Hundreds of thousands of Canadians could face prison time if they do not turn in their newly prohibited guns under a supposedly “voluntary” gun buyback program that is testing the strength of Canada’s bureaucratic regime.
Since May 2020, the Canadian government has attempted to institute a massive “assault-style firearms compensation program” that will purportedly trade cash for prohibited guns. If Canadians do not turn in a prohibited gun by October 2026, they could face up to five years in prison. The program has faced massive pushback from provincial leaders and gun rights organizations who say it will only disarm law-abiding Canadians.
Cathie Coward/Toronto Star via Getty Images
“We’re finding that they’re running into a lot of compliance issues,” Blair Hagen, an executive at Canada’s National Firearms Association, told The Daily Wire. “They have no idea where [the guns are] or who has them. So it’s proving to be a very, very difficult situation for the government.”
Due to the scope of the program, the government has extended amnesty three times for ownership of one of the thousands of banned so-called “assault-style” guns, with the latest one set to expire in October 2026.
We Can Thank Justin Trudeau
David Kawai/Bloomberg via Getty Images
An order in council rolled out by then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in May 2020 banned thousands of “assault weapons” and claimed to offer compensation to those who voluntarily turn in their weapons. According to Hagen, an order in council is a “non-democratic legal instrument” where the Canadian government can ban items like guns “without having to take legislation through parliament.”
Today, the government describes participation in the gun buyback program as “voluntary” but that compliance with the gun ban is required.
“While participating in the program is voluntary, compliance with the law is not. Businesses and individual firearm owners must safely dispose of or permanently deactivate their assault-style firearms before the amnesty period ends on October 30, 2026, or risk criminal liability for the illegal possession of a prohibited firearm,” the government says on its website.
Justin Davis, the public affairs director of the National Rifle Association, said that it made no sense to call the program voluntary.
“I mean, they call these things voluntary, but if the option is either turn them in or you’re going to jail, I would not consider that voluntary,” he told The Daily Wire.
The government also doesn’t guarantee compensation for turning in the designated weapons, only saying that gun owners “who choose to participate in the program may receive compensation subject to availability of program funds.”
Carney Calls It Compensation, Not Confiscation
James Park/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Prime Minister Mark Carney claims that the program, which could penalize gun owners with jail time if they don’t comply, was not “confiscation.”
“This is not about confiscation. This is about voluntary return of firearms for compensation,” Carney said during a podcast in September 2025. “People aren’t going around confiscating guns. Anyone who says that, that is a mischaracterization, what it is is an opportunity for Canadians to return guns for compensation.”
In the same podcast, Carney claimed that the hunting rifles would not be impacted by the extensive gun ban.
“We are not talking about hunting rifles. We’re not talking sports shooting or anything like that. We’re talking about assault rifles,” Carney said.
However, this appears to ignore the fact that there is a specific carve-out for Native tribes that use prohibited rifles for hunting. The amnesty includes “a temporary exception for Indigenous peoples’ exercising a right” under the Constitution and “as well as those who use firearms for sustenance hunting, which enables them to continue to use their newly prohibited firearms to hunt (if previously non-restricted) until a suitable replacement can be found.”
Not In Alberta
Leah Hennel/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Many Canadian provinces, including Yukon, Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, have indicated they will not assist the national government in enforcing the ban.
“We will have nothing to do with this program. We will not spend any Alberta taxpayer dollars on this program,” Teri Bryant, the chief firearms officer of Alberta, told CBC News last month. “We can’t block the federal government from setting something up, but they have to set it up and be appropriately licensed.”
Effectively, what this means is that the feds will be on their own for enforcing the gun ban throughout much of Canada without any assistance from local law enforcement.
“If the feds want to try and enforce it, they are going to have to do it themselves, and of course, the logistics get even more insurmountable and the price goes up,” Hagen said.
In the fall of 2025, the Canadian government ran a pilot program of the buyback scheme that ran for six weeks and only yielded 25 guns. The government had reportedly expected to confiscate some 200 weapons.
The government declared the program a success, saying that it showed that “factual, consistent information on how the program works, what individuals can expect if they choose to participate, and legal requirements to comply with the prohibition must be readily available and up-to-date.”
Hagen said that there was not much public appetite for the gun buyback program, but that it was pushed by leftists embedded in Canada’s federal bureaucracy.
“That’s one of the biggest problems with firearms laws in Canada,” he said. “There is a civil disarmament agenda in that bureaucracy. It started many years ago. They’ve done everything they can to ensure that it continues.”
At the end of the day, Hagen sees the government’s efforts to stop crime and violence by taking law-abiding citizens’ firearms as illogical.
“You can put all the laws and restrictions and prohibitions on the lawful acquisition and ownership of firearms that you want, but it’s not going to decrease or eliminate crime or tragedies because criminals and lunatics will always find a way,” he said.
American Leftists Want The Same Policy
That sentiment was echoed by Davis with the NRA, who warned that leftist politicians in the United States wanted to enact similar policies.
“The issue here is the idea that criminals would be turning in their firearms is just absolutely illogical,” he told The Daily Wire. “There’s no criminal in the world who’s going to turn in their firearm for a few dollars when instead they can use it for perpetuating crime.”
During her first run for president back in 2019, Kamala Harris said she supported a “mandatory” gun buyback program for so-called “assault weapons.”
“We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program,” Harris said. “It’s got to be smart, we got to do it the right way.”
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Davis said that the Second Amendment gave a layer of protection to gun owners that those in Europe and Canada didn’t have.
“Places like Europe and Canada and Australia do not have those type of protections, and you see political figures continue to push more and more gun control laws that, again, just disarm law abiding citizens and create more soft targets for criminals, and evil individuals in this world who want to do harm to innocent lives,” he said.
A 2024 challenge to Canada’s buyback program lost, but advocates for gun rights in Canada believe that the program will become too expensive to institute and will face a host of practical problems.
Hagen sees some parallels between the current ban on “assault-style” weapons and the effort to have all long guns registered. That requirement was repealed in 2012 by a Conservative coalition and was seen as a major victory for Canadian gun rights advocates. The policies could also be overturned if Carney’s Liberal Party loses power in Canada.
“It’s one thing to ban a bunch of guns and declare that they’re prohibited and state your intention to confiscate them,” Hagen said. “But it’s quite another to actually make that happen.”
