This is a temporary prohibition, applied from August 19, pending the entry into force of the “national frost possession of handguns” announced by Justin Trudeau at the end of May.
Le Monde with AFP
The Canadian government announced, Friday, August 5, that it would prohibit the importation of handguns in an attempt to stop violence by firearms in the country. It is a “temporary ban” applied from August 19 to individuals and businesses, “until the entry into force of national frost”, it is specified in a press release.
The bill could enter into force in the fall. These weapons “have only one goal, kill people,” said the Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino, during a trip to Etobicoke, in the suburbs of Toronto.
The Polyssesouvent group, which represents survivors and families of victims of armed violence, praised an “important and innovative measure which will undoubtedly slow the expansion of the Canadian handgun market pending the adoption of the bill “.
smuggling of weapons from the United States 2>
Despite all the measures put in place by Ottawa to try to reduce armed violence, experts remain skeptical about their effectiveness, pointing to the smuggling of weapons from the United States as the real problem. On Wednesday, the Canada Border Services Agency (ASFC) also announced two important seizures in the west of the country of “ghost firearms”, which have no serial number and are difficult to trace . From 1 er January 2019 to June 30, 2022, the ASFC of the Pacific region seized 581 firearms at the entrance points and in international postal shipments.
This announcement comes a few months after Justin Trudeau unveiled in May a project to “national gel possession of handguns” after recent carnage in the United States, who had killed twenty-one people in a school Texas primary and ten in a New York State supermarket.
Mr. Trudeau’s declaration then pushed Canadians to rush into arms stores which, with the crowds, very quickly elapsed their stocks. According to government estimates, there are more than a million handguns in Canada, for a population of thirty-eight million people.
Some 2,500 stores sell pistols in the country. The measure also occurs in a context of resurgence of crimes related to firearms: this week three homicides were notably committed in the space of 24 hours in the Montreal region.