Exactly one week ago, a teenager walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and proceeded to kill 21 people, including 19 children. Fortunately, one high-powered lawmaker is taking the situation seriously enough to propose a bill that would put a cap on the sale, transfer, and import of all guns into his country. Unfortunately, that person is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who seems to understand the power of taking swift and proactive gun control measures better than any politician in America, the country that actually has the gun problem
On Monday, as CNN reports, Trudeau introduced his new bill, which would help prevent America’s gun problem from spilling over the border of our neighbors to the north.
“What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada,” Trudeau explained during a press conference. “In other words we’re capping the market.”
As The New York Times explained, if passed, the bill would work retroactively—meaning that current owners of what Canada considers ‘military-style assault weapons’ would have to rid their homes of these weapons via a government buyback program.
“Gun violence is a complex problem,” Trudeau explained. “But at the end of the day the math is really quite simple: The fewer guns in our communities, the safer everyone will be.”
According to the BBC, there are currently an estimated 120.5 firearms per every 100 residents in America, which is why you so often hear people say that we have more guns than people. Yemen has the second-highest number of civilian gun owners, but they’ve got less than half of our supply, with approximately 52.8 guns per every 100 people. In Canada, meanwhile, there are approximately 34.7 guns per every 100 citizens.
While gun control has been a major concern of Trudeau’s for several years now, particularly following a 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia that took the lives of 20 people—the deadliest in the country’s history—that is still being investigated as part of a public inquiry that has cost the country more than $25 million. Yet it’s clear that the timing of Trudeau’s bill is in reaction to the recent events in Uvalde and Buffalo, New York.
“As a government, as a society, we have a responsibility to act to prevent more tragedies,” Trudeau said on Monday, noting: “We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action, firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter.”
(Via CNN)