The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities says amendments to Bill C-21 will only hurt law-abiding residents.

SARM President Ray Orb says these gun owners will be penalized if the proposed amendments are passed.

“They are legal gun owners so they are not the ones who should be targeted by the federal government.  Instead, we feel that the federal government should be going after illegal gun owners or people that are bringing guns in illegally from outside the country.”

Orb says firearms are a valuable tool in rural Saskatchewan and this bill does nothing to improve safety in our Rural Municipalities.

SARM President Ray Orb says without consultation, the federal government plans to penalize approximately 75-thousand legal firearms owners in Saskatchewan.

“We’d been reassured by the federal government that it would not affect hunters or ranchers. But now we see that there are amendments that have been proposed that do exactly that. They affect farmers, ranchers in this province that use hunting rifles-shotguns to protect their livestock.”

Orb says the most disturbing aspect of the amendments is that it would ban almost all semi-automatic centrefire rifles and shotguns used by ranchers and hunters. He says the money used to implement Bill C-21 would be better spent on measures to reduce rising rural crime rates.