The final numbers are in, and Canada’s gun “buyback” is officially a bust. The Liberals were predicting they’d collect about 136,000 now-banned firearms in their compensated confiscation scheme, but according to Public Safety Canada gun owners expressed interest in handing over just 67,000 guns.
Not every gun has been collected, by the way. The Liberal government imposed a March 31 deadline for gun owners to inform the government that they were willing to part with their firearms in exchange for some cash, but they don’t actually have to hand them over quite yet.
Beginning this month, officials will assess declarations submitted by firearms owners, the department said. The program will provide instructions to participants on how to finalize their claims and permanently deactivate their firearms, or to make an appointment to turn them in.
The collection and compensation processes are expected to run from spring through early fall, Public Safety said.
Collection will be undertaken by the RCMP, local police or secure mobile collection units, with details to be provided to individual owners for their specific area.
Most provinces have said they have no plans on helping the feds collect any firearms. I suppose that could make it harder for the RCMP to do the heavy lifting, but with far fewer firearms to collect than the gun grabbers up north thought there would be, maybe they can do the job without too many issues.
The amnesty period for gun owners to de-activate or turn in their banned firearms runs through October 30. After that, possession of these arms will be a criminal offense. If the Liberals are serious about enforcing the law, they better start building more prisons. There are only about 14,000 Canadians in federal custody at the moment, and that number is likely to be dwarfed by the tens of thousands of gun owners who, to date, have not demonstrated any interest in complying.
It should be noted, though, that even some gun owners who are willing to turn in banned firearms have been stymied by bureaucratic failures on the part of the Liberal government.
David Hicks has been trying to get rid of his father’s rifle — but hasn’t had much luck telling the federal government that.
“It’s very frustrating,” said the Ottawa man. “If they’re going to do it, they need to do it properly.”
Executor of his father’s estate, Hicks has been trying to declare the semi-automatic firearm he inherited with the Liberal government’s banned gun compensation program. He wants to be in compliance with the law — and get some money for his widowed mother.
Hicks said he called when the program first opened in January — and followed up multiple times in the two months since with little response. He said he was initially told that as an executor for an estate he had to go through a different process and would be contacted within 10 business days — which came and went.
“Eventually someone did contact me and said that they would send me some paperwork to fill in to presumably register for the program. That was over a month ago. Nothing arrived,” Hicks said.
As he waited, he watched the deadline to declare go by. Owners of any of the 2,500 banned makes and models had until March 31 to sign up if they want to be compensated.
“It just seems preposterous that they set up the program, they want to take these things off the streets. And here I am willing, able, wanting to participate,” he said.
Oh, he can still participate. In fact, if he doesn’t, he could face criminal charges. He just won’t get any money for his late father’s gun thanks to the inept government workers implementing the round-up.
I suspect, though, that Hicks is the exception and not the rule when it comes to the lack of participation in the “buyback” process, which even the gun control lobby has been forced to acknowledge.
Gun control advocacy group PolySeSouvient, which pushed for a comprehensive buyback, recently blamed “weak political leadership” for what it called “poor participation” in the federal compensation program.
On Wednesday, PolySeSouvient said in a media statement the number of owners who signed up for the program by the deadline was “disappointing,” though far from catastrophic.
“This is arguably a ‘half-empty, half-full’ situation with respect to the buyback program,” the group said. “Despite pervasive disinformation and daily pleas to refuse to participate from the gun lobby, about half of the estimated number of affected firearms have been registered by their owners.”
I don’t know about you, but when I was in school, getting a 50% grade was an “F”. The gun banners can try to put their positive spin on the abysmal numbers, but it doesn’t change the fact that the feds didn’t even come close to their goal… which many believe already woefully underestimated the number of banned firearms in the country. Saskatchewan Firearms Commissioner Blaine Beaven, for instance, believes the real number is somewhere between one and two million guns.
Canada’s Supreme Court has said it will hear a challenge to the gun ban and “buyback,” so maybe the Liberals will be spared from having to enforce a broadly unpopular law before the amnesty period ends in October. If not, then Canada is likely looking at its own version of Prohibition starting this fall… and we all know how well that turned out for the United States a century ago.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact Canadian-style gun control and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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