Canada’s “Buyback” Betrayal: The Slow Creep Toward Disarmament and Despotism
In the crisp autumn air of 2025, as maple leaves turn scarlet across the Great White North, Canadians face a stark ultimatum from their own government: hand over your legally acquired firearms, or become a criminal by October 2026.
What the Liberal administration under Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree calls a “voluntary” Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program (ASFCP) is, in truth, a thinly veiled confiscation scheme.
Since May 2020, over 2,500 makes and models of semi-automatic rifles—once lawfully owned by hunters, sport shooters, and collectors—have been reclassified as “prohibited” through a series of regulatory decrees.
The latest waves hit in December 2024 (324 models) and March 2025 (179 more), swelling the banned list to encompass anything Ottawa deems too “military-style” for civilian hands.
Now, with a pilot rollout in Nova Scotia this October and nationwide expansion slated for fall, the clock is ticking. Participate in the buyback for pennies on the dollar, deactivate your property at a gunsmith’s bench, or face felony charges for possession of what was, until recently, your constitutional right to bear arms under the Firearms Act.
This isn’t hyperbole—it’s policy. The amnesty period, repeatedly extended to shield compliant owners from immediate prosecution, expires on October 30, 2026, for most bans.
After that, non-compliance isn’t a fine; it’s a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison under the Criminal Code. Businesses have already surrendered over 12,000 firearms for a paltry $22 million in compensation, closing their phase in April 2025.
Individuals? Expect a “fair market value” payout based on 2020 prices—often half or less of what these rifles fetch today—capped at a laughable $742 million total fund.
Leaked audio from Minister Anandasangaree reveals the farce: he admits the program is a “boondoggle” kept alive only by Quebec’s electoral clout, confesses it won’t be fully enforced due to police resource shortages, and even jokes about covering bail for defiant constituents.
Yet, for the average owner, the message is clear: comply or be branded a felon.
This escalation builds on a decade of creeping regulation. Bill C-21, rammed through in 2023, froze handgun sales, banned “ghost guns,” and empowered “red flag” laws to strip arms from those flagged for “risk”—often without due process.
Non-restricted long guns, once exempt from registration, now face tighter scrutiny, while background checks stretch to lifetimes of data dredging.
More firearms vanish into the prohibited abyss each year, eroding the line between lawful self-defense and criminal hoarding. Critics, including the National Post, warn this botched rollout will spawn a “grey market” of underground sales, enriching smugglers while law-abiding citizens foot the bill—estimated at over $750 million by the Parliamentary Budget Office in 2021, ballooning higher with delays.
Police chiefs echo the chaos: Durham Regional and others decry missing details, refusing participation until Ottawa clarifies enforcement.
It’s mass disarmament by attrition, one decree at a time.
History whispers a grim warning to those who ignore the pattern. For millennia, tyrants have disarmed subjects to consolidate power. In 1911, the Ottoman Empire stripped Armenians of weapons, paving the way for the 1915-1917 genocide that claimed 1.5 million lives.
Soviet Russia followed in 1929, confiscating arms en masse; by Stalin’s purges, 20 million souls perished in gulags and famines, unresisted by a cowed populace.
Nazi Germany’s 1938 Weapons Act targeted Jews specifically, easing the Holocaust’s machinery—six million murdered without a shot in defense.
Closer echoes ring in Mao’s China (1949 disarmament, 77 million dead) and Pol Pot’s Cambodia (1975 bans, two million slaughtered).
These weren’t anomalies; they were blueprints. As James Madison cautioned in Federalist No. 46, armed citizens deter “enterprises of ambition” by rulers.
Disarmament flips the script: governments trust police and armies with arsenals, but citizens? We’re the threat.
In Canada, this isn’t abstract. The RCMP, already militarized with assault rifles and drones, answers to the same Ottawa elite pushing the buyback.
Sovereignty erodes when rights lack teeth—firearms aren’t hobbies; they’re the ultimate backstop against overreach. You might shrug: “I’m no revolutionary; crime’s the issue.” But consider the cost. Rights come with risks—accidental discharges, hunting mishaps—but those pale against oppression’s toll. A 2020 study found no drop in homicides or suicides post-1981-2016 reforms; gun violence stems from smuggling and gangs, not licensed owners.
Yet here we are, subsidizing a program that ignores root causes while vilifying the compliant.
The encroachment is subtle, a frog in warming water. First, registries. Then, bans. Now, forced sales. By 2026, when realization dawns, the deed is done: a disarmed populace, reliant on state mercy. As one X user quipped, “Not a single person should surrender until politicians disarm their security.”
Another nailed it: “Compliance kills.”
Between neighbors, liberty’s frictions—disputes, defenses—are navigable. Under unchecked power? They’re chains.
Canadians, heed the slide. Rights aren’t free; they’re forged in vigilance. Demand transparency, reject the “voluntary” sham, and remember: history’s tyrants didn’t announce their arrival—they disarmed it first. Before it’s too late, ask yourself: will you hand over your safeguard, or stand as its sentinel? The choice is yours, for now.