Gun-control advocates in Canada fear Conservatives will loosen rules

As debate over stricter gun control ratchets up in the U.S. in the wake of last week’s mass shooting in Connecticut, there is fear among gun-control advocates in Canada that the Conservative government is moving to further loosen some of this country’s gun rules.

While Prime Minister Harper earlier this month threw cold water on a government committee’s suggestion of reclassifying “prohibited” weapons as “restricted” ones, the government appears to be open to some of the committee’s other recommendations, including extending the life of firearms licences from five years to 10 years or longer.

“We may consider common-sense changes to ensure that law-abiding firearms owners are not treated like criminals,” Julie Carmichael, a spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, said in an email Monday. She stressed, however, that there will always be licensing requirements.

Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, said in an interview that Canada is the only industrialized country outside of the U.S. that has relaxed its gun control laws in recent years.

“Most countries are strengthening their gun laws,” she said.

U.S. President Barack Obama is facing pressure to tighten gun controls following a shooting rampage last Friday at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that left 27 people dead, including 20 children.

In a vigil for the victims Sunday night, Obama strongly hinted at the need for tighter regulations, saying that “these tragedies must end.”

“What choice do we have?” he said. “Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?”

Here in Canada, critics say the federal government has moved in the opposite direction with the repeal of the long-gun registry.

This fall, the public safety minister also announced the repeal of gun show regulations that were supposed to come into force in November. Toews said the storage and display of firearms at these events was already covered under existing regulations.

Documents obtained recently by the Coalition for Gun Control through access to information legislation showed the government’s firearms advisory committee sent Toews a lengthy list of other proposed gun control reforms earlier this year, including a recommendation that certain “prohibited” firearms be reclassified as “restricted.”

The prime minister quickly responded by saying that the government had “no intention” of weakening the “prohibited” firearms category.

But the government seems to be open to some of the committee’s other recommendations, including one that would extend the duration of firearm owners’ licences to “no less” than 10 years.

That proposal concerns Mounties, according to the government documents. RCMP officials are concerned that extending the duration of licences could “limit their ability to monitor, on a timely basis, any changes to an individual’s mental health status.”

But Carmichael, the minister’s spokeswoman, said Monday “public safety is foremost in our minds.” She noted that the government has “taken tough action to crack down on gun crime, and Canada has seen a 30 per cent decline in the rate of handgun homicides since 2008.”

Further, all individuals with a firearms licence are regularly “checked against police databases to determine whether they have been involved in any illegal or high-risk incidents,” she said.

Cukier isn’t buying the government’s messaging.

“We’re terribly concerned about the erosion of licensing, about the fallout from the elimination of the (long-gun) registry,” she said.

Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Douglas Quan