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Ottawa will let gun owners keep ‘military-style’ firearms despite nationwide ban.
By
Alex Ballingall Ottawa Bureau
Fri., May 1, 2020
timer 4 min. read
updateArticle was updated May. 04, 2020
OTTAWA—The federal government intends to let gun owners keep “military-style” weapons like those used in the Nova Scotia massacre even after their sale and use is outlawed under a new nationwide ban, officials said Friday.
The plan to let current gun owners keep assault-style rifles was denounced by gun control advocates, who want to see the mandatory removal from Canadian society of weapons that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described Friday as dangerous tools of death.
“I’m so mad,” said Nathalie Provost, a survivor of the 1989 mass murder of women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique.
“I don’t think politicians have real courage. They do politics with everything, even with our safety,” she said.
Starting Friday, Canadians are barred from selling, importing or using more than 1,500 models of firearms that Ottawa has determined are too powerful and dangerous for recreational uses such as sport shooting and hunting.
In a morning news conference, Trudeau and other top cabinet ministers neglected to mention the government intends to current owners keep the guns that were prohibited under new regulations imposed on Friday.
That was left to public service officials who outlined the new rules in a technical briefing after Trudeau and his ministers spoke. The officials said people who currently own military weapons subject to the new ban will have two years to decide whether to give up the now-prohibited guns for compensation or keep them under a “grandfathering” scheme that has yet to be determined.
Public Safety Minister Bill Blair’s office later confirmed the government intends to craft a program that allows people who currently own these guns to keep them under conditions that prohibit the sale, use and transport of banned weapons.
Because Canada scrapped its national long gun registry in 2011, officials said the government doesn’t know how many of these firearms exist in Canada, and could only say that there are significantly more than 105,000.
Like Provost, Kathlene Dixon welcomed the ban that includes the type of semi-automatic rifle that injured her daughter in the 2006 Dawson College shooting in Montreal.
The ban was also applauded by the Coalition for Gun Control and the Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns, who hailed it as the beginning of a “new era for public safety” in Canada even as it called for further restrictions on handguns.
Dixon agreed the government needs to go further, and said she is concerned the grandfather provision will mean dangerous guns can still be used against innocent people.
“I would like to see them all removed. I can’t say anything otherwise. Grandfathering makes no sense to me,” she told the Star on Friday.
“Don’t get me wrong, I am very pleased that they took this really good first step but they need to do more.”
Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill, Trudeau recounted his own memories of the École Polytechnique massacre more than 30 years ago and lamented how a series of mass shootings over the decades since — from Dawson College, to the Danforth shooting, the attack on a mosque in Quebec City and the Nova Scotia rampage less than two weeks ago — has profoundly impacted Canadians.
“These tragedies reverberate still. They shape our identity, they stain our conscience, they make adults out of children, and the heartbreaking truth is they’re happening more often than they once did,” Trudeau said.
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