Canada’s Gun Buyback Is Failing
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Summary
The gun buyback program in Canada has failed to collect enough guns, and critics say it's a waste of money and time. On this episode of the podcast, we talk to gun owner and hunter, Brady Wedman, about the failure of the program, and why we should be focusing on traditional hunters and trappers instead.
Transcript
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early estimates range between 200 and 750 million dollars but multiple analysts are now saying
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billions are more likely the case even before full rollout Ottawa had already spent tens of
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billions of dollars in fact 67 to maybe 100 million dollars without collecting significant
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firearms and critics consistently frame it as costly and ineffective in mainstream reporting
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to talk more about this brady wedham jim lang thanks so much for your time guys
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it's the gun buyback program failing here in canada i think it's one of the most abject
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failures of a government program we've seen in the last decade but then it does nothing to address
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the core of the problem and the illegal guns illegal handguns being smuggled in the major
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canadian cities and used in crimes on a regular basis i i i mean they were so stubborn about this
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gentleman and even though all the police chiefs and all the experts and all the police services
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said we don't want any part of this they refused to adjust their plan in any way yeah it's it's
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incredible you know some of the the stats that i i saw on this uh kind of blew my mind and i know
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you know we can take this conversation a couple of ways one that the program was super
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costly and didn't really do anything too effective but the other thing is they've only collected
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about 32 000 guns uh which works out to about 25 000 per gun bought back uh i guess if you add in
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the cost of everything so far uh that is that is interesting and then to top it off brady
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you're from a family that has been uh hunters and gun owners yeah for generations yeah i'm currently
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not a registered firearm holder, but I grew up in a household that was. So the very first job I ever
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even really had as a kid was loading shotgun shells for my father in our basement. And one
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of the things that I learned very early on, my father had a special firearms license. He was
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also a licensed dealer. I learned respect for firearms. I learned how to be around them, how
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to have trigger locks on them, clean them every time that you're done with them, actual gun safety
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and gun protocols proper ones and these are the people that we're offering money to to bring us
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their guns these are already the cordial people what's your take on that well i tell you i'm glad
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brady brought this up because we go to northern ontario for a stretch every summer and the people
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that live there year-round hunt deer and moose and that meat that they hunt feeds them through
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the winter and i know in rural newfoundland and the maritimes out west whether it's elk and caribou
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the meat that these people hunt on a regular basis and they go through all the licensing
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as brady mentioned and have all the documentation and they get the tags and they're very responsible
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conservation conservationists about this that the meat from that deer and that moose and the elk
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whenever they hunt and geese and duck that's in their freezer through the winter feeding their
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family on that point so our canadian thanksgiving actually lines up with moose season the beginning
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of moose yeah and i've never had my father around for thanksgiving ever but when he came back home
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him and his hunting team they would usually have if they were lucky had one moose if not two and
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we would be eating that meat until april yeah look with the price of food now i mean i was
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was just at Costco last week and they had a strip loin stakes but in a big package that you cut
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yourself hundreds and hundreds of dollars most people could never afford that but the responsible
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hunters who follow all the rules and all the safety guidelines who do get the moose and deer
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that's saving their family thousands of dollars every winter saving their family thousands of
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dollars and like I said I don't know if this is really the aim that we should have been taking to
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clean up the crime is to go after the traditional hunters and trappers that are out there that do
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this properly, have everything registered properly, even to the point where they're kept with trigger
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locks inside of a gun safe inside of their home. Their bullets are kept in other safes. Like these
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are regulations. And the government here in Canada has been very, for lack of better words, they've
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been very anal with how they've laid these laws out. And thank goodness they were because it
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created a very safe environment for gun owners. The guns that we're supposed to be going after
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with this program you'd think would be the illegal ones the ones without serial numbers the ones that
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don't have registrations why are we not spending billions of dollars trying to solve that and
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that's what the police chiefs were begging the government to change their focus the cbc did an
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in-depth study about the amount of illegal guns in major cities in canada 88 of the guns seized
