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The federal gun ban and confiscation scheme has always been a mess, but now it’s messier than ever.
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Ottawa is delaying the enforcement of its gun ban and confiscation by yet another year. At the same time, it’s launching a pilot project to try it out in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Optimism for the test run is low as more and more law enforcement experts are saying the whole project is a waste of money.
Even the minister responsible let slip his doubts about the scheme.
When you get into the details, it’s clear the problem is only going to get worse.
It might be tough to make the pilot project work.
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That’s because police, academics, licensed gun owners and everyday taxpayers know that targeting lawful firearms owners won’t make Canadians safer.
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The government’s been ignoring that expert advice, but it also seems stuck on how to proceed.
Because, like the minister, almost no one thinks the gun ban will work.
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Governments and police forces have limited resources and Alberta, Saskatchewan and the OPP are rightly assessing that they should not be using those limited resources on a program with zero upside.
All the gun ban will do is deprive licensed gun owners of their property, for which they took safety tests and background checks to acquire.
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And it will cost taxpayers a truckload of cash.
After years of Ottawa wasting money and failing to get this program off the ground, this opposition shows why the government needs to throw in the towel on this pointless but increasingly complicated plan.
Sometimes, difficult things are worth doing, but Ottawa’s gun confiscation is becoming more of a Sisyphean task by the minute. All the politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa appear to be unable to push the boulder of this program up the hill to the finish line.
The government is clearly in over its head. The best course of action for Ottawa and taxpayers is to scrap it before any more money is wasted.
Gage Haubrich is the Prairie director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
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