On May 1st, 2020 the Government of Canada announced[1] a sweeping ban of over 1500 firearms and accessories,[2] including the “[u]pper receivers of M16, AR-10, AR-15 and M4 pattern firearms.”[3] This is not particularly surprising given that firearms restrictions are much easier to enact in Canada than in the United States: Our northern neighbor has no equivalent to our Second Amendment in their Charter of Rights and Freedoms.[4] Canadian gun culture is less robust than ours in the United States; concealed carry for ordinary citizens is non-existent and Canadians are more disapproving of firearms ownership for personal self-defense than are Americans. Yet despite this favorable environment, Canadian gun control advocates cannot resist resorting to the same deceptive tactics that their American counterparts employ.
As in our own country, Canadian gun control advocacy starts with dissembling about motive. One notable dissembler is none other than Justin Trudeau himself, Prime Minister of Canada. In the years before he become Prime Minister in 2015, Trudeau poo-pooed fears of mass gun confiscation. In a 2011 newspaper interview, he sought to reassure gun owners that no one was going to take their guns. Describing himself as familiar with guns and licensed to own long guns and restricted firearms including hand guns, Trudeau assured readers that “I was raised around guns, raised shooting … it’s something that is part of my life.”[5] Referring to Canada’s now defunct long gun registry, Trudeau dismissed concerns about mass gun confiscations, accusing conservatives of “promot[ing] fears among gun owners that the registry records might someday help a government of another stripe confiscate hunting rifles and shotguns,” arguing that
“[t]here’s no question that this is a very, very ideological exercise … Listen, I’m a gun owner and the fact is that the underpinning of the entire message of the Conservatives is ‘Once we know where the guns are, they’re going to come and take your guns away,’ which is not at all part of the Canadian psyche or possibility … I mean I’m okay with a handgun, quite good with a rifle, but best with a shotgun, things like clay pigeons. It’s something, for me, that is Canadian. I just don’t think there is cause for tremendous fear or angst about this, and it certainly is no cause to create divisions between Canadians” (emphasis added).
Despite these soothing reassurances, nine years later Prime Minister Trudeau issued an Order in Council banning 1,500 specific firearms[6] – the very action that he declared not “part of the Canadian psyche or [a] possibility.” Defending the ban, Trudeau asserted that “[y]ou don't need an AR-15 to bring down a deer.”[7] Despite this, Trudeau’s Justice Minister David Lametti stated on the same day that “[t]here will be an exception for Indigenous people’s exercising a section 35 hunting right, as well as those who use the weapon for hunting to feed themselves or their family … They may continue using firearms that were previously non-restricted for these purposes until a suitable replacement can be acquired”[8] (Lametti was referring to Section 35 of Canada’s Constitution Act which “recognizes and affirms Aboriginal rights”).[9] Lametti’s statement revealed that Trudeau deployed two time-honored gun control tactics in support of this ban: dividing people into good versus bad gun owners (in this case, “good” hunters, versus “bad” assault weapons owners), and mischaracterizing the purpose and utility of the guns being banned by denying the AR-15 is widely used in sporting pursuits including target shooting, competitive shooting, and increasingly as hunting weapons, as Lametti’s announced exception for indigenous peoples itself unintentionally confirms.
Another gun control tactic well represented in Canada is obfuscation of facts to exaggerate the danger of firearms. One example of this was highlighted by Rod Giltaca and the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights (CCFR) in their excellent seven-part series on Trudeau’s gun ban produced in 2020.[10] The CCFR highlighted the testimony of Dr. Najma Ahmed before the Canadian Senate in which she cited a study claiming that from 2008 to 2012, one child per day was injured by firearms in Ontario.[11] But as Giltaca points out, this statement grossly distorts the truth in two ways. First, the study included people through the age of 24 years old in its counts.[12] The study author defended this by arguing that “[i]n high income countries, youth (compared with young children and older adults) are the age group at highest risk of injury and most in need of targeted injury prevention strategies [and] [a] considerable number of research programs that explore youth injury and violence typically include those from 10 to 24.”[13] But Dr. Ahmed did not point this out to the members of the Canadian Senate that she was addressing and this nuance would be lost on the general public. Even more disturbing is the fact that 812 of the 1777 injuries reported in their study – nearly 46% -- were caused by BB guns and air guns; and for another 734 injuries or more than 41%, the type of weapon is not specified and could be anything.[14] The study authors justified this by pointing to a provision of Canadian law defining a firearm as “a barreled weapon from which any shot, bullet or other projectile can be discharged and that is capable of causing serious bodily injury or death to a person.”[15] This is a very dubious defense, first because it is a stretch to include BB and air guns among those instruments capable of causing serious injury or death. More importantly, this is another nuance that will lost on the reading public, who will attribute all of these injuries to firearms as understood in the vernacular, which is to say guns firing bullets propelled by an explosion of gunpowder.
