Liberals Promise One-Stop Gun Shops for Criminals

Minister Bill Blair reiterated the Liberal government’s inane promise to make it easier for criminals to steal guns.ⁱ

“We are looking at all the measures … that can include … additional restrictions on where firearms can be possessed or stored within a municipality to make it far more difficult for people in those municipalities to gain access, criminally, to guns.”

In other words, Blair wants centralized firearm storage facilities because, in his view, if all the guns are kept in one place, no criminals will ever try to steal them.

He makes this comment after stating some guns are stolen from gun stores. That much is true, although rare. Some guns are stolen from gun stores.

If, despite heavy duty gun safes, expensive alarm systems and security systems, thieves can break in to retailers and steal guns, what makes the Minister believe a “central storage facility” will fare any better?

It won’t. What it will do is threaten public safety, because instead of stealing a dozen guns from a gun store, thieves will now be able to steal thousands of firearms during a single break-in.

If this is the best plan Liberals have for keeping guns out of the hands of violent criminals, we’re in trouble. Big trouble.

The minister justified the creation of 1-stop gun shops for criminals by stating current legislation is unclear about how to safely and legally store firearms.

“[O]ur current laws do not provide firearm owners with enough information about what they need to do to keep them secured.”

Minister Blair obviously needs a refresher course on Canada’s gun laws, specifically the Storage, Display, Transportation and Handling of Firearms by Individuals Regulations,ⁱⁱ which are explicit about the legal requirements for firearm storage.

That the Minister of Organized Crime Reduction is unaware or is uninformed of this cornerstone of Canadian firearms law does not inspire our confidence in his abilities.

His plan also raises far more questions than it answers.

Who will pay for the construction of these facilities at gun clubs across the nation? Who will guard them? And what will happen when a criminal gang decides it wants all the guns inside just one of these “central firearm storage” sites?

Most shooting ranges are in remote rural locations where police response times are measured in hours, not minutes. When criminals decide they want the guns from one of these storage facilities, who will stop them? The lone security guard making $15 per hour?

While the Liberals continue to focus all their efforts on legal firearm owners, the Conservative Party’s Safer Canada Planⁱⁱⁱ focuses on cracking down on gangs with gun laws that focus on violent criminals, not law-abiding gun owners.

 

Sources:

i Starting at 6:10 of the broadcast https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-63-the-current/clip/15736512-what-are-political-parties-going-to-do-about-gun-violence-naomi-klein-on-climate-change-u.s.-iran-tensions

ii https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-98-209/index.html

iii https://www.conservative.ca/safer-canada/