Juno News - February 04, 2019


Bill Blair might make gun owners store guns in ＂central＂ facilities


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

181.25046

Word Count

832

Sentence Count

34

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Six months after the tragic Danforth Ave shooting in Toronto gave Justin Trudeau's Liberals the
00:00:07.200 political cover to explore a nationwide gun grab, the man responsible for overseeing this policy
00:00:14.360 has not yet ruled out a full ban on handguns. Bill Blair is the Minister of Border Security
00:00:21.200 and also the minister that Justin Trudeau is tasked with looking at whether we should ban
00:00:26.280 assault weapons. This is what the Liberals think assault weapons are not the actual assault weapons
00:00:31.580 which are already banned in Canada and yes a handgun ban. Now Bill Blair has been notoriously
00:00:37.400 difficult to actually be held accountable on this issue. There have been some invite-only events where
00:00:43.200 gun advocates have been very frustrated. They've not been allowed to go to ask questions of this
00:00:48.540 government and most recently Bill Blair had to his credit a town hall event co-hosted with a
00:00:54.380 conservative MP Larry Miller in Bruce Gray Owen Sound. People had the opportunity to raise their
00:01:00.180 questions to get an update on the government's and Bill Blair's progress on this and what we got is
00:01:05.980 very concerning. Now to be clear he is not yet committing to a full ban on handgun but he is
00:01:11.780 using language that people should be very wary of when he talks about quote-unquote secure storage.
00:01:17.180 That we're looking very seriously at how we might make it more unlikely that those weapons will be
00:01:23.320 stolen. How we create greater security around those firearms and so we've examined a number of
00:01:28.820 issues. This notion I've heard a number of times of central storage. I've had proposals suggested to
00:01:38.500 me in a number of jurisdictions that that might work in that jurisdiction but I also want to share with
00:01:43.960 you that I've heard in many other places in Canada. People saying to me that that will not work here
00:01:49.160 and so it was important to go to those places to listen to those people to look at the circumstances.
00:01:54.200 Now law-abiding firearms owners already have to do a lot to keep up with the regulations on storage.
00:02:00.700 There are rules depending on the classification of firearm about how many locks it must be in,
00:02:05.380 where the ammunition must be held. It has to be secure and you have to be able to account for it and
00:02:11.440 quite frankly police can show up at your house without a warrant and inspect to make sure you're
00:02:16.180 following those rules. But one of the ideas that has been put forward is whether gun owners will be
00:02:22.140 forced by law to store their firearms off-site to keep your guns in a storage locker at a shooting range
00:02:30.020 at a gun club rather than in your own home where everything else that you own is. This is what it looks
00:02:36.400 like Bill Blair may be talking about when he uses terms like secure storage. Now as he notes there is
00:02:42.340 no legislation yet on the table and it's not likely there will be any legislation on the table before
00:02:48.480 the federal election but if the Trudeau liberals are re-elected this is something that we could very
00:02:53.780 well see. Why would secure storage be such a bad idea? Well for starters it gives the illusion that
00:03:00.760 law-abiding gun owners are the problem. That it's actually the guns owned by me that are getting
00:03:06.520 into the hands of criminals which we know has been debunked time and time again. So that's one of the
00:03:11.920 issues there is that puts the onus on the people that are following the laws to deal with the problems
00:03:16.900 from those who aren't following the laws. But more importantly if we are trying to prevent
00:03:21.700 criminals from stealing legally owned guns why would we think it would be a good idea to make sure that
00:03:28.380 every legally owned firearm is kept in one warehouse in one storage facility. Kept all there in one room
00:03:35.800 behind one door so that if someone does actually want to steal guns well we know where they're all
00:03:40.320 going to be kept. It's laughable to think this is a policy that would do anything other than detract
00:03:46.720 from public safety if it had any impact whatsoever. Not to mention most gun clubs most likely do not want
00:03:53.020 the liability of having to safeguard everyone's firearms who happens to be a member there.
00:03:59.600 If a gun is your property and you are following the rules and regulations as they've been laid out
00:04:04.560 you should not be penalized by the government. And Bill Blair's approach once again is to go after
00:04:10.620 the law-abiding to give the illusion that gun control is something that he's making a priority.
00:04:17.200 Well gun control has been a priority in Canada. Gun control exists. It's on the books and for the most part
00:04:22.440 Canadian gun control is effective. Adding more useless make-work regulations does nothing but
00:04:28.760 penalize the people who are the least harm to Canadians. Law-abiding gun owners. For True North,
00:04:34.460 I'm Andrew Lutton.