The federal government introduced a regulatory bill last month introducing stronger controls on gun-owners.
Bill C-71 was tabled by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale on March 20 and passed second reading on March 28. It’s gone to committee for comment and review before coming back to the House of Commons.
Among other things, it would require gun retailers to keep records of inventories and sales, purchasers of rifles and shotguns would be required to present a valid license, and background checks on people acquiring guns would go back their whole lives, not just five years.
Critics of the bill have suggested that it’s just a by-proxy revival of the long gun registry, that it will do nothing to curb gun violence and called it “civil disarmament.” President of the National Firearms Association Sheldon Clare told Global News that the bill is “another unnecessary set of firearms control regulations and regime that will have nothing whatsoever to do with preventing any crime.”
Clare also said that the “research is very clear,” that gun-control legislation introduced in 1976 had “no effects whatsoever on crime rates.”
