Ottawa, May 30: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has introduced a bill to impose national freeze on handgun ownership across the country.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Trudeau said, “What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada. In other words we’re capping the market.”
He further said that the new anti-gun legislation will allow fines to be imposed on fine gun smuggling and trafficking besides “increasing maximum criminal penalties and providing more tools for law enforcement to investigate firearm crimes”.
According to CNN, the new legislation would also require that long gun magazines “can never” hold more than five rounds.
The PM said, “Gun violence is a complex problem, but at the end of the day the math is really quite simple: The fewer the guns in our communities, the safer everyone will be.
“We don’t need assault style weapons that were designed to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time.”
The announcement comes in the wake of two recent shootings in the US — a teen shot dead 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas and racist shooting in New York’s Buffalo that killed 10 people.
Ending gun violence had been a part of Trudeau’s campaign in the 2019 election and the next year his government banned over 1,500 types of military-style assault weapons after the country witnessed its deadliest gun rampage that killed 22 people. (UNI)
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