TOPLINE
Nearly two weeks after the country’s deadliest mass shooting, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a ban Friday not only on assault-style weapons sales but possession, with owners needing to relinquish their assault weapons within two years.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attends a news conference on March 7, 2019 in Ottawa, Canada.
KEY FACTS
Trudeau said during a press conference that Canadians will not be able to “buy, sell, transport, import or use military-grade assault weapons.”
Law abiding gun owners will have a two-year amnesty period during which gun owners will get “fair compensation” for their firearms when they are sold and exported out of the country, but the details of the buyback program still need to be ironed out and will likely need Parliament’s approval.
The ban comes nearly two weeks after a gunman in rural Nova Scotia went on a 12-hour rampage that killed 22 people.
The rule applies to the AR-15 as well as two weapons used by the gunman, the Associated Press reported, though the shooter did not have a firearms license for the several semi-automatic handguns and two semi-automatic rifles he used in the rampage.
Trudeau and his Liberal party had been preparing to introduce gun control measures before the Nova Scotia shooting, but measure was put on hold in mid-March in the wake of the coronavirus.
Canada’s ban is similar to New Zealand’s ban on military-style weapons enacted after the Christchurch shooting in 2019.
Crucial quote
“These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada," Trudeau said in a briefing where he announced the decision.
CHIEF CRITIC
Canada’s Conservative opposition party leader Andrew Scheer denounced the ban, pointing out the Nova Scotia gunman used illegally obtained firearms, which the ban doesn’t address. “Trudeau is using the current pandemic and the horrific attack in Nova Scotia to push his ideological agenda and make major firearms policy changes,” he said in a statement.
Key background
Canada’s gun laws have been tightened following mass shootings before. In 1989, a student killed 14 people during a rampage at an engineering school in Montreal, which led to the country implementing twenty-eight-day waiting periods, mandatory safety training courses, increased background checks and bans on large-capacity magazines. Canada’s gun death rate is far less than the U.S. According to University of Washington researchers, Canadas gun death rate was 2.1 per 100,000 people in 2016 compared to 10.6 per 100,000 in the U.S.
Big Number
5. That’s how Canada ranks in world gun ownership, only behind the U.S, Yemen, Montenegro and Serbia, according to the 2018 Small Arms Survey.
