As The U.S. Debates Gun Laws, So Too Does Canada

[steve from amherst]

While the U.S. continues to debate what, if any, federal firearms restrictions to enact in the wake of last month's deadly mass shooting at a Florida high school, Canada is introducing new gun laws of its own, even as opponents there have vowed to fight those changes.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal party government has proposed what it bills as "common sense gun laws," including tougher background checks and more thorough screening of people with a history of violence.

Proponents say the goal is to help authorities investigating a growing problem of gun trafficking blamed on a flow of illegal firearms across the country's southern border. Although Canada's rates of gun violence pale compared to the U.S., they have spiked in recent years, particularly in Toronto, along with trafficking by criminal gangs.

The Toronto Star reports that the new law "would require deeper lifetime background checks (beyond the five-year checks currently required) of would-be gun owners but doesn't set out new bars to gun ownership."

It would give the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – and not the Cabinet — final say on firearms classifications. Further, it "restores old rules requiring commercial gun vendors to track sales; creates a new legal obligation on all individual sellers of guns to verify with the Canadian Firearms Program that a would-be buyer holds a valid [license]; and would put tougher restrictions on how restricted firearms may be transported," the Star says.

 

"What's the point of having a license if no one ever checks it out?" Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale was quoted by The Ottawa Citizen as saying. "The process for doing so will be efficient and straightforward."

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/21/595480759/as-the-u-s-debates-gun-laws-so-too-does-canada