LOS ANGELES (LifeSiteNews) — In a recent radio interview, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced to the public that Canadians do “not have a right” to use a gun for “self-protection.”
“We have a culture where the difference is guns can be used for hunting or for sport shooting in Canada, and there are lots of gun owners and they’re mostly law respecting and law abiding, but you can’t use a gun for self-protection in Canada,” Trudeau said on the Los Angeles-based “Pod Save the World Podcast” last week.
“That’s not a right that you have, either in the Constitution or anywhere else,” the prime minister added. “If you try and buy a gun and say it’s for self-protection, no, you don’t get that, you can get it for hunting, you can get it for sport shooting, you can take it to the range, no problem, as long as you go through our rigorous background checks.”
While Trudeau is correct in saying that gun ownership is not an enshrined right in Canada, and that one cannot purchase a gun for the purposes of self-protection, many immediately pushed back against the prime minister’s statement saying self-defense is not a right.
On the Andrew Lawton Show produced by True North Centre, criminal lawyer Sam Goldstein fact-checked Trudeau’s statements by explaining that despite his misleading statement, one does have the right to self-protection per the Criminal Code of Canada.
“[T]echnically speaking, there’s no Charter right to use a firearm, but in fact Section 34 of the Criminal Code — the right to a defense — would include the right to use a weapon against another person who is attacking you with, for example, a weapon,” Goldstein explained to Lawton.
Goldstein went on to clarify that depending on the circumstances, even if one’s attacker does not have a weapon, self-defense with a firearm can be permissible.
Trudeau’s recent statement comes on the heels of two major gun control efforts put forward by his administration in recent weeks.
In mid-May, Trudeau’s government announced they were bringing back a version of the previously-scrapped long-gun registry, and in late May announced a complete freeze on the sale and transfer of handguns within the country.