US politicians would like to emulate Canada and to ramp up restrictions on the purchase of firearms due to an acute awareness that “they rule illegitimately” and out of fear that the population may “rise up” to challenge their policies, Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson has alleged.
“That probably has not occurred to you. It’s definitely occurred to them, and it’s occurred to the corporate media they control, whose job it is to push their power grabs, and they would very much like a Canada/China-style gun ban in this country,” Carlson said in a segment of his cable news show Wednesday night.
Carlson blasted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “Botoxed dictator to the north” over the Liberal government’s proposed new handgun restrictions announced in a new bill this week.
“We recognize that the vast majority of gun owners use them safely and in accordance with the law, but other than using firearms for sports shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives,” Trudeau said in a press conference on Monday.
“That means anyone in Canada apart from Justin Trudeau because guns, it turns out, are a huge part of Justin Trudeau’s everyday life,” Carlson said, pointing out that Trudeau is “surrounded by” firearms carried by his security.
“Even if he succeeds in confiscating every last privately held firearm in the nation of Canada, Justin Trudeau will never disarm his own bodyguards. Why? Because he understands perfectly well that guns are the key to his power,” the pundit added.
Firearms violence in Canada is not even much of a problem, notwithstanding one of the highest rates of civilian gun ownership in the world, according to Carlson, who pointed out that only half of the 16 homicides reported in the million-person city of Ottawa last year were caused by guns.
“So, guns are not killing a lot of Canadians. What is killing a lot of Canadians are drug lords. More than 5,000 Canadians died last year from opioids alone, mostly fentanyl,” the Fox host said, recalling British Columbia’s move this week to decriminalize possession of the deadly drug. “How does that make sense? Well, it only makes sense if your goal is to keep the population weak and vulnerable, even if it kills them, and that would explain why Trudeau is not stopping British Columbia. He also said he’s working with Toronto and Edmonton to legalize fentanyl there as well,” Carlson said.
The pundit also pointed to the Canadian government’s decision this week to extend federal travel restrictions – barring Canadians who haven’t been vaccinated for COVID-19 from leaving the country. “This is not a public health measure, of course. It’s a show of force from a tyrant. But if you don’t like it – tough, there’s nothing you can do. Why? Because you’ve been disarmed,” Carlson said.
Carlson suggested that in the US, state and federal politicians, mostly from the Democratic Party, are “taking very close notes” from the Canadian prime minister’s words and actions, with even some Republicans, like Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson expressing openness to additional restrictions on Americans’ legal ownership of firearms.
The United States suffered more than 20,700 gun deaths in 2021, with over 800 mass shootings – i.e. those where 3 or more people were killed, reported during the same period.
The 24 May mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in which nineteen students aged 9-11 and two teachers were killed, and the 14 May mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, in which 10 African Americans were killed in a white supremacist’s attack on a supermarket, sparked renewed debate about gun violence in the US. The Biden administration and its supporters have proposed dealing with the issue through new restrictions on civilian gun ownership, while their opponents have suggested that what’s needed is support for people with mental problems, and/or a national conversation about America’s culture of violence.