The Liberal party says Conservatives are “taking orders from Canada’s NRA” in a fundraising email blitz that says the government’s new gun bill contains measures to crack down on illegal handguns and assault weapons.

The email listed several measures in the bill, including more rigorous background checks for handgun and semi-automatic rifle licences.

But the message also contained an aggressive attack on the Conservatives.

The email, a copy of which was provided to iPolitics, claimed Conservative leader Andrew Scheer and his party “want to steadily weaken gun laws in Canada.”

“Their policies would make it easier for dangerous handguns and assault rifles to end up in the hands of violent criminals, and they would weaken law enforcement’s ability to prevent and prosecute gun crime.

The email cites elements of Scheer’s gun-control platform during the Conservative leadership contest last year. The message says Scheer pledged to increase cartridge magazine capacity and reduce regulations governing firearm sales.

“They’re taking orders from Canada’s NRA, and we can’t let them win,” the Liberal email said.

All of the major gun lobbies and associations in Canada supported the Conservatives in 2011, when Stephen Harper and his party campaigned on promises to dismantle the federal long-gun registry and take other measures to water down gun-control measures brought in by previous Liberal governments.

Firearm rights advocates also took sides in the 2015 election, as well as the Conservative leadership race.

But a member of a gun-control advocacy group established in the wake of a 1989 shooting massacre that killed 14 women at Montreal’s Polytechnique engineering school said she was shocked at the Liberal message on the heels of the firearm bill.

Meaghan Hennegan, a survivor of the 2006 Dawson College shooting in Montreal who was shot twice by a gunman outside the building in that attack, said the Liberal fundraiser was “insulting.”

“We’ve been pushing for the legislation to be put through for almost three years, and then the second thing they do is go out and start selling it, like ‘look how awesome it is’ and ‘oh, the evil Conservatives, we need all your money so we can fight them’.”

Hennigan said the fundraiser makes the Liberals appear to be exploiting the gun-control issue.

PolySeSouvient, the group set up to memorialize the women killed at the Montreal school and advocate for tighter gun laws, has criticized the Liberal legislation, Bill C-71, for an absence of measures that would directly address ownership of assault-style semi-automatic rifles.