Canada’s long-promised gun “buyback” is already collapsing under the weight of its own bad assumptions, and the early numbers make that painfully obvious.
After years of buildup, bureaucracy, and political chest-thumping, the federal government’s test run managed to recover 25 firearms out of an expected 200. That’s not a hiccup. That’s a face-plant. And it perfectly illustrates why this entire program was doomed from the start.
According to Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), this so-called buyback is nothing more than compensated confiscation. The government didn’t own these firearms. It didn’t manufacture them. It didn’t sell them. Yet it now demands lawful owners surrender them or face criminal penalties because a bureaucrat slapped an “assault-style” label on more than 2,500 models.
Calling that a “buyback” isn’t just misleading. It’s dishonest.
CBC’s reporting confirms what gun owners have been saying all along. The program only targets legally owned, registered firearms. Not smuggled guns, not gang weapons, not black-market pistols driving violent crime in Montreal or Toronto.
In fact, the CBC report openly acknowledges the central flaw: to believe this program improves public safety, you’d have to believe licensed Canadian gun owners are responsible for rising gang violence.
They’re not.
Even worse, enforcement appears optional in practice. A leaked recording caught the federal minister responsible admitting municipal police don’t have the resources to enforce the program. And that it was pushed largely to appease Quebec voters. That’s not public safety policy. That’s political theater.
And the logistics? A nightmare. Provinces are refusing to participate. Police agencies don’t want the job. The Nova Scotia pilot already failed. Yet Ottawa insists everything just needs “clarification,” as if Canadians didn’t understand the instructions well enough to surrender property they lawfully own.
Gun control advocates argue the goal isn’t stopping all crime. It’s preventing mass shootings. But even by that narrow metric, the policy makes no sense. Confiscating hunting rifles and competition firearms while illegal guns continue flowing across borders doesn’t reduce risk. It just punishes compliance.
The real message here isn’t subtle. Law-abiding gun owners saw the program for what it was and refused to play along. Twenty-five guns turned in wasn’t apathy. It was rejection.
Canada’s buyback isn’t failing because it hasn’t been explained well enough. It’s failing because it targets the wrong people, ignores real crime drivers, and treats a fundamental right like a government-issued privilege that can be bought back at a discount.
And that’s not a “step in the right direction.” It’s an expensive, embarrassing dead end.
We’ve covered for some time the so-called “safe storage” ordinance passed by Savannah city leaders and the resulting lawsuit challenging the ordinance on Second Amendment grounds.
Now, lawmakers in the Peach State have voted to put an end to the whole mess.
First, however, some background. Savannah passed an ordinance in April 2024 that requires firearms to be “securely stored” when left in cars and establishes a maximum penalty of $1,000 in fines and 30 days in jail for people who leave them inside unlocked vehicles. It also mandates that those who have had a firearm stolen report the theft to the Savannah Police Department within 24 hours.
Gun-rights organizations and pro-gun lawmakers believe the ordinance violates Georgia’s firearms preemption law. And a subsequent lawsuit argued just that.
More recently, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr jumped into the fray, saying that the ordinance simply doesn’t meet court muster.
“This misguided attempt to punish law-abiding Georgians does absolutely nothing to address crime, and it won’t hold up in Court,” Carr said in a press release announcing that he had filed a brief with the Superior Court of Chatham County in support of the plaintiffs in a case challenging the law.
“No matter how much the Mayor disagrees with our laws, he cannot openly infringe on the Second Amendment rights of our citizens. Progressive politics aren’t a defense for government overreach.”
Before the trial could start, the state Senate on January 13 voted along party lines to ban cities from requiring gun owners to lock up their guns in cars, the first bill approved in this year’s legislative session.
The legislation was approved in the Senate by a 32-21 vote. The state House had passed the measure last April 4, and it now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp for his consideration.
The controversy centers on whether the city ordinance violates the state’s strong firearms preemption laws. Sponsors and supporters of the measure in both the House and Senate say it does.
And indeed, a general reading of the law suggests it runs afoul of the language. That law states: “No county or municipal corporation, by zoning, by ordinance or resolution, or by any other means, nor any agency, board, department, commission, political subdivision, school district, or authority of this state, other than the General Assembly, by rule or regulation or by any other means shall regulate in any manner: (A) Gun shows; (B) The possession, ownership, transport, carrying, transfer, sale, purchase, licensing, or registration of firearms or other weapons or components of firearms or other weapons; (C) Firearms dealers or dealers of other weapons; or (D) Dealers in components of firearms or other weapons.”
One supporter, state Sen. Colton Moore, stated that the bill would safeguard gun owners’ rights.
“You can travel the state freely knowing you’re not going to be a victim of a crime and then be made a criminal as we’ve seen in Savannah,” Moore said during the Senate debate on the bill. “We’re putting freedom back into the hands of the citizenry.”
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