As someone familiar with Canada's gun laws and firearms licensing framework, I find it incredibly disappointing that the Liberal Party and the mayors of Toronto and Montreal would consider a ban on handguns. That the government would go after legal gun owners (instead of criminals) is disingenuous. There are better ways to strengthen our nation's gun laws that don't require millions of licensed, law-abiding Canadians to forfeit their guns or be treated like would-be criminals. To understand what is currently wrong with the Canada's gun laws, and how we can fix them, you first need to consider a very brief history of how we got to where we are now.

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Starting in 1934, all handguns (restricted guns) in Canada had to be registered with the government/RCMP. After 1977, when firearm acquisition certificates were introduced, Canadian gun retailers had to document who they were selling "long guns" (non-restricted rifles and shotguns) to, including the names of the purchasers and the serial numbers of the firearms. This data was recorded in the "green books" kept by the gun retailers, and could be requested by the police. Following the mass shooting at Ecole Polytechnique, the Liberals under Prime Minister Chretien introduced the Canadian Firearms Registry in 1995 for long guns. The long-gun registry spelled the end of the old "green books" for non-restricted gun sales. From 2012 until October 2015, when the Harper Conservatives were voted out, there was no recordkeeping. The Reform Party (later the Conservative Party) was vehemently opposed to the Canadian Firearms Registry for long guns. When Prime Minister Stephen Harper had an opportunity to dismantle the long-gun registry and destroy its records in 2012, he did so (in all provinces except Quebec). After the long-gun registry was dissolved, Harper's government made no effort to legislate back the "green books" used for tracking non-restricted firearms. So from 2012 until October 2015, when the Harper Conservatives were voted out, there was no recordkeeping. Any Canadian with a possession and acquisition license (PAL) had been able to go to a gun retailer and purchase a non-restricted rifle or shotgun, with no record being made of: Who they were How many non-restricted rifle(s) or shotgun(s) they were purchasing What the serial number(s) were This situation allowed "straw buyers" to purchase non-restricted (unregistered) guns for others who were not permitted to own a gun. No registration meant no tracing a firearm back to anyone who was reselling it illegally, and therefore, no accountability. Justin Trudeau's Liberals were elected back in 2015. Since then, the government has not made any moves to close this registration loophole and bring back the green books. From 2015 up until now, retailers have not been required to document non-restricted firearm sales. Today, a person with a PAL can buy a tactical shotgun or non-restricted assault rifle (or 25 of them) and no one is keeping track of serial numbers, models or the names of the buyers.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette Toronto Mayor John Tory asked Ottawa to consider a nationwide ban on handguns.

In addition, neither the Conservatives nor Liberals have attempted to replace the dissolved long-gun registry with anything. Trudeau in fact has made it clear that his government won't be bringing back the long-gun registry. The question then is, why not at least bring back the green books? Without this, what prevents non-restricted firearms from being resold/diverted? Where is the accountability? Where are the safety measures? Our politicians refuse to bring back the registry because they are opposed to it, or they feel that they will lose votes as the old registry was perceived as a billion-dollar boondoggle. Instead, they want to ban all handguns and semi-automatics. Why? The answer is because it makes it look like they are finally doing something, where for the last six or seven years, they have done nothing except allow hundreds of thousands of non-restricted guns to be sold without records. It's much easier to go after the duck hunter or target shooter than to concede that government has had a huge role in creating this problem. Talk about an off-target, knee jerk reaction. It isn't as if the Trudeau government has exhausted all of the other possibilities and has come to this conclusion: that only a handgun ban will work. They simply haven't done anything. That Liberals are calling this a wedge issue is laughable. It's much easier to go after the duck hunter or target shooter (the licensed, legal shooters) than to concede that government has had a huge role in creating this problem. In his recent HuffPost Canada blog, Vahan Kololian of the Mosaic Institute states that: "In 2016, [Canadian] police forces and other authorities seized 25,123 firearms, out of which nearly 20,000 were non-restricted." What Kololian's research implies to me is that if nearly 80 per cent of the guns being seized in Canada are non-restricted, then going after the other 20 per cent (handgun owners who have had to register their restricted weapons all along) is not going to fix the problem.

Michele Sandberg via Getty Images The Bushmaster XM-15 is a restricted firearm available in Canada.