Arming and Disarming by R. Blake Brown

Author:R. Blake Brown [Brown, R. Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS006000, LAW060000, POL029000
Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Published: 2012-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Government’s Response

The lobbying efforts and arguments of firearm owners proved extremely effective, and politicians advocating gun control expressed surprise at the forcefulness of the opposition. The Liberals responded by limiting the length of the parliamentary debate on Bill C-83 – a move that gun groups deemed further proof of the Trudeau government’s tyranny. The Liberals also introduced amendments meant to placate firearm owners, such as lowering the age at which a minor could acquire a licence and providing free permits for people living in designated areas who hunted or trapped to support their family. These minor amendments did not quell the opposition, however, and when Parliament adjourned for the summer in 1976 the Liberals shelved Bill C-83 before third reading. When the House of Common reconvened in the fall, the government ended the parliamentary session adjourned for the summer. This meant that Bill C-83 died on the order paper. The bill had proven too divisive for the Liberal Party, which was bleeding popular support. In September 1976, a Gallup poll placed Liberal electoral support at only 29 per cent. Following the Bill C-83 debacle, Trudeau replaced Warren Allmand as solicitor general with Francis Fox.112

Despite receiving a bloody nose, the Liberal Party, or at least a contingent of the party, remained interested in pursuing stronger gun controls. As if on cue, a new shooting incident stiffened the backbone of Liberal Party members who desired new measures. In September 1976, the Clarke Institute for Psychiatry in Toronto discharged Ernest Lamourandire. He promptly purchased a rifle, climbed to the top of a building, and shot at strangers on the streets below. He injured five people before turning the weapon on himself. “Cash and carry and kill,” lamented the Globe and Mail after the incident, which, the paper declared, proved the need for tough new firearm measures. The shooting should “silence all opponents of gun control,” it wrote hopefully, if incorrectly.113

The ferocity of the opposition to Bill C-83 led the Liberals to debate whether to make a second attempt at passing new gun controls. With the Liberal caucus divided, Justice Minister Basford had to argue in Cabinet for the wisdom of pursuing new measures. The government ultimately decided to strike an informal committee of Liberal MPs from eastern and western Canada and from urban and rural areas to produce an amended bill that could satisfy the caucus.114 The result was a watered-down bill, C-51, that the government could pass with less resistance. As historians Tom Traves and John Saywell conclude, Bill C-51 was “obviously a compromise designed to win approval from the anti-regulation lobby.”115 Justice Minister Basford said as much in the Commons, assuring Parliament that the government had consulted more broadly than it had in drafting Bill C-83. Responding to the major complaints voiced in 1976, Basford promised that the new bill involved “the least possible interference in the lives of responsible Canadians.” The government sought to zero in on “those gun owners or would-be owners who might be dangerous to themselves or others if they have access to a firearm.

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