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by toronto police in 2024 were traced illegally to the united states in peel region it's 90
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and that's brampton mississauga a huge area west in toronto so you have this massive amount of gun
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crime being perpetrated by criminals with guns smuggled illegally from the u.s and the police
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chiefs are begging the federal government strengthen the laws strengthen the border
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start catching the guns and if you're caught with it do serious jail time yeah i'm not sure
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that taking guns away from uh recreational users and responsible people was really the mission in
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fact 12 000 of the firearms were collected from businesses before the individual rollout by the
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way this guys has been going on since may 2020 when it was first announced here we are six years
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later uh potentially a billion or more into it and 32 000 guns returned from people who are probably
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and most likely would never use these weapons in an undue manner uh so you're right we you know we
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missed the boat on who really this gun back and i'm not sure what the the theory was but really
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what we need i think is more of what we see in the u.s which is an amnesty program but even so
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much to say i can't believe as a canadian that i'm even saying this are we headed as we have a
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a military increase coming in this country uh hundreds of thousands of people potentially
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joining our military uh trained properly with firearms responsible individuals
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maybe carrying weapons themselves are we maybe missing the point on this and we should be
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creating laws like we see in many of the states where people are allowed to carry in and are
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license to do so before we get into that i just want to tail end the the final the final little
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bit of information i have for the licensed gun owners so we're not taking into consideration at
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all about collectors there is gun collectors out there my father was a gun collector he he had
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championship brettas that had never been shot he had uh gold uh henry repeaters and things like
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that so there's collecting collecting markets when you pay over 10 to 20 000 for a collector's gun
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and then the government offers a program to buy it back at five to ten thousand it's not a very
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good investment so this is another reason why we're seeing low buybacks because these who in
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their right mind would ever want to take something worth that amount of money whether it's a gun or
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not and sell it at to do what it's not cleaning up any of the crime and farmers we have to remember
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gentlemen that the livestock is basically the entire financial wherewithal of many farmers in
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Canada. So their dairy cow, their beef cattle, their sheep, whatever they're raising. Unfortunately,
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there is coyotes and wolves and predators out there. And I know my wife's family, they have
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some farmers and they have to have 22 bolt action rifles and shotguns to keep those predators away
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from the herd. Because if they lose the herd, that's their life. Once again, they got 32,000
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guns back. Apparently people aren't interested in handing them back on that front. And I would
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imagine not too many collectors handed back a weapon. They're probably not going to. And I
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think there's a few, I think there's a few solutions even inside, let's say we're not
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going to go after the illegal guns, but we want to get some of the special firearms. I think maybe
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we take a step back on special firearms licenses. They haven't really released those to the public
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for a very long time. You had to be grandfathered in, but there's people that are in Canada that
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collectors or whatever it is that have these special firearms license that own rpgs that go
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out to the tank the tank ranges and you know and yes they're allowed to they should be allowed to
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but if we're trying to clean up some of these guns that could eventually get into the hands
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of the illegal market maybe go after the special firearms first i think there's a good chance that
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you're going to be able to get more and that's a good point brady and mike just take what you said
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about the expanding military and the militia uh the military i know from growing up with my father
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have very strict rules about the armory every base in canada has a special armory with a senior nco
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who's the range officer who handles and and some guns are stored in the base you can't take home
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you could be in whatever member of the service army navy air force and use a gun at work
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but it stays there on the base with control and care and safety issues and when needed you go to
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the base get your uniform on and you get your your kit your weapon my point to that end was that we
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are going to have a lot of well-trained people uh with weapons in this country uh many many more than
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we've had in the history of my life anyway and on that front uh you know it does beg the question
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look we've the violent crime weapons were not retrieved obviously no that means there's still
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a predator danger out there. There's property danger out there. People are looking at the
