Mayor Kennedy Stewart issued a statement Tuesday supporting the new federal Bill C-21, specifically the section about the federal government allowing municipalities to ban handguns.
In his statement, Stewart says he supported Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's actions last year around assault weapons but added that, for cities, handguns are a bigger issue.
"[F]or cities like Vancouver, the greatest threat to public safety is the proliferation of handguns, deadly weapons that have no place in cities, and this bill would give us new tools to get them off our streets,” he says in the statement.
The mayor wants the ban as quickly as possible, pointing to recent shootings and weapons found by police as reasons to put a ban in place right away. He adds that he'll bring a motion as soon as possible.
Bill C-21 was just introduced in the House of Commons today. Along with allowing municipalities to ban handguns it looks to tackle a wide variety of firearm-related issues, ranging from the glorification of guns in ads to a non-permissive storage regime for recently prohibited guns to new anti-gang funding.
The act is expected to pass the Liberal majority-held House of Commons before heading to the Senate.
