By Michael Ruiz | Fox News
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered a new firearms ban after a mass shooting in Nova Scotia this year.
A Canadian petition asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to reverse expansive new gun control rules, which asks him to apologize to legal firearm owners, has earned a record-setting number of signatures.
“The Prime Minister’s firearms confiscation regime, undemocratically imposed without debate during a pandemic while Parliament is suspended, is an assault on Canadian democracy,” the petition states.
The petition is sponsored by Conservative Member of Parliament Michelle Rempel Garner, whose husband is a U.S. Army veteran, and is initiated by a Calgary man named Jesse Faszer. The digital petition, e-2574, notched 230,905 signatures before it closed.
It got so much attention in its first four hours that parliament’s website had server trouble, according to Garner.
The previous highest petition also took a stand against gun control and received support from 175,310 signees.
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“We, the undersigned, citizens of Canada, call upon the Prime Minister to immediately scrap his government’s May 1, 2020, Order in Council decision related to confiscating legally owned firearms and instead pass legislation that will target criminals, stop the smuggling of firearms into Canada, go after those who illegally acquire firearms, and apologize to legal firearms owners in Canada,” the petition reads.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau banned more than 1,500 models and variants of rifles after a deadly mass shooting in Novia Scotia earlier this year. (AP)
The petition also argues that Canada is home to millions of “responsible, law-abiding” gun owners and claims that most guns used in violent crimes are obtained illegally – including those used in a mass shooting in Nova Scotia in April that led to the new rules.
That was the deadliest such attack in Canadian history. Authorities said the gunman disguised himself as a police officer before shooting at least 13 people and lighting fires that killed nine others. The gunman was killed by a Canadian police officer.
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Weeks later, Trudeau banned more than 1,500 models and variants of rifles, including AR-15s, Mini-14s and firearms that the Nova Scotia gunman used.
“You do not need an AR-15 to take down a deer,” Trudeau said at the time. “So, effective immediately, it is no longer permitted to buy, sell, transport, import, or use military-grade, assault weapons in this country.”
Fully automatic rifles were already banned in Canada decades ago.
Fox News’ Robert Gearty and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
