On the second morning since Justin Trudeau’s campaign was rocked by racist images of him wearing blackface makeup, the Liberal leader tried to change the subject, announcing that his party will ban “assault-style” firearms and work with the provinces to allow Canadian municipalities to ban handguns.

If elected on Oct. 21, the Liberals will make it illegal to own weapons like the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, made infamous in countless mass shootings south of the border, Trudeau said.

“You do not need a military-grade assault weapon — one designed to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time — to take down a deer,” Trudeau said, speaking at a hotel in the Toronto riding of Don Valley East on Friday morning.

Article Continued Below

The platform stops short of calling for a national handgun ban, which the Liberals have called too expensive for uncertain benefit to impose nationally.

It was not immediately clear how municipalities might impose a handgun ban under the Liberal proposal. Premier Doug Ford has said he is against allowing Toronto to ban handgun sales, a stance a spokesperson for Ontario Attorney General Doug Downey reiterated in an email to the Star.

“It has not been demonstrated that banning legal firearms and targeting law-abiding citizens would meaningfully address the problem of gun violence,” wrote spokesperson Jenessa Crognali.

“Our government does support an approach to stopping gun violence that includes more effective measures to stop the flow of illegal guns — whether they’re from across the border or domestic sources — and get them off our streets.”

Article Continued Below

The Liberal platform calls for a buyback of legally owned assault-style weapons, with a two-year amnesty for legal owners.

Click to expand

After taking a handful of questions on the proposal, Trudeau once again spoke to his regret for wearing blackface.

“I have let a lot of people down and I am deeply sorry for it,” he said in response to a question on whether he feels secure in his leadership following a series of statements from prominent Liberal candidates expressing dismay at the images.

The leader also clarified that a brief video in which he appears in blackface makeup was taken while he was working at a whitewater rafting facility in Quebec between 1992 and 1994.

Trudeau said that because he had not remembered that incident, he is wary of stating definitively that more do not exist.

The images of the leader — two show him in blackface at an “Arabian nights” party at the Vancouver private school where he taught in 2001 — have drawn worldwide attention, mockery and condemnation ahead of the Oct. 21 election.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he was surprised by Trudeau’s photos when asked by reporters Friday morning.

Article Continued Below

“I was hoping I wouldn’t be asked that question,” Trump said in a video taken by C-SPAN. “I’m surprised. I was more surprised when I saw the number of times. I’ve always had a good relationship with Justin. I just don’t know what to tell you. I was surprised by it.”

Trudeau was also asked about a La Presse report that his campaign is girding for more blackface photos to come out.

“I have nothing to confirm on that,” Trudeau said.

Trudeau said the Liberals are trying to arrange a private call between Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh over the scandal

Singh is the first member of a visible minority to lead a federal party. He wears a turban as part of his Sikh faith.

“I will apologize to him personally,” Trudeau said.

Earlier Friday morning, Trudeau walked the scene of the Danforth mass shooting, where a gunman killed two and injured 13 others on a crowded summer night in the city’s Greektown neighbourhood last year.

The gunman used a Smith & Wesson .40 calibre handgun in the rampage before killing himself during a shootout with police.

That gun was stolen from a gun shop in Saskatchewan. It is unclear how the gunman obtained it. (Ammunition for an assault-style AK-47 rifle was recovered from his apartment.)

Ken Price, whose teen daughter was wounded by that firearm, said the platform falls short in not calling for a national handgun ban. Legal owners and retailers “are going to make mistakes, guns are going to get stolen,” he said.

Click to expand

Price, who said he was speaking on behalf of the families of the victims of the Danforth shooting, said he’s “lucky” his daughter has physically recovered since she was shot. When the families get together, he said, they all reminded of the life-changing impact of a shooting.

“The impact of this is lifetime,” he said.

At Toronto city hall, Mayor John Tory applauded Trudeau for a “important step in the right direction,” adding he wants more gun-control pledges from the Liberal leader, and the other federal leaders.

If Trudeau is re-elected, Toronto will start work on enacting a citywide handgun ban while continuing to push for a nationwide ban, Tory said.

The mayor was incredulous that anyone would oppose banning regular Torontonians owning assault rifles or handguns, given the “catastrophic” toll gun crime has inflicted on Toronto families.

“Our city bans many things already because we’re concerned about people’s health and safety,” he said. “You can’t own a pet tiger Toronto. You can’t operate a hookah lounge. You can’t smoke on a playground.”

Trudeau had tasked former Toronto police chief Bill Blair, candidate for Scarborough Southwest and minister in charge of border security and organized crime, with studying rising gun violence.

Speaking to reporters after the news conference, Blair said there are nearly a quarter-million assault-style weapons — like those used in massacres at a Quebec City mosque, Christchurch, N.Z., and at Sandy Hook Elementary School — in Canada.

Those weapons are worth on average about $1,500 each, putting the cost of a buyback possibly into the billions of dollars.

Leaving the decision to ban handguns up to municipalities risks creating a “patchwork system” in which neighbouring jurisdictions have different laws, like U.S. states, said Blake Brown, a professor of history at St. Mary’s University in Halifax and author of the book “Arming and Disarming: A History of Gun Control in Canada.”

Blake said he will be watching which weapons fall under the category of an “assault-style” firearm, noting that a semi-automatic rifle such as the Ruger Mini-14 used in the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre has many of the same capabilities of an AR-15, but looks more like a hunting weapon.

There’s “some teeth” to the Liberals’ plan, he said, noting that although mass shootings don’t occur often in Canada, several have involved assault-style weapons. “These are low-frequency but high-impact events,” he said.

Trudeau emphasized that Liberals will protect the rights of hunters, vowing not to re-establish the divisive long-gun registry, which was scrapped by the previous Conservative government.

Also speaking after the news conference, Liberal incumbent Adam Vaughan (Spadina-Fort York) dismissed concerns the Ontario government could block a handgun ban in the city.

If city hall asks for the authority, Ottawa has the “strict jurisdiction” to allow a ban to happen even against the province’s wishes, he said.

Vaughan has long supported a nationwide handgun ban. “If we aren’t selling them in Canada, then we have one point of entry” at the border, he told the Star last week.

Toronto is not one of the most dangerous cities in Canada, but gun violence has risen sharply in the city in the last five years. As of Monday, 176 people had been killed or injured in a shooting in the city this year — up from 74 by that date in 2014 and tied with 2005 for the most in any year Sept. 16 in police records that go back to 2004.

The city’s latest gun homicide — its 26th this year — happened late Thursday in Scarborough. Toronto police said a man was shot near Middlefield Rd. and McNicoll Ave. at about 10 p.m.

He has been identified as Charankan Chandrakanthan, 25, of Toronto.

He died at the scene.

Mayor John Tory has lobbied for a ban on the sale of assault-style rifles and handguns, saying government should do everything it can to deal with “Canadian-sourced” weapons.

Speaking to the Star’s editorial board this month, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said his party will impose tougher sentences for gang members and pointed to the fact the national association of police chiefs has criticized calls for a gun ban.

Both Singh and Green party Leader Elizabeth May argue cities should have the right to ban handguns.

With files from David Rider