Firearms group warns posties could be 'target for organized crime' if Canada Post collects guns for Trudeau Liberals

Canada Post workers could become a target for organized crime if they cooperate with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s demands to collect banned firearms, says a firearms group.Canada Post has thus far refused to cooperate with Trudeau’s firearms buyback program, the Crown corporation recently told Ottawa in a written statement. Staff will not be responsible for collecting firearms from people reluctant to give up their guns, it said, citing concerns over potential conflicts between staff and angry gun owners. The Trudeau Liberals, having promised a gun grab in both 2019 and 2021 elections in hopes to remove 144,000 firearms from private ownerships, banned certain firearms in 2020, and hopes to have a functional program in motion before the next election, which will be no later than the fall of 2025. Tracey Wilson, VP of public relations at the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR), told the Western Standard the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association, a gun shop lobby that documents all retailers and distributors, including import records, said in reality the total works out to about 514,000 rifles.The federal government’s expectation to put the responsibility of collecting guns on the Crown postal service “puts Canada Post in a really bad position” because Canada Post workers could become “a target for organized crime," said Wilson.“They were worried about Canada Post workers having to deal with angry gun owners, right? That's not actually my concern,” said Wilson, adding legal gun owners are peaceful people. “My concern would be Canada Post workers ending up being a target for organized crime.”“Imagine these little Canada Post trucks that go around and pick up the mail full of guns, AR-15s. To me, it's insane to even suggest it. If the idea is instead of them picking them up, that we would bring them into Canada Post — my local Canada Post is in a little kiosk in the back of Shoppers Drug Mart … with a 17-year-old kid working at the counter.”“It's ridiculous even to suggest it. I think it's a sign of a flailing government. They promised to do this stuff. And they're completely unable to carry it through.”Even if Canada Post staff did collect the guns, the firearms would then be sent to sorting facilities where they would be “stacked up in big piles,” said Wilson. “It's insane to me to think of half a million rifles, just being bounced around the country by people who don't have a firearms licence, haven't had the training to deal with them.”“They're just in a bunch of cardboard boxes. So ripe for exposure that it's it's ridiculous to even suggest it.”Wilson said the Trudeau Liberals also approached the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the RCMP to collect the firearms from Canadians, but both refused, as did local police stations. “Nobody wants to touch this. That's not part of their mandate,” said Wilson. “Their mandate is to protect the safety and security of Canadians. And this doesn't do that. The police don't want to do it either. They don't have the manpower or the storage.”“This is a punitive measure that only impacts licensed legal gun owners and their legal guns.”Wilson pointed out if these formerly legal firearms were really so dangerous, the federal government wouldn’t have allowed the weapons to sit around collecting dust in people’s houses for years on end. “If it's true these guns were too dangerous, far too dangerous for us to keep them, we wouldn't be sitting here four years later, with every single one of them still where they were before.”“Can you imagine what it would look to pile a half a million rifles together? This is an impossible task. And now they're just bouncing around trying to figure something out.”When asked what federal officials would do with the firearms even if they did manage to find success with the collection method, Wilson explained they would be destroyed and the metal would maybe be recycled — but many parts of the guns would not be recyclable. The guns also can’t be utilized by CAF or anywhere else, because they are not actually military-grade weapons, said Wilson. If a CAF soldier deployed in Kuwait was given a “semi-automatic five round rifle” to protect themselves, they’d “already be dead.”“No, no. These are not, although they like to call them ‘military style’ or ‘assault style,’ they are not that thing.”“No military in the world would use them.”