Assault-style weapon ban is like Swiss cheese

When the Trudeau government moved to ban 1,500 types of military-style firearms, all the usual suspects were quick to express their outrage.

The federal Conservatives, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and gun lobbyists were quick to condemn the move as an assault on legal gun owners.

The response is not surprising, but the legislation itself is much ado about not much. Yes, this means the kind of weapon used by the mass murderer of 14 women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989 will be illegal. These weapons are expressly designed to kill the maximum number of people in the shortest time. There is no legitimate reason for civilian Canadians to need one.

But assault weapons are not the most common guns in crime. That dishonour falls to handguns. And there are enough loopholes that this legislation could fairly be called the Swiss cheese of gun bans.

First, there is a two-year grace period that will allow the government to figure out details of a buyback program. In the meantime, owners can keep them but not use them. The government also plans grandfathering legislation, so those who currently own assault-style weapons will be allowed to keep them. As gun bans go, this one is pretty friendly.

How much will it really help? At least some of he killings in the recent Nova Scotia murder spree — Canada’s largest mass shooting — were carried out with handguns. And the majority gun crimes reported to police involve handguns. In many cases, those handguns are illegal, and many arrive illegally from the United States. This legislation doesn’t address that at all, although Trudeau says he intends to move forward with handgun bans at the discretion of cities where provincial and local governments support such a ban.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that in provinces like Ontario, the Ford government would never agree to a handgun ban, even in cities like Toronto where the local government has advocated for one.

But the jurisdiction-specific ban option gives the Trudeau government a way to move forward and avoid large scale conflict with governments like Ford’s and Jason Kenney’s in Alberta. So there will be no handgun ban in Ontario any time soon.

According to opinion polls, the majority of Canadians favour the assault-style weapon ban. In fact, 45 per cent of legal gun owners were found to be supportive. Further, a recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute showed four in five Canadians support a complete ban on civilians possessing the types of weapons used in the Nova Scotia massacre.

Bottom line? The assault weapon ban is fine, as far as it goes. But since a real handgun ban is unlikely, to what extent can Canadians feel safer?

Here’s a suggestion that could actually move that needle. Reinforce the border. In Ontario, the majority of illegal guns come from the United States. That’s part of the reason that Ottawa in 2018 announced $51.5 million in new funding for the Canadian Border Services Agency. But that’s a drop in the bucket.

How about serious new investment in fighting organized gang activity? How about more intelligence sharing with American law enforcement sharing, particularly around gangs? How about new measures like electronic sensors at the border?

These are all big challenges in a trading nation, in which our biggest (and least stable) partner shares the longest unsecured border in the world. Any new measures that impede cross-border movement will be controversial, to say the least.

But we know that stopping more guns at border crossings means fewer illegal guns on the streets of Canadian cities. Isn’t that worth it?