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castle law now seriously because of the amount of home invasions that have occurred. And I wonder
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how long it's going to be before we start making the trip across the line for Canadians and start
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looking at certain ways to uh arm people i certainly am not an armed individual it's not
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something i've considered i don't hunt um the the notion of it will uh will frighten me i think to
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some degree however in many states it is the average day for an american disclosure i've been
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into licensed gun ranges in Canada and the US, and with gun officers and safety officers and
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followed all the procedures to shoot at sandbags and targets and stuff like that. And I will say
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this, you'll have a healthy respect for a gun when you actually fire a gun with not a blank,
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but a real live ammunition in it. And it's scary. And I don't own a gun. I have no desire to own a
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gun but every day in the news from surrey bc to halifax to montreal to the suburbs of toronto
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you know really well-to-do middle-class suburbs you're seeing video people shooting up homes in
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intimidation those aren't guns they're buying at cabela's well i grew up on on a range at a
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sportsman's club for i was there for 20 years um and one of the very first things that i did was
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set up uh so we'd have a lot of the americans come up for rifle competitions and we'd run out
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set up the targets at 50 meters 100 150 etc etc and also load skeet for the shotgun right for
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shotgun shooters on the other side of the range um and i grew up around firearms and i also realize
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and i think anybody who probably grows up around firearms that is normally wired understands what
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these things are they're extremely dangerous yes yeah i mean i mean shooting as you talk about it
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is an olympic sport it is your target shooting is olympic sport and so you know it's and and
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there's the biathlon where you're you're cross-country skiing and then shooting at a target
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with a 22. so i met a lot of those guys growing up yeah yeah funny i i recently met the son of a
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of a uh i guess what is it a a relay shooter yeah and uh he said to his kids if you want to make
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sure that you stay safe you know just stand still because i can't shoot at you unless we're on the
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move so who would see a very very special skill it's pretty so having said that really what
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happened here i guess guys is the gun buyback funding diverted funding from where it's really
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needed on the border at smuggling yeah uh efforts um in the streets retrieving uh violent you know
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organized crime weaponry if can i pay down an example and you guys tell me if this just sounds
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crazy or not i'm going to come up with an idea for the government you tell me if i'm completely out
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to lunch but i think this may work it seems to be in my head makes more sense than something like
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this so what we do is we open up a federal gun buyback program but for illegal guns let's say
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you bring in a registered gun we'll buy it too but we want the illegal guns we don't care if
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there's a serial number on it we don't care if it's attached to a crime bring these things in
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we'll do that research once we get them but at full immunity which yeah i don't care how it got
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here i think here's your paycheck and i think you're going to turn a bunch of criminals into
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businessmen and put them in an environment where it's actually real for the first time where they're
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getting a government paycheck and it hopefully that only changes with guns on the street but
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hopefully you motivate some people to actually do something different for a living because
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If they can make more money off of exchanging that gun than selling that gun
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or using that gun for a crime, then why wouldn't they just turn in that gun?
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My only caveat is some of these hardened criminals in major Canadian cities
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are smuggling, say, a Glock or like a really dangerous handgun with a high capacity,
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so it's being rented for hundreds of dollars an hour in the morning it's used in the execution
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of crime it's brought back it could be rented out two and three times now i think for maybe
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someone who's a fringe criminal who's maybe not like a hardcore that is a fabulous plan brady
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they have to come up with something something has to be done something has to be done and
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especially at the judicial level, to give the judges to write, to hand out pretty stiff sentences for people convicted of smuggling.
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I'll straw man my own point here by saying, well, maybe we shouldn't do that because all you're doing is funding more criminal organizations.
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What says that they don't take all of this money that they've made and do something completely more dangerous like invest in fentanyl or whatever it is?
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But it sounds like that argument still is a lot better than what we laid out here since 2020.
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Amnesty in the States brought in a lot of guns from families, mothers, kids, family members who knew illegal guns were in the home.
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It did not bring a lot of organized crime weaponry out of the woodwork.
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What it did was it made homes somewhat safer, but what it did do was have a huge effect on how many people actually participated.
