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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to give municipal governments the power to ban handguns won’t address the problem it’s intended to solve.

That is, violent urban street crime in cities where rival criminal gangs don’t care about who they kill, including innocent bystanders, as they fight over control of the lucrative trade in illegal drugs.

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The Trudeau government knows that banning handguns won’t work.

As a paper released by Public Safety Canada in April titled A Dialogue on Handguns and Assault Weapons noted:

“The vast majority of owners of handguns and of other firearms in Canada lawfully abide by requirements and most guns crimes are not committed with legally-owned firearms … Any ban of handguns … would primarily affect legal firearms owners …”

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police knows it, pointing out in August that since the vast majority of handguns used in gun violence are already illegal — with more than 80% smuggled in from the United States — it makes no sense to make something that is already illegal, illegal twice.