Conservative MPs Michelle Rempel and Pierre Poilievre hold a news conference at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa on July 24, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

A Commons petition sponsored by Calgary MP Michelle Rempel that opposes a federal ban on handguns and assault rifles is drawing a lot of support from gun owners.

The e-petition — launched Oct. 11, the same day Border Security Minister Bill Blair kicked off a seven-week public consultation on a potential handgun ban — has racked up more than 23,000 signatures in its first 12 days online.

Another petition backing the prohibition of handguns and assault weapons was posted to the Commons website the same day as Rempel’s petition, but had gathered just 311 signatures by Tuesday.

The sponsor of the supportive petition, Winnipeg Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette, is more low-profile than Rempel, the Conservative star who owns and shoots a handgun herself and has close ties to the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.

“He’s not that well-known,” Toronto Liberal MP Judy Sgro said as she considered the snail’s pace of the petition Ouellette took up. “He’s probably not spending a lot of time out there pushing, whereas Ms. Rempel is pretty close to an expert.”

Rempel, a Winnipeg transplant who first won election to the Commons by contesting a Calgary seat in 2011, eventually became a champion for gun owners after entering Parliament as an Alberta MP.

The first Commons petition Rempel sponsored was similarly popular. It was initiated in 2017 by Tracey Wilson, an in-house lobbyist for a firearm rights coalition, and collected 16,630 signatures by the time it closed after the maximum 120 days each Commons e-petition is permitted to be active.

The petition Rempel sponsored for Wilson stands out among the eight firearm-related petitions Conservatives have sponsored since 2016.

Wilson’s petition called for a requirement that members of the federal public safety minister’s statute-based civilian advisory committee on guns all hold valid firearm-acquisition licences to “adequately understand” the gun owners affected by their recommendations.

So far, the most popular firearm petition sponsored by Conservatives came from an elector in Lethbridge, Alta., MP Rachael Harder’s electoral district. That petition attracted a total of 86,082 signatures, calling on the government to scrap Bill C-71, the new gun control legislation slowly making its way through Parliament, only eight days after the bill was introduced in the Commons last March.

Alberta accounted for the largest number of signatures by province and territory outside of Ontario for the petition Harder sponsored, and for three other firearm-related petitions sponsored by Conservative MPs.

Another popular petition, sponsored by B.C. Conservative MP Bob Zimmer, called for the infamous AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to be reclassified as a semi-automatic hunting rifle, as opposed to a restricted sport rifle, to be used only at gun clubs and firing ranges.

Zimmer’s petition amassed 25,249 signatures.

Blair, who is also designated as the government’s minister for organized crime reduction, launched the second phase of his public consultations on Monday. The former police chief and his parliamentary secretary, Montreal MP Peter Schiefke, are scheduled to hold invitation-only roundtable sessions and discussions through the end of November.

The initial consultation phase, an online survey of public views on how to tackle handgun violence and assault rifles, began Oct. 11 and continues to Nov. 10.

A Nanos Research poll conducted for CTV in early September following a string of handgun shooting deaths in Toronto, Ottawa and other cities indicates the public mood does not match Conservative opinion on handguns.

The survey found 48 per cent of Canadians would support a handgun ban and another 19 per cent would somewhat support it. The Nanos poll found 21 per cent would oppose a ban and another 10 per cent would somewhat oppose it.