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I would be curious to know what the average turn-in was.
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I think that if you were going to hand in guns, it was your dad's or your grandfather's.
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They might not even be serviceable at this point.
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I think some people cashed in on weapons that were probably never going to be used again anyway.
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would assume that's probably a majority of the number that's a great point mike that especially
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with the aging population uh for a lot of people especially few and i of our age group an uncle a
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loved one passes away and you're doing the clear out of their residence and you're like oh i didn't
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know grandpa or uncle joe had a shotgun or a rifle so then you contact your local rcmp opp police
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force and they're they're trained like hey i'm helping my blah blah blah and they're like hey
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that's all good we but they specialize in that they know how to handle weapons and store it
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safely and dispose of it and and you're right i mean a lot of the older families the older people
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who came over and were hunting to feed themselves may just have something still in the garage or in
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the attic that they've had decades and it was forgotten about okay amnesty and the gun buyback
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doesn't work we're not stopping the guns at the border and crime begins to grow i promise you
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my estimation is it's not long before people are starting to go in the opposite direction i i would
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imagine there's some some provinces some cities that will start to issue training and self-protection
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and uh you know gun training uh that will allow for a license for carry well and to that end
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mike i'm glad you brought that up about three or four weeks ago because everyone's got a ring camera
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three individuals tried a home invasion in a nice neighborhood in vaughn and while they were kicking
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someone who had a legally owned firearm took it out of their legal uh weapons locker and their
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ammo and shot at the people breaking in and they ran away and they injured one of the perpetrators
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and when the police investigated they saw that it was a legal weapon licensed weapon in a licensed
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locker with and they used it to defend their house and there was no charges to the homeowner
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interesting i kind of i kind of see the trend heading that way guys i know that's odd for
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canadians it certainly feels weird coming out of my mouth it's something that i've uh reviled about
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the united states my entire life oh they're all got but there comes a point where a certain amount
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of respect and reduction in crime has been noted in states that otherwise would have problems
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When people are armed, there seems to be a different level of respect among society.
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I literally have two novels full of paperwork in front of me.
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And it is very nicely put together by our team.
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And one of the things that is reflected through all of this is that when you have open carry or concealed carry, it definitely does make a huge difference on decreasing crime.
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now whether we bring that into canada then affects it here i don't know but in the states it seems to
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be where there's concealed carry as the lowest amount of crime i just all i know is 25 30 years
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ago when someone used a gun in a crime it always seemed to be in a gritty area of the urban city
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vancouver montreal toronto the suburbs was always seen as a safe haven in canada
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I mean, and now on a weekly basis, we're seeing people shooting up a house in nice suburbs
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And that just, gentlemen, that just simply never existed in this country, not that long
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And I can see people going to Cabela's or whatnot and getting a legal shotgun, even a
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double barrel shotgun that's easy to load and get ready.
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in case they see someone in the ring can or trying to kick the door,
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I wish that the future boyfriends of your daughters hear you say that quote exactly.
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Guys, the buyback program, we're about a billion dollars in.
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We got 32,000 weapons back from people who are probably nonviolent citizens.
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And I think that we can all agree it's not a happening thing.
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Can I ask for a solution from each of you guys before we roll it out?
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Look, if we had to make a decision right this second,
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I've already given my case of what I think should be done.
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I think we should be offering a full immunity buyback program.
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Get these legal guns off the streets and bring them back.
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The men and women in all these major cities in Canada,
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look, we're trying to do something to stop this never-ending flow
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illegal guns in the united states and all the stats are showing it across country 85 90 95 percent of
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guns and crimes in major cities in canada are illegal this is what we want to do what are
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your suggestions to help us with the the crown attorneys and the judicial department in this
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country so then we can set laws and punishment and fines and whatnot so it's so prohibitive
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that if you're caught smuggling a gun in, you won't do it again.
