Between his two gun stores, JR Cox estimates he's losing about half a million dollars in sales due to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's firearms ban.
"It's attacked so many facets of my business," said Cox, who runs two retail stores with shooting ranges—Target Sports Canada and The Shooting Edge—in Toronto and Calgary, respectively.
Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Bill Blair announced the ban on 1,500 "assault-style weapons" including the controversial but popular AR-15 rifle about two weeks ago, not long after the Nova Scotia mass shooting that left 22 people dead. The shooter was not a legal firearms owner and procured most of his weapons from the U.S., according to the RCMP.
The Liberals introduced the ban through an order-in-council, a regulatory mechanism they used to reclassify swaths of firearms as "prohibited." They did not table legislation to push through the changes.
Trudeau said the banned guns are used "for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time."
While the government said it will introduce a buy-back program for the newly banned guns, it has yet to provide any details about that.
For now, firearms dealers are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in guns and related accessories that are effectively useless to them.
Cox has hired Calgary-based criminal lawyer Greg Dunn, who is also a firearms owner, to launch a legal challenge against the government in an attempt to fight the ban.
Dunn said the challenge will focus on the use of an order-in-council to implement the ban, which he alleges is an abuse of power.
"The process is unfair and it affects people's livelihoods," he said, noting that Cox is "a guy that invested heavily in semi-automatic sporting and hunting rifles. All of a sudden, without any warning, all of those are unsaleable."
Dunn hasn't finalized the exact nature of his challenge, but said it will be "a tough set of arguments" to raise.
But some advocates of the ban are calling for even stronger gun control.
On Thursday, Poly Remembers, a group of students and grads of École Polytechnique, where a gunman killed 14 women in 1989, published an open letter to Blair calling for additional gun control measures.
The group is calling for the government to implement a mandatory buy-back program for all the banned guns; the Liberals stated current owners would be able to keep their banned guns through a grandfathering system, but not use them.
Poly Remembers also wants the ban to include other firearms and modifiable magazines and is recommending the government stop importing handguns.
Several gun owners who spoke to VICE said they're focusing their attention on getting the Conservatives elected as a way of reversing the ban. Some gun retailers are also promoting Conservative party memberships on their websites.
"It's the only way," said Cox.
LOL Lobbying gun owners to vote conservative when 4 out of 5 Canadians want the ban. Let them cry
Trudeau’s Assault-Rifle Ban Could Cost Gun Sellers Hundreds of Millions
Firearms retailers says the ban will decimate their industry and are lobbying gun owners to vote Conservative in the next election.
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