.
No evidence to support Bill C-71 changes to Authorizations to Transport firearms