October 29, 2021
By Mark Chesnut
Question: What’s more inefficient than the average big-city gun “buyback” program in the United States?
Answer: Canada’s federal gun “buyback” program.
According to recent reports from Canada, the Canadian federal government has now spent nearly $1.5 million on anti-gun Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s questionable scheme, which hasn’t resulted in a single gun being “bought back” so far!
A recent report from True North explained that the plan was initially supposed to cost taxpayers about $1.1 million. But increases in contracts have burgeoned the cost to closer to $1.5 million, not counting what it will cost to actually “buy back” thousands of firearms, causing many to seek dismantlement of the plan.
“We’re already seeing costs go higher and the government hasn’t bought back a single gun,” Franco Terrazzano, federal director with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), said in a press release. “The gun buyback won’t make Canadians safer, but it has all the makings of another big taxpayer boondoggle.”
An Order-in-Council announced by Trudeau in May of 2020 immediately banned more than 1,500 models of firearms (along with any current or future firearms that could be considered a “variant” of the listed guns) and established a time-limited amnesty that allows the owners to possess the guns until April 30, 2022, without incurring criminal liability. Owners have the choice “either grandfathering or compensation if they surrender the firearm,” with the details “announced later.”
This isn’t the first time the CTF called for Trudeau to drop the expensive scheme. Back in late June, the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) estimated it would take about $756 million to compensate gun owners affected by Trudeau’s ban/buyback.
“Today we learned the gun buyback could cost hundreds of millions more than Canadians have been told and the government still doesn’t know the full costs,” CTF’s Terrazzano told the Morinville News . “This a huge sum of money and the people on the front line say the buyback won’t make Canadians safer.
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needs to reverse course and scrap the ineffective and expensive gun buyback.”
Terrazzano’s lament that those on the “front lines” have said the “buyback” would be ineffective is, indeed, true. The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s National Police Federation (NPF) has said just that.
“The narrative is that we need to restrict gun ownership because that will curtail crime, when really the evidence is that illegal gun trafficking leads to criminals owning guns, which leads to crimes with firearms,” NPF President Brian Sauvé told the National Post last November . “So really, we need to look at the source of the problem.
“Do we take the perspective that criminals will follow the law when it comes to firearms?” he continued. “Or do we look at trying to strengthen the Border Integrity program, the National Weapons Enforcement program, our partnerships with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), and all those areas?”
It’s likely that Trudeau won’t back off the costly scheme and millions more tax-payer dollars will be wasted on the Canadian “buyback” with nothing to show in return. We’ll keep our readers posted as the situation continues to develop.
Freelance writer and editor Mark Chesnut is the owner/editorial director at Red Setter Communications LLC. An avid hunter, shooter and political observer, he has been covering Second Amendment issues and politics on a near-daily basis for more than 20 years.
