What's happening in Canada right now is an absolute travesty. It's also what a lot of American anti-gunners want to see here in the United States. They want to curtail so-called assault weapons and force us to hand all of them in, only so they can then move on to the next target, which will likely be handguns.
And sure enough, Canada has a freeze on handgun transfers, which is just a precursor to going after them next.
But with the current gun grab, there are issues. We've already talked about the low compliance rate, but an op-ed at the BBC makes it pretty clear that pretty much no one is happy with what's happening, and that includes Canadian gun-grabbers.
Heidi Rathjen has been calling for a ban on assault-style rifles since 1989, when a gunman opened fire on her classmates at Montreal's École Polytechnique.
The shooting, in which 14 women were killed and more than a dozen injured, was a turning point for Canada, changing how the country viewed gun violence.
More than two decades later, after another deadly mass shooting in 2020, Ottawa did roll out a ban on some 2,500 models of such "assault-style" weapons.
But a scheme designed to buy back these now-prohibited guns from their owners has had a bumpy roll out, and the programme looks likely to miss the mark.
Many legal gun owners are distrustful of the process, two provinces have refused to take part, and even gun control activists like Rathjen say the federal efforts, though a win for public safety, are flawed because the ban does not apply widely enough.
"Without a comprehensive ban on assault weapons, there is no ban… and the money will be wasted," said Rathjen, a spokesperson for gun control advocacy group PolySeSouvient.
Even Canada's own minister of public safety, Gary Anandasangaree, was caught criticising his government's plan in an audio clip leaked to the Toronto Star.
"Don't ask me to explain the logic to you on this," he told a Toronto man in a secretly recorded conversation late last year, when pressed on programme's value when most gun crimes in Canada are committed with illegal weapons.
Rathjen's definition of a "comprehensive ban on assault weapons" basically seems to be anything semi-automatic, since she singled out the SKS in particular, which is not commonly thought of as an "assault weapon" in any way, shape, or form.
But while people like Rathjen are upset that the measure doesn't go far enough, pro-gun rights groups think it goes too far, most of the individual provinces want nothing to do with it, and the guy who is tasked with carrying it out can't even explain the logic behind it, though he did later try to walk back those comments.
In short, no one is happy with what's happening, and everyone thinks it's stupid.
I mean, I get it. It's beyond stupid. It's so stupid that if ideas went to school, it would require a bus with far fewer seats than are standard. Assuming it had enough mental faculties to even go to school and not simply be institutionalized.
Or would MAID be "offered" to ideas too stupid to do anything productive? It's a good question, I guess.
Regardless, I'm mostly just sitting here laughing at Canadians who like to pretend they're superior to us, but can't seem to even beat us at the Olympics, or Paralympics, at the sport they hinged their entire national identity on.
And besides, if we decide to make them the 51st state, this law means they couldn't do anything about it, even if everyone hates it.
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