Following are excerpts are from a speech by federal ustice minister Allan Rock defending his gun-control bill.
… Bill C-68 is about the kind of country we want to live in. It’s about the kind of society we want for ourselves and our families. It’s establishing that our way of life, our values, are for the majority of Canadians to determine and that they will not be dictated by the gun lobby. …
Let’s make it completely crystal clear that there’s no room for an American-style gun lobby in this country. …
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There are wild statements about confiscation of hunting rifles, of $100 per firearm to register, of the complexity of the system that hunters and others will have to tolerate. But we start from the proposition that we live in a society in which all manner of activities of business, of property, are registered or regulated or licensed and why not firearms? …
Criminals, those who are engaged in street crime, obtain their firearms on the underground market and that’s fed by two sources of supply – guns that are smuggled and guns that are stolen from law-abiding Canadians. Registration is intended to help choke off those sources …. Compare the advantages of the registration system to the minimal inconvenience of a program that will be phased in over time, that will cost nothing or a nominal amount in the initial years … firearms owners will only have to fill out a form that they’ll pick up at the Post Office and mail in. Those who are simply registering firearms they already own will not have to take a course.
