On May 22, 2020, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair published a letter to MP Bob Zimmer on Twitter[i] in an effort to “set the record straight” on which guns his Order in Council banned on May 1, 2020, and which it did not.
“There is misinformation circulating online surrounding the types of guns that were prohibited in Canada on May 1st. To be clear, 10 and 12 gauge shotguns are not prohibited in Canada – Canadians who use these guns lawfully, including hunters and farmers, can continue to do so,” the Minister said.
It’s the same line he used in Parliament on May 6th when he said:
“We have been very clear. This does not cover 10-gauge and 12-gauge shotguns. The police will understand that. They know how to do their jobs. I trust them.”[ii]
Unfortunately, the only person shoveling buckets of misinformation into the world is Minister Bill Blair.
Despite the Minister’s insistence his Order in Council “does not cover 10-gauge and 12-gauge shotguns” the RCMP Canadian Firearms Program specifically used SOR/2020-96 to ban at least 29 specific makes and models of 12-gauge shotgun by claiming they are variants of the AR-15.[iii]
Without intending to, Bill Blair explained to Bob Zimmer why these shotguns were banned via his Order in Council.
“The amendments introduced under section 87 describes the design of the AR-10 and AR-15 and any variants or modified versions of them. It is not specific to characteristics such as type, operating system or calibre.”
Bill Blair and the RCMP Canadian Firearms Program define “variant” to mean any firearm that remotely looks like an AR-15 – a patently absurd interpretation by any rational standard.
The Minister of Misinformation made two things clear in his letter to MP Bob Zimmer:
- Minister Blair is lying (again) about banning shotguns by Order in Council.
- The RCMP do not “understand” the Minister’s intent, nor do “they know how to do their jobs.”
Bill Blair, you dug yourself a deep hole. When will you stop digging that hole deeper and simply resign?
Sources:
[i] https://twitter.com/BillBlair/status/1263964388576329730
[ii] https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-1/COVI/meeting-4/evidence#Int-10835142
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