The buzz on Parliament Hill over the past couple of weeks (to the extent there has been any buzz other than the Liberals’ SNC-Lavalin scandal) has been that the federal government now believes an all-out handgun ban might be too expensive.

Since last summer’s tragic shooting in Toronto’s Danforth district, the Trudeau government has been searching for some dramatic gesture to symbolize how much they care.

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Since last fall, Border Security Minister Bill Blair (a former Toronto police chief) has been investigating a full-on ban of all handguns and “assault-style” rifles. He was still raising the option of bans during in-person town halls and conference calls with owners last month.

I’m not sure why the expense would suddenly bother the Liberals.

They LOVE to spend taxpayers’ money. And in 1998, when they confiscated over half of the legal firearms in Canada at the time, they didn’t pay owners a dime.

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Still, the Liberals’ symbolic gesture of choice now seems to be central storage of handguns and rifles, but only in some major cities.

If you live in, say, Toronto and you want to own guns, you might be required to deposit them at a federal warehouse except for when you are taking them hunting or target shooting.

One thing hasn’t changed, though. The Liberals’ justification for new gun controls is still the assertion that the main source of crime guns in Canada is legit owners – people who have licences and buy guns legally, but then “illegally divert” guns to the black market for thieves or drug runners.

Another frequent claim is that legit owners fail to store their guns securely and the guns end up stolen.

Although there exists mountains of evidence that most Canadian crime guns are smuggled in from that giant arsenal to the south – the United States – not only the Liberals, but also the Toronto Police Service keep spreading the same misinformation that legal gun owners have become the No. 1 source of criminal firearms in Canada.

Even Regina Police Chief Evan Bray, who heads the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police’s Special Purpose Committee on Firearms, insists Canadians with gun licences buy a lot of firearms and sell them illegally.

There is no proof of any of this. The reason for spinning these tales is to demonize legit gun owners so the government can get away with subjecting duck hunters, target shooters and farmers to even more gun controls.

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For instance, last year Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale claimed there were more than 1,200 break-ins a year in Canada in which guns were stolen. He credited StatsCan for that figure.

However, StatsCan’s database shows five “robberies to steal firearms” in 2013, 16 in 2014, 12 in 2015 and 18 in both 2016 and 2017. There may not have been 1,200 break-ins to steal guns in the 151 years since Confederation.

Firearms researcher Dennis Young filed an access to information request asking for “records, reports and statistics showing the number of firearms stolen in Canada” over the last 18 years and “where they were stolen from.”

The federal government had to admit it doesn’t keep those statistics (except at StatsCan), even though Goodale, Blair and others keep insisting on much higher totals.

Perhaps most troubling, there are more than 420,000 Canadians who are banned from owning guns, typically because of previous criminal convictions. But Goodale had to admit recently, the federal firearms computers “do not capture information concerning the illegal acquisition of firearms by prohibited persons.”

The Liberals are about to impose more restrictions on legit owners to win votes in Liberal cities and to claim they are taking action to reduce crime.

Yet they have no clue – none – how many convicted criminals possess guns or where they got them.

Talk about cynical, ineffective policy.