In terms of political strategy, Justin Trudeau's new gun control measures tick all the boxes. But if his government is returned and these measures legislated, will they make Canada a safer place? That is far from clear.

What Trudeau is proposing can be divided into two parts. First, there's the part that would ban assault rifles. This is hardly risky territory. Even former Conservative leadership Kevin O'Leary once questioned why anyone in Canada would need an AR-15 assault rifle. As recently as this past spring, an Angus Reid opinion poll found that 74 per cent of Canadians support such a ban. Even a surprising 55 per cent of gun owners could get behind one.

Given all that, it's not a surprise that the Liberals made an assault weapon ban, with a buyback program, a central part of their platform.

It's the second part of the plan that gets more interesting, and debatable. The Liberals want to give municipal governments the option of working with the province and Ottawa to put in place a handgun ban.

As strategy, this is smart. The Liberals need to bolster their support in urban centres and among progressive voters who may be disenchanted based on the Trudeau government's track record. This is a way for Trudeau to be able to honestly say he is respecting the concerns he has heard from municipal leaders like Toronto's John Tory and Montreal's Valérie Plante.

But banning handguns in Toronto or Montreal is one thing, banning them in Winnipeg or Edmonton is quite another. An across-the-board ban would have had huge political implications for the Liberals given how differently guns are seen in different parts of the country.

But there's also a politically expedient and self-serving aspect to the handgun ban proposal. As noted, it takes the easy way out by making it voluntary — municipal governments that don't want it for whatever reason don't have to have it.

The city-by-city approach also makes it less likely that handgun bans will actually happen. Such bans would require provincial approval and in some cases — Ontario being one — provincial governments don't support handgun bans. So unless Doug Ford can be talked into supporting one in Toronto, and he says he will not, it won't happen. Unless the federal government tries to override provincial jurisdiction, which would lead to an interesting legal conundrum, but probably not to a happy ending.

There's another problem with the patchwork quilt approach. What if Toronto has a ban but Mississauga does not? Will handguns crossing municipal jurisdictions somehow be identified and stopped? Try and picture that.

Here's the biggest problem with this approach — it ignores the elephant in the room. Credible estimates are that up to 80 per cent of gun crime in Toronto happens with guns that are illegal to start with. Most cross the U.S. border illegally.

In fairness, the Liberal government has boosted investment in border security, but aside from that there is nothing in this new gun control regime to address the illegal smuggled gun problem, and it's the biggest driver of gun violence in major cities like Toronto and Montreal. In the end, what Trudeau is proposing is better than what we have now, but it falls short of being a dramatic improvement in public safety.

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