Urban / Rural Divide

Canadians have become accustomed to heated debates over gun control. However, unbeknownst to most, the question of whether the state should allow citizens to freely possess and use arms has a long history. Economic trends, cultural attitudes, labour strife, civil unrest, firearm technology, constitutional thought, and foreign threats all shaped the extent to which firearms were used and regulated in Canada.

The desire to suppress gun ownership and use by specific minority groups intensified with the onset of the Great War in 1914. During the conflict, Canada sought to control firearms owned by “enemy aliens.” In the immediate aftermath of WW1, fear of Bolsheviks led Ottawa to enact a gun-licensing program. Leaders’ worries about the potential dangers of armed, desperate men during the Depression and during the Second World War resulted in further legislation.

Canada’s most infamous mass-shooting – the 1989 murder of fourteen female students at the École Polytechnique in Montreal – provided the impetus for additional gun control legislation. The political response to the “Montreal Massacre” culminated in the passage of the 1995 Firearms Act, which, among other measures, created a wasteful registry of all firearms.

In the 2006 federal election, the governing Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin defended the long-gun registry and proposed a handgun ban. The financial legacy of the registry shaped public opinion and a negative response to Martin’s handgun ban. The Winnipeg Free Press criticized the plan, reminding readers that the Firearms Act “proved expensive for all taxpayers – more than $1 billion spent on it with no discernible benefit.” The plan did not survive the election, as the Liberals fell from power for the first time since 1993. This taught the Liberals to never allow gun control become an election issue and (in my opinion) is why these bans were effected using an Order in Council (OIC) through a change of regulation.

Throughout the years all of these laws have stacked on top of one another crushing the people it has been applied to. Now in 2023 the Liberals have gun control Bill C-21 which again takes the property of citizens, punishes those who have done no wrong and ignores the impacts to society by criminals and repeat offenders.

Canada already has one of the world’s most aggressive regulatory firearm frameworks. Liberals / NDP / Bloc / Greens continue to advance the narrative that the property of gun owners must be taken (Bill C-21) even though they aren't the problem.

Canada is essentially run by a handful of city states that house most of the voters. Something to the order of 50% of the country’s population lives in that tiny triangle that dips below the 49th parallel. If Trudeau can keep them in a state of fear by turning a blind eye to gangs and criminal networks then he will eventually succeed with his gun control agenda.

It is these voters that Trudeau speaks of when he says “Canadians”, the rest of us are misguide troglodytes living out in the colonies that need to be brought into line and properly harnessed in order to create the utopian vision of the future that “proper” Canadians are entitled to.

Riflechair.com