Gun Confiscation: The Liberal Government’s Political Albatross

Its $2.7 billion price tag is what finally ended the Long Gun Registry, not it’s failure to improve public safety.

Cost overruns will likewise end the Liberal government’s latest political albatross – its planned gun confiscations – but not before it wastes at least another $2-5 billion of your taxes.

The Trudeau government is far more interested in virtue-signalling than it is in protecting Canadians. They trumpet their misguided belief confiscating rifles from licensed gun owners will stop gang violence fuelled by the illegal drug trade.

It won’t. It can’t.

“There are handguns all over. They’re all illegal and they’re in the hands of criminals. And the people that legitimately own them, their [guns are] in safes and being taken to gun clubs. The two sections [of society] don’t intersect,” Winnipeg Constable Rob Carver[i] told reporters.

“I guess it might make some people feel good, but it won’t change the threat level one iota,” Carver said.

Drug dealers and gang members will still have their illegal guns long after the last “assault-style rifle” is confiscated from its legal gun owner.

 

Not Enough Police Officers

Prime Minister Trudeau’s Mandate Letter to the Minister of Public Safety, Bill Blair, asked him to

• “Amend Canada’s firearms laws to ban all military-style assault rifles, with an associated buyback program and two-year amnesty;”

This is a far more expensive undertaking than Minister Blair’s estimate of $600 million to confiscate and destroy approximately 250,000 guns.

It also comes with extraordinarily high staffing requirements.

New Zealand set up 524 local collection points (including 43 firearm dealers) to collect 175,000 prohibited guns.[ii]

Canada is 37 times larger in size than New Zealand. Our population is also 8 times larger than the island nation.

Geographically, our land mass suggests 19,388 collection points. If we base collection points on population alone, that suggests a minimum of 4,192 collection points are required.

New Zealand typically staffed each collection point with four police officers and four clerks, according to the Fraser Institute.[iii]

By staffing each collection point to New Zealand’s levels, the government will need 16,768 police officers, assuming a single 8-hour shift per day. If collection points are open longer, this number doubles.

We have a total of 68,563 police officers in Canada according to Statistics Canada.[iv]

If almost 50% of Canada’s cops are yanked away from criminal investigations to staff gun confiscation booths, who’s left to protect Canadians?

We can’t afford to pull 33,536 police officers from their regular duties.

We even can’t afford to pull 25% of Canada’s police officers off those tasks.

The threat to public safety is too high.

If the government diverts police officers away from criminal investigations, court testimony and other efforts that protect the public, criminals will have free reign.

Will these confiscations from licensed gun owners remain popular when costs spiral out of control? 

Will they remain popular when the body counts inevitably rise, unchecked by a feel-good program that was never designed to stop the violence in the first place?

Cowering behind another round of expensive virtue-signalling can only guarantee more carnage. That’s not how you enhance public safety.

Let’s address these issues head-on.

Let’s focus on the real problem – violent drug dealers and gang members shooting, injuring and killing innocent people.

 

 

Sources:

[i] https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/police-identify-man-20-dead-after-shooting-at-windsor-hotel-1.4765097

[ii] https://www.police.govt.nz/sites/default/files/advice/firearms/amnesty-buyback-summary-operation_0.pdf

[iii] https://www.fraserinstitute.org/blogs/trudeau-governments-buy-back-gun-program-likely-a-multi-billion-boondoggle

[iv] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2019001/article/00015-eng.htm