By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
OPINION: The Globe and Mail in Toronto is harshly criticizing how the Trudeau government’s gun ban effort launched in the aftermath of a mass murder in Nova Scotia which claimed 22 lives has managed to spend $67-million on a gun buyback program that, after four years, apparently still doesn’t exist.
In a bristling editorial, the newspaper said the buyback effort is “just more evidence that, for the Liberals, gun control is as much about electoral politics as it is about public safety.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of a plan hatched in response to an April 2020 night-long massacre conducted by mass murderer Gabriel Wortman who disguised himself as a Canadian Mountie and drove a decommissioned RCMP patrol vehicle in a region about 90 miles north from Halifax and Dartmouth. His victims included Constable Heidi Stevenson, whom he murdered and then began driving her car during the 12-hour rampage which ended when he was shot dead in a confrontation with real Canadian lawmen at a gas station.
All of this happened in a nation with strict gun controls; a country often used as an example by U.S. gun prohibitionists as having gun laws this country should emulate.
But according to the Globe and Mail report, that may not be such a good idea. The story recalled how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in the aftermath of the Nova Scotia rampage, announced his government would ban some 1,500 specific military-style semiautomatic firearms, and their accessories.
“The whole thing is such a boondoggle that even a major gun-control group has turned against it,” the Globe and Mail editorial board said.
This “boondoggle” is becoming an election issue, with the editorial observing, “The minority Liberals say the buyback program will start next spring and target some 150,000 weapons – if their government survives that long.”
Near the end of the critical 728-word essay, the editorial board observes this about the buyback effort, “Its only accomplishment, if you can call it that, is to have ensured that the survival of its theoretical buyback program will be an issue in the next election, whenever it takes place.”
By no small coincidence, gun rights versus gun control is part of this year’s election campaign, for the presidency, for the Washington State governor’s office, for the U.S. Senate race in Montana, and for legislative races all over the map.
Although the FBI’s annual crime report for 2023 was recently released, showing a 3.5 percent drop in crime last year from 2022, the Crime Prevention Research Center has released its own report noting, “The newly released FBI data shows that reported violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) fell by 3.5% in 2023, but they have revised the 2022 data to show a 4.5% increase. However, it should be compared to the Bureau of Justice Statistics data, which showed 4.1% increase in reported serious violent crime in 2023 (rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, but even though murder isn’t included, it covers only about 1 percent of reported violent crimes and even less of total violent crimes).”
Translation: Restrictive gun control laws adopted over the years during Democrat administrations (Obama, Biden-Harris) haven’t produced the promised results, while the crime situation is not as rosy as we are being told. They have failed and they only want to double down on what hasn’t worked, including “expanded background checks,” bans on so-called “assault weapons” and “large capacity magazines,” and other restrictions.
Much like the Nova Scotia massacre of 2020 demonstrated the failure of Canadian gun control, this country’s Democrats, like Canada’s Liberals, are on the wrong side of history and common sense when it comes to the Second Amendment.
