OTTAWA –
A number of civil society organizations, together with ladies’s advocates, are calling on the Liberal authorities to swiftly flesh out firearm laws handed final yr by enacting essential laws and directives.
In December, Parliament authorised a authorities invoice that features new measures to maintain firearms out of the palms of home abusers.
It additionally cements restrictions on handguns, will increase penalties for firearm trafficking and goals to curb do-it-yourself ghost weapons.
An in depth transient endorsed by numerous involved organizations urges the federal government to take the regulatory steps wanted to activate measures aimed toward stemming intimate violence.
“We really consider that a few of these measures are going to make a distinction in protecting ladies secure,” mentioned Suzanne Zaccour, director of authorized affairs for the Nationwide Affiliation of Girls and the Regulation, one of many teams behind the transient despatched to key federal ministers.
“In order that’s why we’re advocating for these vital sections to return into pressure as quickly as doable.”
The transient presses the federal government to problem an order-in-council to make Firearms Act amendments within the invoice associated to home violence take impact, particularly:
— subsection 6.1, which makes a person ineligible to carry a firearms licence if they’re topic to a safety order or have been convicted of an offence involving violence;
— subsection 70.1, which obliges a chief firearms officer who has cheap grounds to suspect {that a} licensee could have engaged in home violence or stalking to revoke the licence inside 24 hours;
— and subsection 70.2, which routinely revokes the licence of a person that turns into topic to a safety order and requires them to ship their weapons to a peace officer inside 24 hours.
The transient additionally calls for brand spanking new regulatory measures to make sure compliance with a beforehand launched requirement for sellers of firearms to confirm the validity of the licence of a possible purchaser.
“There have been many cases the place a person with a revoked or expired licence managed to buy a firearm which they then used in opposition to an intimate accomplice or ex-partner.”
The federal authorities ought to guarantee an training marketing campaign for police, the courts, the general public and girls’s shelters contains up to date data relating to the brand new requirements for intervention to take away entry to firearms because of subsection 70.1, in addition to the expanded definition of home violence within the Firearms Act, the transient provides.
Others who’ve endorsed the suggestions embody gun-control advocates PolySeSouvient, Canadian Docs for Safety from Weapons, the Canadian Federation of College Girls, Ending Violence Affiliation of Canada, Girls’s Shelters Canada, YWCA Canada, Danforth Households for Secure Communities, Federation des femmes du Quebec and Federation des Maisons d’Hebergement pour Femmes au Quebec.
The Public Security Division had no rapid response to questions concerning the transient.
The invoice handed by Parliament additionally features a ban on assault-style firearms that fall below a brand new technical definition. Nonetheless, the definition would not apply to fashions that had been already available on the market when the invoice handed.
Earlier this summer time, PolySeSouvient spokeswoman Nathalie Provost wrote Public Security Minister Dominic LeBlanc, in search of motion on plans for a buyback of firearms banned in 2020 by means of order-in-council, together with the AR-15, prohibition of others that fell by means of the legislative cracks, and stronger laws on large-capacity magazines.
On the time, LeBlanc’s workplace mentioned it was “persevering with to place sturdy measures in place to deal with gun violence.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Sept. 3, 2024.
