The Ben Mulroney Show - Why are we talking about the gun buy back program again??

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

-  Ian Runkle / Criminal defence and firearms lawyer If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ Twitter: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ TikTok: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Yeah, that's for a grenade launcher. $235 for a grenade launcher. Welcome back to the show. That was the voice of Ian Runkle, criminal defense and firearms lawyer. And he was going through the buyback program, the weapons buyback program by the federal government. Again, something I don't remember hearing much of on the campaign trail,

but here we are. This is a priority of the government, and I know it's a priority, because we're a week into this parliament, and this is what they've chosen to lead with. And there are guns on this list that are hunting guns. There are guns that are 117,000 dollars, and a grenade launcher for under $300. So to talk about what the heck this thing is, why it's happening, and what kind of weapons are on the list and how much it's going to cost the government. Please welcome Ian Runk. to the conversation. Ian, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me on. So did you see this coming? Because I didn't. Oh, I, with Carney, yes, absolutely. He dropped some hints that this was going to be a focus for him. He made, he dropped comments on it, but it wasn't sort of beating the drum immensely. So those of us who are sort of familiar with watching politicians for what they're going to say,

on this particular issue saw that this was going to be something he'd push but he didn't want to push it too hard to make it a big make it sort of a large issue but I did see this coming that he'd be pushing this through again we are living

in a time where illegal handguns that are coming across the border from the United States are being used almost daily in cities like Toronto. And in fact, if you look across the country, I'm sure that there are crimes being perpetrated every single day with illegal handguns coming across the border. In my estimation, it's happening at a clip we've never seen before. And I'm going based solely on the news and the reporting of those crimes. Yet again, it feels like this party, whether it's

Justin Trudeau or Mark Carney, they don't seem to understand that they are not solving a problem by going after these weapons? Oh, I think they understand it just fine. I don't think the goal has ever been to solve the crime problem, because if it was that actually focus on the firearms that are used in crimes, and as you said, what we see is that's almost entirely firearms that have never been legal in Canada. And what I mean by never been legal in Canada, they're almost exclusively short-barreled handguns that we're seeing that are being brought across the border. And given that short-barreled handguns were banned in Canada some time ago, a lot of the firearms we see were manufactured after

that ban. So we know that they can't be, you know, diversion from legal sales here in Canada. They had to have been smuggled. And this notion that we're going to take the people who their entire occupation is smuggling drugs across borders and somehow prevent them from smuggling guns as well is just kind of a fantasy. The firearms they're targeting are ones that are almost never used in crime. Yeah. There's a $117,000 double-barreled purdy right at the top of the list. My brother looked at that. He says, oh, I went hunting with one of those once. It's not, it's just I've never heard of a purdy being used in a in a in a in a in a in a in a in a in a in a shotgun you're probably not robbing the local liquor store yeah and if you are

falling into dire straits and you have a hundred and seventeen thousand dollar shotgun you're probably selling it in order to you know in order to fund whatever these are just not crime guns they're not the firearms that are used by criminals But even the ones that they want to target and focus on as sort of scary firearms, a legally purchased AR-15, we've never seen that used in a homicide canada. They're just not. The seabors are not used in criminal activity because what we see from criminals over and over and over again is they want small, concealable firearms.

So we see short-barreled handguns. We see sometimes sawed-off shotguns, but we're not seeing what these are is their sporting rifles. When they say we're not banning sporting rifles, they're absolutely targeting sporting rifles. And they're targeting not just a sporting rifle, but they're targeting the people who bought them and who jumped through every single regulatory hoop to get a license, to make it known to the governments of different levels that they own these. and therefore they are going to store them responsibly, and they are going to keep them out of harms. Like, these are the wrong people to be going after.

So my question to you, Ian, is how do you fight something like this? This clearly is, I don't know what this is. I don't know if it's performative. I don't know if there's a larger goal of taking people's guns. So I don't know what it is. But is this something that can be fought in court? Is that something that you're going to be doing? Well, right now I do have a court battle,

but it's a bit of a procedural battle. It's over how they revoked the registration certificates for the AR-15. What they did with that is that instead of going through the legally, like the law specifies a process that they have to go through, but they said, oh, no, we're not doing that because in our view, these registration certificates were just automatically revoked, which if you apply this to any other area of law is a crazy notion, this idea that changing the law just automatically does this.

Yeah. But so far the courts have accepted it in the specific firearm context. But I'm hoping that I've applied for leave to go to the Supreme Court. Oh, really? Of course, the Supreme Court doesn't just take every case that comes to them, but I have applied for leave. If leave is granted, then I hope the Supreme Court will listen. And if that goes through, then they'll have to go. and they'll have to do the revocations properly,

if that's something they want to pursue. But fundamentally, this is a political issue. The problem we run into is that the courts have said that the government is allowed to ban things, even stupidly, so long as it's not done along certain sort of forbidden lines. And so people have to vote. People have to vote.

