Trudeau Imposes Handgun Import Ban Without Waiting for Parliamentary Approval

A ban on importing handguns to Canada passed by the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau without a parliamentary vote came into effect on Friday as part of a broader crackdown on gun rights.

The Trudeau government announced that imports of handguns to Canada would be halted earlier this month, with Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino stating that the current ban is temporary until a permanent ban can be passed in the Canadian parliament.

On Friday the import ban came into effect, ostensibly to limit the number of handguns coming into Canada, the CBC reports.

According to the Canadian government, handguns were the most frequent type of firearm used in shootings between 2009 and 2020, and between 2010 and 2020 the number of registered legal firearms increased by 71 per cent.

For Minister Mendicino, the two figures are related. In an interview, he stated, “The total universe of handguns has exploded,” adding: “And at the same time, we’ve seen handgun violence go through the roof. That is not a coincidence — there is a correlation between those two trends.”

The government put less emphasis on the number of shootings where the firearm used was held illegally rather than legally, however.

Raquel Dancho of the Canadian Conservative Party, who serves as public safety critic, stressed that the move to ban the import of legal handguns would go after the general law-abiding public rather than tackle the illegal smuggling of guns.

Gun smuggling remains a major issue in Canada, and earlier this month police in the York region in Ontario arrested 22 individuals accused of smuggling drugs and handguns across the U.S.-Canada border.

Police seized a total of 27 handguns and over a million dollars worth of heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, and Xanax.

It remains unclear how many handguns have been smuggled into Canada and a government memo from last November which was released in January suggested the government also has no accurate figures regarding gun smuggling.

The memo, which came from Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s department, did state that from April to the end of September of last year the government seized a total of 692 firearms at the border.

Canadian Border Services, however, claimed 1,122 firearms were seized last year.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.