Prairie provinces up in arms over proposed amendment to gun legislation

The prairie provinces have banded together to oppose amendments the federal government has made to its firearms legislation.

Last week, a Liberal MP introduced an amendment that would broaden the number of firearms being banned.

The amendment moves to ban “a firearm that is a rifle or shotgun, that is capable of discharging centre-fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner and that is designed to accept a detachable cartridge magazine with a capacity greater than five cartridges of the type for which the firearm was originally designed.”

The legislation would ban almost all types of semi-automatic firearms in Canada.

On Thursday, the governments of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan issued a media release saying the ban would “criminalize hunters, farmers and target shooters who collectively own hundreds of thousands of firearms that could soon be prohibited.”

Cabinet ministers from all three provinces offered statements opposing the proposed ban.

“If these amendments are allowed to proceed, Bill C-21 will be the most sweeping and arbitrary ban of firearms in Canadian history,” Tyler Shandro, Alberta’s minister of justice, said in the release. “The federal Liberals claimed that they were never going after hunters, farmers and target shooters — they lied. This is clearly part of a push to ban legal firearms ownership altogether.”

“Manitoba continues to raise significant concerns regarding the proposed measures that will punish law-abiding firearms owners while doing little to address illegal importation of firearms from the United States,” added Kelvin Goertzen, the minister of justice and attorney general for Manitoba. “The federal government should focus its attention and resources on illegally imported firearms, and those who commit crime with guns, instead of measures that target law-abiding citizens.”

“The rifles and shotguns that law-abiding Saskatchewan farmers, hunters, and sport shooters use will soon be confiscated by the Trudeau-NDP government,” noted Christine Tell, Saskatchewan’s minister of corrections, policing and public safety. “These men and women will be criminalized overnight. Saskatchewan will not stand idly by while the federal government yet again attacks law-abiding citizens instead of focusing on crime.”