Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre dodged questions Sunday about whether he would repeal the federal government’s handgun ban, a measure brought in to tamp down on the diversion of legal firearms into the hands of bad actors.
Poilievre hasn’t said much during this campaign about what he would do with the Liberal firearms legislation he voted against while in Parliament, but he has blasted the last government’s “assault-style” firearm buyback program as a “gun grab” that he would scrap.
Gun control advocates say any legislation to curb the flow of firearms is a worthy measure to try and reduce incidents of crime and violence. Firearms rights advocates meanwhile say the Liberal suite of policies only punish lawful gun owners who play by the rules.
It’s insane to me that he keeps pushing for policy changes that we know either don’t work, or are fundamentally dangerous to the general public. So much of what he pushes has been done in the states for years with horrible results.
The fact that these idiots look at them and say “lax gun laws, private healthcare, punishing prisons with a broken justice system, tax breaks for the wealthy. Seems to work in the states” fuck me, Americans have been trying to change this shit for years and he’s sprinting right towards it.
Firearm laws in Canada are very strict, and not comparable to the American system. No serious Canadian politician is advocating for lax gun laws or an American-style system in terms of firearm ownership.
Under Trudeau, the first major Liberal movement on banning so-called assault style firearms came after the tragedy in Portapique. The gunman in that massacre used firearms smuggled from the States, and a pistol stolen off of an RCMP officer. The shooter was reported to the RCMP for having illegal firearms repeatedly, and months/years before the shooting occurred. So, I think it’s important to point out that no measure that the Liberals have moved on since 2020 would have changed the outcome in Portapique. That’s why law abiding firearm owners are pushing for increased enforcement, instead of new measures that uniquely target them.
The vast majority of gun crime is commited with illegal firearms or firearms stolen from legal owners. IMO money would better be spent on better enforcement of illegal firearms and compliance checks on legal owners rather than spending the money buying backs guns that were obtained legally and have not been used for crimes.
That’s the whole “common sense Conservatives” schtick. It effectively translates to, “just trust us, don’t look at the data, we’re definitely doing this for the good of the people and not solely those who line our pockets.”
Their base, often with limited critical thinking ability, is happy to lap it up as it means they don’t have to use their brain.
If they were “critical thinking conservatives” they wouldn’t be conservatives.