Tony Bernardo, executive director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), told the Western Standard he “understands the frustrations of the Toronto Police Service.”

“It must be beyond maddening to see the government behaving this way, where such real problems rear their heads. People are actually dying on the streets,” said Bernardo, adding the Liberals’ tactic of “going after lawful Canadians is not going to solve the problem with criminals.”

“It doesn’t take much intellect to figure out that people who lawfully register and store their firearms and use them at shooting ranges are not the same people that are shooting up the streets of Toronto at night.”

The prime minister is trying to conflate those two groups of people, he said. “And the conflation he is doing is two-fold: number one, ideologically the Liberal government opposes firearms ownership, period, end of sentence, no matter what else they say. Secondly, this was never intended to go after criminals in the first place — it was intended to go after votes.”

“Despite the fact the Liberals lied about its intention, they’ve been doing it for 25 years, back to (former Liberal Prime Minister) Jean Chretien’s Bill C-68.”

The Liberals at the time under C-68 created a long-gun registry, promising Canadians it would lower crime and only cost taxpayers $2 million. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we now know, the program cost an estimated $2 billion.

“The programs have cost into the billions of dollars, and crime is worse than it’s been since it started,” said Bernardo.

“The only time through this entire thing that gun crime actually went down, was when Stephen Harper was prime minister. He removed layers of gun laws against lawful citizens and went after criminals.”

He said that while the government is spending billions on taking away the firearms of sportsmen, “it must be terribly frustrating for the police to see massive amounts of money that they could use to wipe out crime in these big cities.”

“God knows our cops are working their butts off to keep crime under control. The government owns this — totally, completely owns this.”

He elaborated on Poilievre’s plans to repeal gun control and his solutions to stop gun trafficking at the border by using technology like cargo scanners, which are “high-tech, but surprisingly low cost.”

“You know another thing we can do is take criminals and lock them up,” said Bernardo facetiously, explaining how gun violence criminals have 16 or 17 prohibition orders on them, but never served a day in prison.

Bernardo confirmed the TPS’s claim that 85% of handguns come illegally across the border from the US, and offered some insight as to where the other 15% comes from. Looking at pictures of guns confiscated by police across Canada, “they’re almost all prohibited.”

The guns seized “are not even allowed in Canada, they’re not stolen from us.” He said there are “police services across the country that lose guns like crazy.”

“So when we’re talking 85% of all guns used in crime come from the United States — guess where the other 15 is coming from?”

“Guns that were taken from the police military across the country. Maybe 25 to 35 come out of the civilian market, and many of those have been modified to become prohibited,” which is a criminal offence.

“But that gun could be said to be coming from Canada, even though it’s a crime gun,” he said, meaning the gun could be legal in Canada, but then it’s altered, becoming a prohibited firearm.

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