Another example of deceptive firearms statistics brought to light by Giltaca and the CCFR comes from the Toronto Police Service. In that instance firearms rights researcher and Royal Canadian Mounted Police veteran Dennis Young filed a public information request with the Toronto police for data on crime guns seized. Of the 833 firearms seized by the Toronto police in 2018, at least 21% were not “firearms” at all – 157 or 19% were air guns, and 16, or 2%, were toy guns. Another 37 “guns”, or 4% of the total, were categorized as “other”, and could be anything. Thus at least 21%, and possibly up to one quarter of the so-called crime “guns” seized in Toronto in 2018 were not actually guns.[16]
While there are individual exceptions, Canadians as a group are far less attached to firearms than are Americans. Where many Americans view privately owned firearms as instruments of personal self-defense and a badge of the peoples’ sovereignty, many Canadians see armed self-defense as vigilantism and would find private ownership of guns as a check on government tyranny to be simply inconceivable. Where many Americans see guns as integral to our national culture, Canadians view them as a dangerous and indulgent nuisance best done away with. Yet even on this favorable terrain, gun control advocates resort to deceptive use of statistics and dishonest representations of the intentions to advance their agenda. If gun control activists in Canada resort to such tactics with all their advantages, how far will their counterparts here in the United States go where they face a strong, vigorous and well-organized gun culture determined to hold on to our rights? The price of liberty is eternal vigilance and perpetual labor.
Dennis P. Chapman, a retired U.S. Army officer, practices law in Virginia. He is the author of The AR-15 Controversy: Semi-Automatic Rifles and the Second Amendment (Third Brigade Press, 2021), available online from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
[1] Regulations Amending the Regulations Prescribing Certain Firearms and Other Weapons, Components and Parts of Weapons, Accessories, Cartridge Magazines, Ammunition and Projectiles as Prohibited, Restricted or Non-Restricted: SOR/2020-96. Canada Gazette, Part II, Volume 154, Extra Number 3, May 1, 2020.
[2] Pierangelo Tendas, “Canada bans Modern Sporting Rifles by Order in Council.” Gunsweek, May 4th, 2020. https://www.gunsweek.com/en/current/articles/canada-bans-modern-sporting-rifles-order-council. Retrieved January 23rd, 2022.
[3] “What you need to know about the Government of Canada’s new prohibition on certain firearms and devices.” Royal Canadian Mounted Police, December 21st, 2021. https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/firearms/need-know-the-government-canadas-new-prohibition-certain-firearms-and-devices/. Retrieved January 23rd, 2022.
[4] See
http://www.charter.ofrightsandfreedoms.ca/
. Retrieved January 29th, 2022.
[5] Dennis Young. “Trudeau’s Firearms Quotes From a 2011 Hill Times Report,” https://dennisryoung.ca/2020/10/11/trudeaus-firearms-quotes-from-a-2011-hill-times-report/, quoting Tim Naumetz, The Hill Times, November 1, 2011. Retrieved January 29th, 2022.
[6] Regulations Amending the Regulations Prescribing Certain Firearms and Other Weapons, Components and Parts of Weapons, Accessories, Cartridge Magazines, Ammunition and Projectiles as Prohibited, Restricted or Non-Restricted: SOR/2020-96. Canada Gazette, Part II, Volume 154, Extra Number 3, May 1, 2020. See also Pierangelo Tendas, “Canada bans Modern Sporting Rifles by Order in Council.” Gunsweek, May 4th, 2020. https://www.gunsweek.com/en/current/articles/canada-bans-modern-sporting-rifles-order-council. Retrieved January 23rd, 2022; “What you need to know about the Government of Canada’s new prohibition on certain firearms and devices;” and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, December 21st, 2021. https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/firearms/need-know-the-government-canadas-new-prohibition-certain-firearms-and-devices/. Retrieved January 23rd, 2022.
[7] “Trudeau: ‘You don't need an AR-15 to bring down a deer.’” BBC News, May 1st, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-52510137. Retrieved January 23rd, 2021.
[8] Todd Lamirande. “Indigenous hunters excluded from Ottawa’s assault weapons ban under Section 35.” APTN National News, May 01, 2020. https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/indigenous-hunters-excluded-from-ottawas-assault-weapons-ban-under-section-35/. Retrieved January 23rd, 2022.
[9] “Constitution Act, 1982 Section 35.” https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/constitution_act_1982_section_35/. Retrieved January 23rd, 2022.
[10] Links to each of the videos are here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoxuhdrwHS2Z-UseJpLJ4UiT7SqODgI3A. Retrieved January 29th, 2022.
[11] Rod Giltaca. “Gun Ban Canada - Exposed; Episode 3/7 - Do More Guns Equal More Death?” at 4:22 (Dr. Najma Ahmed citing Natasha R. Saunders, Hannah Lee, Alison Macpherson, Jun Guan and Astrid Guttmann, “Risk of Firearm Injuries Among Children and Youth of Immigrant Families,” CMAJ March 27, 2017 189 (12) E452-E458.
. Retrieved January 22nd, 2022.
[12] Giltaca at 5:11.
[13] Dr. Natasha Saunders and Dr. Astrid Guttmann, reply comment on study, https://www.cmaj.ca/content/189/12/E452/tab-e-letters#questions-on-analysis. Retrieved January 29th, 2022.
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] Rod Giltaca. “Gun Ban Canada - Exposed; Episode 2/7 - Where Do Crime Guns Come From?”
. Retrieved January 29th, 2022.
Gun Control Disinformation in the Great White North