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We need strong laws that people have to really abide by,
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and we enforce to put them behind bars for a long, long time
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well and i leave that question to our audience as well if you'd like to leave a comment
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below let us know what you think on it but yeah i i i unfortunately farmers i think yeah go ahead
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brady no no i don't want to be in a position where i see us all carrying guns i think i agree with
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mike i don't know if that's where we want to be as canadians but it sounds like we're getting
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closer to the point where we might have to but the economic reality a lot of people in in rural
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canada in the far north and small towns across the country as you mentioned brady deer season
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moose season elk season is an important part of the survival of their family both for food and
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for the economy they simply can't afford to go to their local superstore sobeys and buy all their
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meat there because it's too expensive and then being a responsible hunter a conservationist and
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a gun owner and getting that meat and filling their freezer has been something they've been
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doing for generations and anybody who's never been to northern ontario or northern parts of canada
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it doesn't matter what province you're in yeah try and take something to the dump without a gun
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oh no try and take something to the dump must avoid the bears eventually one of those guys
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is going to get you now mind you dump bears are usually dumb they're they're living off
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the garbage so they're not usually as aggressive as a bear out the forest i don't think we want
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to label bears do we you know what i mean you know what i mean like it's like yeah there's
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There's portions of this country where you kind of need a firearm, guys.
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As a matter of fact, I had a family member who was doing a geological research project
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in northern Saskatchewan, like past the cell phone line.
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They had no cell service near the border of the Yukon.
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And they had a couple individuals around their camp because they were looking to see it's
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just a good place for uranium or rare earth minerals because of the wolf packs up there.
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and they had to have it to protect them because the wolf packs will come in and grab food or grab
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you don't follow you home if you're walking around in the middle of the night you know i hate to say
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it this way but this could be a double bang solution we could have a double barrel solution
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here jim if we armed up as a nation and created our own industry of building firearms we could
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put Canadians back to work. We could arm them. It takes a lot of experience and practice to use
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a gun properly and hit what you're aiming at. And I don't trust the average Canadian with a gun in
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their hand to hit what they're aiming at and not hit someone they're not supposed to. I want the
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military to have guns, the police to have guns. If you're a responsible gun owner, go and practice
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so you know how to use it properly but you know you see these stories about someone who has in
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the states they have a a small a handgun in the console of their car um shoot the chihuahua by
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accident yeah well yeah right i mean no you're all joking aside uh kids get shot by accident
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innocent people get hit but the ball doesn't know where it's going it's not going to turn
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away when it realizes it's it's an innocent person my father used to label three days of
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the week was wednesdays ski thursdays indoor range sundays rifle range obviously oh yeah yeah
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and an experienced responsible gun owner who knew what they were doing it's like it's like anything
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i mean you're just going to say i'm going to grab a fishing rod i haven't touched it in 10 years
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i didn't catch anything you think you know experienced anglers do it on a regular basis
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or whatever it is right okay guys well listen i think that we've offered some solutions
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none of them great but at least we understand better where we're at
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then frankly the gun buyback program look at we have to have been we have a great audience i can
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only imagine that they're going to let us know if it's a bad idea or a good idea maybe not
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we'll be behind it like it or repost it and i know from you gentlemen both know we all know
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police officers the frontline police officer who are out there every day and the stress level they
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deal with because the amount of illegal guns that are on the street smuggled from the states that
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they're dealing with every day and their life is in danger every day because of it i can guarantee
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you they want a solution as much as anyone else living in in any city in this country 100 guns
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on the street changes policing entirely we've witnessed it happen in toronto we've seen it
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across the country uh something does need to be done i think we can at least all agree on that
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patriotic means looking out for each other and fixing things together true patriotism is being
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in the country you love surrounded by people you love and great weather being a patriot is being
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a part of your community and caring for it it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from
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patriotism is the one thing we all share it's okay to be critical of government
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and still be a patriot it's gratitude to your country of course i'm a patriot i'm
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Well, actually, true patriot love is the mission.