By The Canadian Press

Coalhurst teen launches petition to stop amendments to the Firearms Act

Mar 31, 2018 | 12:13 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB.  – An electronic petition launched by a Coalhurst teen is getting national support, from those calling on the federal government to scrap Bill C-71, which aims to tighten Canadian firearm laws.

The proposed legislation was tabled March 20, introducing measures such as background checks that would encompass a person’s entire life, instead of just the previous five years, and rules that would require retailers to maintain records of all inventories and sales for a 20-year period.

Since the petition was launched by 15-year-old Ryan Slingerland Wednesday morning, March 28, it has collected 20,618 signatures (as of Friday at noon), more than 13,000 of which came in the first 24 hours that it was posted. The province with the most signatures on the petition (again, as of noon Friday) is Ontario (6,571), followed by Alberta (4,286), B.C. (4,067), Quebec (2,197), and Saskatchewan (1,178). As of this posting, all other provinces and territories remained below 1,000 signatures.

As electronic petitions require the sponsorship of a Member of Parliament to be open for public signature, Lethbridge MP Rachael Harder has thrown her support behind it.

“One of the things that I’ve always placed as a priority as a Member of Parliament is youth engagement, and so I have a youth advisory board where I meet with young people on a monthly basis in order to hear their opinion on different things,” Harder told Lethbridge News Now. “So, when Ryan stepped up… I couldn’t help but get really excited and of course come behind him and support him.”

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Harder explained that Slingerland had been shadowing her in Ottawa when the proposed legislation was announced, and that after hearing her and her staff discuss the matter, he decided to start the petition.

As for her specific concerns with the bill, Harder called it a back-door long-gun registry, adding that in her view it was a missed opportunity to address a growing problem in our country.

“There was a chance for the government to put a bill in place that could have tackled organized crime, more gang related activity,” she explained. “This bill doesn’t do that, instead it goes after those who own their guns in a legal manner, and who acquire ammunition in a legal manner, and who will sell their guns in a legal manner. So, it sets up a back-door registry for them and makes life more cumbersome, when it wasn’t really necessary.

“At the end of the day, Canadians who want to own a gun or acquire ammunition or acquire a new firearm, they have to show their licence, they have to show that they’re responsible. They’ve gone through an entire process of training and background checks. We have those things in place,” Harder added.

The petition will remain open to signatures until July 26, 2018.

The petition reads as follows:

Petition to the House of Commons

Whereas:

Bill C-71, An Act to amend certain Acts and Regulations in relation to firearms, does nothing to tackle firearms violence, but rather adds further red-tape on law abiding firearms owners;
This legislation brings back the useless and ineffective long-gun registry; and
This legislation does not provide the resources to frontline police forces to tackle the true source of firearms violence : gangs and organized criminal enterprises.

We, the undersigned, Residents of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to scrap Bill C-71, An Act to amend certain Acts and Regulations in relation to firearms, and to instead devote greater resources to policing in Canada.