Public Safety Minister Bill Blair told a Liberal Party policy convention audience that “extremists” make up the ranks of Canada’s gun lobby.
“Not every person who is in the gun lobby is an extremist, but anybody extremist is in the gun lobby,” said Blair during a panel on gun violence.
In response to Blair’s comments, the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR) lashed back at the minister accusing him of slandering hard working and law-abiding Canadians.
“The ‘gun lobby’ is moms, dads, grandparents, teachers, lawyers, cops, military, tax payers. It’s average Canadians,” wrote the official CCFR Twitter account.
Under the Trudeau Liberals, around 1,500 firearms were prohibited after the federal government bypassed debate in the House of Commons and introduced Bill C-21 using an order in council.
The law effectively bans the ownership, sale and distribution of those guns throughout the country, giving owners of the guns a limited time period to turn their firearms into the government under a federal buyback program.
According to prior statements by Blair, the minister assured a House of Commons committee in June 2020 that it was a “mistruth and deception put out by the gun lobby” and that his government was not intent on legislating such a ban.
Since then, the Liberals expanded the legislation to include “any device, including an unregulated airgun that looks exactly like a conventional regulated firearm (i.e., shoots over 500 feet per second).”
“No further ‘replica’ firearms could be imported into, or sold/transferred in Canada,” a government document claims.
In response to the legislation, a record number of Canadians signed a parliamentary petition urging the federal government to change course.
“We, the undersigned, citizens of Canada, call upon the Prime Minister to immediately scrap his government’s May 1, 2020, Order in Council decision related to confiscating legally owned firearms and instead pass legislation that will target criminals, stop the smuggling of firearms into Canada, go after those who illegally acquire firearms, and apologize to legal firearms owners in Canada,” reads petition e-2574 which was signed by 230,905 Canadians across the country.
To find out more about the Trudeau government’s infringement of firearm rights, tune into True North fellow Andrew Lawton’s documentary Assaulted: Justin Trudeau’s War on Gun Owners when it’s released this Spring.
