“It’s really not going to be effective,”
That’s from K.K.S. Tactical Supplies co-owner Cassy Premack who believes the federal buyback program on prohibited weapons won’t have an impact on gun violence.
Premack stands with the Alberta and Saskatchewan governments, who both announced last week they will not be funding the initiative.
“I agree with Alberta and Saskatchewan completely. There is no reason to use provincial funds for a federal confiscation program when it’s going to do nothing to impact the safety of Canadians or violent crime involving firearms.”
“It’s really not going to be effective when you are asking Canadians to voluntarily give up their property without any reasoning behind it.”
Premack would like to see BC follow suit, but does not think that is likely due to the strong voter base in the Lower Mainland.
“Most of our BC politics are the same where we have a voting mass in the Lower Mainland who’s values and interests are typically different than the rest of the province. When we saw the push in the federal government for handguns to be banned and allowing municipalities to ban them, we saw a lot of support from the Lower Mainland mayors.”
She added the last two years have been devastating to their business due to the accelerated legislation by Ottawa.
“We have been attacked viciously quite honestly by our federal government. Not only would this be awful if it weren’t through the pandemic as well but many of these legislations and proposed legislations came through right in the midst of COVID-19 and the impacts on business.”
“Honestly, from the military assault-style weapons ban of May 1st, 2020 all through the proposed changes with Bill C-21 and if C-21 pushes forward the way it looks like it will, it will affect more than just the firearms. It will impact the magazines, the air soft portions of our business, it’s crippling.”
“For us as firearms business owners, it’s been devastating not only financially but morally as well. We don’t know what’s going to come next, we don’t know day-to-day what’s going to be banned or not banned. We just went through the handgun ban and now we are effectively not going to be able to sell handguns going forward because there are no more coming into the distributors. We can continue to sell the used ones but that means people being willing to sell their used ones and really that is a very small part of my business.”
In May, Sheldon Clare, who is the past president of the Canadian National Firearms Association stated Ottawa has taken the hot topic of firearms and made it into a political football.
“What they have really done is declare war on Canadian firearms owners. Innocent people who own millions or billions of dollars worth of property and basically made an attack on a very lucrative industry.”
“They (Ottawa) is going to be putting businesses out of work, they are going to be stopping sports competitions and the ending of transferring handguns means inheritance and expensive collections will be worthless. They are making a lot of these decisions by order and council.”
In July, the Trudeau government announced that gun owners could receive over 13 hundred dollars for turning in an AR-15.
In addition, Ottawa banned 1,500 firearms and their variants in May 2020.
Something going on in the Prince George area you think people should know about?
Send us a news tip by emailing [email protected].
