Under pressure: Trudeau defers to police on gun restrictions
OTTAWA — Police, not politicians, should decide what restrictions to place on specific kinds of guns, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday, his Liberal government under renewed pressure to impose an outright ban on military-style semiautomatic rifles.
Trudeau’s comments come after a group of people impacted by last year’s deadly Quebec City mosque shooting — a number of wounded, as well as family members of the six people killed — urged him to outlaw military-style weapons outright.
He touted provisions of his government’s firearms bill, which once passed would restore the authority of RCMP experts to classify firearms without political influence, repealing cabinet’s authority to overrule Mountie determinations.
In a letter Monday to the prime minister, more than 75 people express disappointment the bill does not ban semi-automatic rifles like the one carried by mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette.
Bissonnette began his January 2017 assault with a .223-calibre Small Arms VZ 58 Sporter rifle, which is legal, along with two illegal 30-cartridge magazines.
The rifle jammed on the first shot, and Bissonnette then used a handgun, but the letter asks how much worse the carnage could have been had Bissonnette’s rifle worked.
“What kind of society allows a single individual to have so much destructive, lethal power at their disposal?” the letter says.
Firearms in Canada are classified as either nonrestricted (such as ordinary hunting rifles and shotguns), restricted (handguns, certain rifles) or prohibited (certain handguns, fully automatic firearms and sawed-off rifles).
Restricted and prohibited firearms must be registered and entail additional safety training. In addition, their use is limited to people such as target shooters and collectors.
The RCMP’s firearms program determines the technical classification of a gun according to criteria in the Criminal Code.
As such, the Mounties are limited to interpreting definitions established by the government, says the group PolySeSouvient, which includes graduates and students of Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique, where 14 women were gunned down in 1989.
In a brief to a House of Commons committee studying the bill, the group says the current Criminal Code definitions allow some “assault weapons” to be legal.
“Unfortunately, this system results in classifications that are not consistent with the risks of many weapons,” the brief says.
“Indeed, despite the general objective of banning assault weapons of both 1991 and 1995 legislative reforms, weapons designed for military purposes have become more accessible.”