More Gun Bans – December 5, 2024 – CBC Interview

Tony Bernardo, a spokesperson for the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, engaged in a discussion with CBC regarding the announcement of a new gun ban, which took effect on December 5, 2024. This conversation highlights the association’s perspective on the matter, as well as the broader impact on the shooting sports community and gun ownership in Canada.

Transcript

Our next guest is a gun rights advocate unhappy with this latest gun control initiative. Tony Bernardo is the spokesperson for the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. And he joins us tonight from Oshawa, Ontario. Tony, thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Well, thank you for having me. Let me get your initial reaction to all of this. Well, a little incredulous, to be honest with you, this is a continuation of a process that they started four years ago. And for four years, there’s been fifteen hundred makes and models of firearms that have been banned and they haven’t confiscated a single one. They’re still in the gun safes of law abiding firearms owners all over Canada. Now they add another three hundred and twenty five, three hundred and twenty four, excuse me, makes and models of firearms to the list. And they haven’t even been able to collect the first ones. And then they make the deadline date two weeks after the next scheduled federal election. It sounds to me like this is some pretty crass politics going on, possibly because the prime minister is trying to bolster up his popularity in some of the Montreal ridings and was uninvited to the Le Coup Polytechnique memorial tomorrow. That’s happening. And of course, this will probably get him a re-invite. So you think that this is just politics, this is all for show. But there were some that were at that news conference today, a victim from Le Coup Polytechnique and others that have been affected that say this is actually going to make a difference. And I spoke to somebody earlier on the show that says it’s going to make substantial change. Well, that’s great, but I don’t think it’s ever going to actually happen. You know, and somebody can have an opinion that it makes a great change. But let’s first take a second and define what a great change is. Since they’ve done this last ban, these firearms haven’t been able to be taken out of a safe except by their owners. And for four years, we’ve had no mass shootings, the shootings we’re seeing every night, the real shootings are happening on the streets of our big cities. And that’s where I think most Canadians would agree we need really effective controls there. I don’t think that going after RCMP vetted and licensed firearms owners that aren’t committing crimes is going to make us any safer. Let me ask you about something Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said. He characterized the banned guns as belonging to the battlefield with no reasonable use as hunting weapons. What do you make of that logic? It’s absolute nonsense. It’s said by somebody who doesn’t know anything about the subject matter. Back 30 odd years ago, they banned all the types of firearms that could ever be used on a battlefield. If these firearms were in the country and able to be banned, well, they weren’t battlefield weapons. And it’s just as laughable with this statement that we can send them to the Ukraine. The Ukraine doesn’t want them. They want cruise missiles, not Canadian target rifles. Right. So let’s talk about solutions here. Obviously, you don’t think that this is this is the right move by the government. The Conservative leader was very vocal about that today on social media as well. He thinks he’s got the same opinion that this is not about actually public safety. It’s it’s more of a display and politics here. What are the solutions? What do you think would make a difference in reducing the number of crimes we see with guns in this country and violence that we see? Well, let’s first of all, let’s define what solutions we’re looking for. You know, if you’re looking to disarm the general populace, then that certainly is one way to go about doing it. You’ll disarm everybody except the criminals, because criminals are criminals because they don’t obey laws. If we’re going to talk about disarming the criminals, let’s talk about things that we can do to effectively stop the flow of crime guns coming across the borders. And what’s and so what do you want to be what would you like to see on that front change? Well, I’d like to see, first of all, significantly more CBSA people. We need scanners for the containers. We need increased scrutiny of the people that are coming across. We need, quite frankly, there’s several holes on the border that this stuff flows across. And whether getting into that argument too much, they need to be closed. OK, we got to leave it there. Tony, I really appreciate your perspective on this tonight. And your expertise. That is Tony Bernardo. He is the spokesperson for the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.