New Public Safety Minister as Misguided as the Last Two

Politicians of all stripes love to parade in front of television cameras while making grand (but meaningless) pronouncements.

Bill Blair, the former public safety minister, chose to ignore violent criminals in his obsessive pursuit of headlines and press releases touting how he tackled and won the battle over illegal guns.

He did nothing of the sort.

Just like his predecessor Ralph Goodale, Bill Blair ignored the real problem of illegal smuggled guns in the hands of drug dealers, gang members and other violent criminals in favour of scapegoating the most law-abiding segment of Canada’s society: licensed firearm owners.

The new Public Safety Minister, Marco Mendicino, despite his decade of experience prosecuting drug dealers, gang members and other violent criminals, continues the folly of the previous ministers instead of, well, doing his job.

While incredibly disappointing, it’s also wholly predictable that successive Liberal public safety ministers would put leftist ideology over public safety.

As this sampling of criminal violence headlines for the past 14 days shows, Canada has a problem with illegal guns in the hands of violent criminals – the very issue Marco Mendicino, like his two Liberal predecessors, continues to ignore in favour of virtue-signalling headlines and attacks on Canada’s law-abiding firearms community.

1. Rideau Street shooting victim in stable condition: Ottawa police
2. Police investigate shooting on Orléans side street
3. Toronto police investigating fatal shooting near Jane and Finch
4. 8-year-old boy killed after being shot in car, Halifax police say
5. Hamilton man, 24, shot to death in driveway of Mountain home
6. Toronto man tries to enter police station with Molotov cocktail and lighter, police say
7. Toronto police identify man gunned down in Lawrence Heights on Christmas Eve
8. Fredericton Police investigate shooting in city’s Northside
9. 2 men seriously injured in shooting outside West Kelowna hotel
10. Man, 29, dies after shooting at townhouse in Toronto: police
11. Toronto police identify victim of fatal Boxing Day shooting
12. 27-year-old man found dead inside Ajax home after shooting
13. Peel police issue warning after victim reportedly shot following online classified sale in Mississauga
14. Arrest made in shooting death of man outside Winnipeg convenience store
15. Three Overnight shootings Sunday keep Toronto Police busy
16. Driver struck parked cars, fired shots and grappled with officers: police
17. Lethbridge police make arrests in connection with northside shooting
18. Shooting at Surrey home believed to be targeted, sends man to hospital: Mounties
19. Flin Flon RCMP looking for suspect in shooting, homicide

Noted journalist Lorne Gunter restated the obvious for anyone willing to open their mind and hear it.[i]

Trudeau is interested purely in virtue signalling. He doesn’t really care whether his ban makes sense, only that it sends the right signal to his supporters, who are equally ignorant of the true causes of gun crime.

The assault weapon ban looks and sounds as clever to Liberal voters as it does to Trudeau, so of course they’re sure it’s the right thing to do.

However, Chris Lewis, former Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, also disagrees with virtue-signalling firearms policy.[ii]

The Trudeau government recently committed $1 billion to help the provinces and municipalities ban handguns. How on earth they believe that this tremendous chunk of taxpayer money is going to take handguns out of the hands of criminals who would do others harm, is completely mind-boggling to me.

Unfortunately for some Canadians, it doesn’t have to make sense.

It’s government policy to govern by virtue signals and opinion polls, not common sense and facts.

 

 

Sources:

[i] https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-why-im-cheering-for-trudeaus-gun-buy-back-to-fail

[ii] https://www.cp24.com/news/a-view-from-the-top/oped-will-handgun-bans-prevent-violent-crime-in-canada-1.5715744