Canada Gun Ban Case Puts Property Rights To Test - Firearms Group

TORONTO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th October, 2020) A legal challenge to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's gun ban could determine whether the country's citizens have property rights, the head of a firearm rights group told Sputnik.

Earlier this year, the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR) initiated legal proceedings to challenge Trudeau's regulatory ban on 1,500 models and variants of military-grade assault weapons that was introduced in May. Lawful gun owners will have two years to comply with the new regulations under an amnesty clause, the government said.

"We want to know whether Canadians have property rights, actually have the right to truly own anything. And by extension, if the government takes property from people, do they have to justify it at any reasonable level? So that's to me, that's the most important part of this fight," CCFR CEO and Executive Director Rod Giltaca said.

Two separate Supreme Court of Canada judges have previously ruled that firearms possession is a privilege, not a right in Canada.

Giltaca said the ruling will have implications for all Canadians, even his detractors.

"[The case] is highly consequential as not only do you not have a codified right to own firearms in Canada but you have no right to own anything. This usually isn't a problem until you arrive at a time where people applaud the use of government force against each other for political differences. Unfortunately, we are here now. Someone has to take on this fight. It just so happens it's gun owners," Giltaca said.

The ban was less than two weeks after the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history, in which a Nova Scotia gunman went on a rampage killing 22.

Giltaca said he is upset that Trudeau used the Nova Scotia tragedy to embark on an ideologically motivated "gun grab" that leaves lawful owners to face the music for the actions of criminals.

"It was immoral and a clear demonstration of the calculating nature of [Trudeau's] Liberal Party of Canada," Giltaca said, adding that gun owners are not asking for much. They are only asking for "reasonable restrictions" and to be left alone, he added.

The ban is already having a profound impact on the sport shooting industry, Giltaca added. He estimates that the ban has impacted approximately 80 percent of the industry, where two-thirds of events utilize the banned guns.

According to Giltaca, the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association (CSAAA) are conducting a financial impact study in conjunction with the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH). Neither CSAAA nor the OFAH responded to a request for comment.

The CCFR has since filed an injunction seeking an expedited trial process, with growing fears that the case will not make it through the courts before the amnesty clause expires in two years. The next court date has not been set, while affidavits are being filed.

Canada's gun control activists welcomed the regulatory ban, some saying too many people died because of violence. One prominent gun-control activist, Heidi Rathjen, said in an interview that "weapons of war" do not belong in the hands of ordinary people.

Giltaca dismissed these assertions as "propaganda." The CCFR's head says that the semi-automatic rifles in question have been heavily regulated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) - some for over 50 years - and that the regulations also outlaw bolt action rifles and shotguns found on many farms throughout the country.

Canadian gun activists and enthusiasts point out that the ban has done little to curtail rising gun violence in parts of the country.

Weapons including the M16, AR-10, AR-15 rifles and M4 carbine were all designated as prohibited weapons, the government said during a technical briefing following Trudeau's announcement in May. Those found not to be compliant after this time will face charges of unauthorized possession of a firearm, which potentially carries a jail term of up to ten years for a first offense, according to Canada's criminal code.

In Canada's largest city, Toronto, in spite of the coronavirus induced shutdown, gun violence is up nearly 10 percent compared to last year - a year that saw a record-high number of shootings - and there have been 255 shootings since the ban was introduced - a 4.5 percent increase over the same period last year.

A major part of the problem is that a significant proportion of Canadian firearm offenses involve illegally obtained guns, which usually trace back to the United States. In fact, all of the weapons prepared ahead of the 13-hour rampage in the province of Nova Scotia on April 18 were purchased illegally in the United States, according to law enforcement. Despite this, there is little to no data available about the source of seized guns at the national or provincial levels.

"Currently, there is no national repository for this type of information in Canada. The Canadian Firearms Program does not collect or track statistics with regard to the origin of illegal or stolen firearms," the RCMP said in a statement to Sputnik.

According to information obtained by Dennis Young, an independent firearms researcher, through dozens of access-to-information requests, the Ontario Provincial Police also does not maintain a database dedicated to gun tracing.

Data showed that nationally between 2013 and 2017, law enforcement seized 122,214 firearms, of which only 13,548 were legally registered and the percentage of legally owned firearms never exceeded 11 percent in any of the years. The data also showed that firearm seizures declined by 18.6 percent in the five years.

And while national and provincial authorities do not track firearm sourcing, some local jurisdictions, including the Toronto Police Service (TPS), do.

In a statement to Sputnik, TPS spokesperson Connie Osborne said that as of October 2019, Canada's largest municipal police force seized 296 firearms, 222 of which - 75 percent - were traced back to the United States. In 2018, 70 percent of recovered guns were US-sourced, more than double the amount of those traced to back to domestic sources and nearly five times the number of legally owned firearms seized.

As such, the "Trudeau gun grab," as some have described it in the local media, has gun owners up in arms. Last month, over 5,000 gun owners and advocates converged upon Ottawa for one of the largest demonstrations in recent memory in the nation's capital.

Aside from this legal challenge and protests, an e-petition by parliamentarian Michelle Rempel Garner garnered the highest number of signatures in Canadian e-petitions history, although it is unclear whether any legislative proposals will arise from it. Garner did not respond to requests for comment.

The regulatory ban will also cause irreparable damage to multi-billion-dollar industries, the lawsuit alleges. According to the Governor General in Council (GIC), the sport shooting is a near $1.5 billion industry that creates $652.12 million in labor income and supports over 14,000 full-time equivalent jobs. Additionally, according to estimates, there are 1.3 million hunters in Canada, who contributed approximately $3.08 billion to Canada's GDP to $1.5 billion in labor income.