Liberal government extends amnesty on 'assault-style' firearms until 2023

Gun owners hold signs criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair during a rally organized by the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights against the government's new gun regulations, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA -

The federal Liberal government is extending its amnesty on "assault-style" firearms until October 2023.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in May 2020 he was banning more than 1,500 models of firearms, including the AR-15.

He also announced owners of these guns would have a two-year amnesty period to come into compliance with the prohibition.

The Liberal government revealed on Wednesday that the order that was set to expire in April would be extended until October 2023.

It says doing so gives officials more time to implement a mandatory buyback program for the firearms.

A prominentgun-control advocacy group says it hopes this is the "first and last" extension of its kind and wants to see the buyback program, promised by the Liberals during the 2019 federal election, to be introduced as quickly as possible.

"It is important to understand that the May 2020 regulations combined with the mandatory buyback program, while extremely positive, do not represent a complete ban on assault weapons," reads a statement from PolySeSouvient, which includes former students and graduates of Ecole polytechnique, where a gunman shot and killed 14 women in 1989.

"Further legislation is required to ban models that were not covered by the regulations and to prevent manufacturers from introducing new models into the market."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 16, 2022.