Pay more attention to smuggling, less to gun confiscation

Brazen gang shootings are nothing new to BC’s Decrease Mainland, however final Saturday night time’s automated gunfire in a residential White Rock neighbourhood rocked that metropolis to its core.

Worse, it’s simply one among a number of terrifying gang shootings across the Decrease Mainland this month. Video reveals two armed assailants method two automobiles, a black BMW SUV and a white Toyota RAV4 and open hearth. The BMW is seen dashing out of the driveway. It crashes right into a fence throughout the road the place the assailants rain down more gunfire on the car’s occupants.

Miraculously, no person was killed, regardless of “over 100 bullets” fired into the 2 automobiles from point-blank vary.

“This incident seems to be focused and there’s no ongoing danger to public security within the space presently,” stated Const. Chantal Sears.

As anybody acquainted with Canadian gun legal guidelines understands, automated firearms had been banned in 1979. Odd Canadians can not personal or possess them, which ends up in a number of inescapable info (for these keen to face uncomfortable truths.)

First, Justin Trudeau’s vaunted Invoice C-21, which provides larger bureaucratic hoops for licensed firearms house owners, bans their legally-owned weapons and lowers jail sentences for violent criminals who use unlawful weapons in crime, is an abject failure. Computerized weapons such because the one’s utilized in Saturday night time’s tried mass homicide are already unlawful. The one method they will enter Canada is by being smuggled throughout the border.

Cash reveals intention and focus. One billion {dollars} to confiscate legally-owned weapons (according to a 2019 Liberal government memo), but lower than 10% of that to stop unlawful weapons from coming into our nation to stop violent criminals from terrorizing suburban neighbourhoods with unlawful automated weapons.

In 2020, the then-public security minister crowed that, “we invested $86 million (over 5 years) within the CBSA and RCMP to conduct investigations at our border for these gangs and people liable for smuggling weapons.”

The Liberal authorities’s precedence isn’t stopping unlawful weapons on the border. Their focus is on confiscating legally-owned firearms from licensed firearms house owners.

However, that isn’t the way you “hold Canadians secure,” as Justin Trudeau and his revolving door of public security ministers declare.

There may be some excellent news on the gun smuggling entrance, as a result of our police and border providers brokers do the perfect they will with the meagre sources they’re given.

On April 11, 2023, information shops reported that the CBSA and five other police agencies broke a gun smuggling ring in Ontario, seized 173 weapons, and charged 42 folks with a slew of prices.

Then, on February 12, 2024, information shops broke the story of one other main gun smuggling bust, the most important in Ontario’s historical past. A three way partnership between the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and US Homeland Safety Investigations (HSI) seized 274 unlawful weapons.

Our police and border providers brokers do a outstanding job, regardless of being chronically underfunded. Think about what number of unlawful weapons they may confiscate at our border, stopping horrifying incidents such because the one in White Rock final Saturday night time, if Justin Trudeau’s authorities pulled their head out of their collective buttocks, deserted their vendetta in opposition to authorized gun house owners and targeted their hatred (and $1 billion) on defending our border so gun smugglers can’t flood our streets with automated weapons?

Except Trudeau sees the sunshine of reality about his failures up to now, it can take a change in authorities to focus taxpayer {dollars} on the supply of the issue — securing our southern border — one thing Trudeau’s authorities has refused to take action far.

Tony Bernardo is Government Director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association