Alexander Robak is the
President of Students for Liberty,
a Libertarian advocacy club at Carleton.
Now that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been re-elected in a minority government, lawful gun-owning Canadians can consider their weapons as good as gone.
Prior to the 2019 federal election on Oct. 21, Trudeau promised that if re-elected, he would invest hundreds of millions of dollars to institute a gun buyback program that would see the forced confiscation of up to 250,000 assault-style weapons from thousands of law-abiding Canadian citizens.
Even with a minority government having been elected, it is likely that this will still be pushed forward. The truth is, this systemic confiscation of weapons from Canadians will only make things worse, and won’t decrease gun violence in the least.
The expectation that all owners of assault-style weapons will willingly give up their guns to the federal government for the proposed compensation of a mere $800 is completely absurd.
I can’t speak for the whole of society, but the idea of the general population being unable to defend itself from criminals and the government seems to me something from a dystopian fiction novel.
Does Trudeau’s government really expect people who use these guns to commit violent crimes to see that the government is buying up assault rifles, and will walk into the firearms registry to surrender them? The only people that will willingly give up their weapons to the state are those that are already not using their guns to commit violent crimes.
When you disarm your population of law-abiding gun owners through a buyback, the only people that will still have these supposedly dangerous weapons are criminals and the state.
Criminals do not follow laws. Plain and simple. That’s what makes them criminals. That being said, how can we expect criminals to willingly give up their assault-style weapons to the federal government? The truth is, we can’t.
What do we expect to happen when we disarm our population of law-abiding citizens in the name of “public safety?” The general consensus seems to be that we will be better off as a society if this policy is implemented. However, the opposite is true.
When we allow the general population to be disarmed, we are essentially handing power over to those who are armed: criminals and the state.
I can’t speak for the whole of society, but the idea of the general population being unable to defend itself from criminals and the government seems to me something from a dystopian fiction novel.
No matter how hard you deny the simple logic, we have to collectively realize that disarming law-abiding citizens, while leaving assault-style weapons in the hands of people who use them, is a terrible idea that will cause more harm than good.
It is essential that hard-working Canadians have the ability to defend themselves from gun owners who have no regard for the law at all.
People who use their guns to harm others aren’t going to hand their assault-style weapons over to the government, so why should anyone else?
File photo.