People have to write their MPs. You know, what is, when you put yourself out there as somebody pushing back against initiatives like this, what, earlier in the show, we were talking about labels, you know, what opponents will ascribe to the other side of a debate. And it's, the, the slurs are getting less and less helpful to having any sort of debate. I, myself, am called a racist and a Nazi and a baby killer all the time. unhelpful right what is what attacks have you have been leveled at your reputation oh i mean people sort of assume things about my political views people assume whatever and they sort of nobody's able to view things as moderation nobody's able to view things as you know their political opponents are somebody who is slightly you know different from them in some issue and the other problem is that

I get death threats on a not irregular basis. It is, I suppose, somewhat funny that people who are against guns are sending me death threats because I'm not sure if they've done the math. But it is, you know, and of course it doesn't do a whole lot to convince you that you don't need firearms when crazy people want to send you threats to your life. That doesn't say, oh, now it's time to get rid of my guns so that this guy. I can quite helpfully try to kill me. But you do, you know, people cannot sort of have a consistent view of anybody they disagree with these days, it seems.

Yeah. And so they just immediately go to assuming that you must be the most extreme version of their political opponents that they can imagine. And it does get pretty tiring when you're sort of trying to explain. Yeah. And you're just trying to do a job. You're just trying to do a job that is, and there's a pathway for you to do it, and there are levers that you can pull. I want to thank you, Ian, for being here.

Ian Runkle, thank you so much for joining us. And I would like to point out that the government estimates on this program say it could cost $750 million. I don't know where we're going to get that money because we have none. And if anybody thinks that it's going to stop at 750, I've got a bridge to sell you. Ian, thank you very much. Thank you so much. And yeah, it'll be way over that number.

Coming up, stick around and play along for the legendary games. game show, is it BS or is it real? This is the Ben Mulroney show, and welcome back. It's Friday, and we like to have a little fun on Fridays. And yesterday, I, my producer, Mike, wrote as he does every day, my promo that I stand in front of a microphone and I read. And a lot of times I read it cold. He sends me an email and I just read it. Sometimes I get lucky and we do it in one take.

Other times, not so much. And yesterday, for the promo that was airing today about today's show, he said something about, I had to say something that he wrote about me stopping my losing streak on, is this BS or is it real. And I stand by that. A losing streak is not two. Okay? It's not two.

And a winning streak is not two. You have to be a very, very poor team to call a winning streak two. A streak is three or more. To be fair, I lost a whole bunch in a row, so two is pretty good. Yeah, that's just back to back. That was a back to back losses that I had. I did not, there's not a losing streak. If I lose today, that's the beginning of a losing streak.

Well, let me just say that our friend and fellow producer, Danny Vaughn sent me a note to say, time to humiliate Ben again. I'm just reading what you wrote. Yeah, you two are getting too big. for your britches. All right. So here's the game. We've got some news stories that will be,

uh, news stories that, uh, have been written by, because it used to be written by the producer, but now they're written by chat GPT. And, and,

uh, and I have to decide whether what I'm hearing is true or not. Now there's some colorful language in this show and this segment. So if you don't like the colorful language, turn off the, turn off the radio. Go do something else. Uh,

but I'm not apologizing for it. Sorry not sorry. As the kids. might say. And not for nothing, but we stepped up our show a little while ago when we brought Dave Bradley into this show. See, now that's some bullshit. This is bullshit. Man, this is some bullshit. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. You are fake news.

Yeah, so is it BS? Is it real? And thanks too. We've got some So Dave Bradley, he brings the gravitas to the show as a particular anchorman does. I look good. I mean, really good. Hey, everyone. Come and see how good I look. Yeah, you know, actually, Dave Bradley walks into the... He says that sometimes.

Every day. It's true. Very damn day. All right, shall we start? Go ahead. All right. Story number one, please. All right, an 80-year-old woman in Japan fell victim to a romance scale.

after meeting a fraudster on social media who claimed to be an astronaut stranded in space. He said he urgently needed money for oxygen. After several months, he developed a fake online relationship with her, eventually persuading her to send around 1 million yen. That works out to about 9,000 Canadian. Police in Hokkaido warned that such scams exploit lonely individuals seeking love. They're often based out of Asian fraud factories where workers are trained to manipulate victims. giving money through fake romances and other schemes.

So you want me to believe that a little old lady was convinced that she was engaged in a conversation and possibly a relationship with a spaceman. And she needed to send him money so that he could buy oxygen. Yes, that's the point of the game. Look, this is one that if I'm wrong, I will be happy to be wrong Because it takes us and I get it the old lady is lonely and she's I get It takes a particular type of silly That's the word I'll use silly for that to for this to be true So I'm saying it's BS

Is it possible this story is true? Yes it is I have I'm losing faith in humanity I'm losing faith in humanity I mean this There's some dude said, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to, I got this idea for a scam. I don't know this is going to work, but I'm going to go in a whirl. And it works, my God. All right, story number two, please. White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt sparked attention after sharing a post suggesting last week's 4.1 magnitude Utah earthquake was a sign of God's anger over the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The post linked the quake's timing to Acts 757. which recounts the stoning of St. Stephen, drawing a parallel to Kirk's death. The earthquake struck hours after Kirk was shot at Utah Valley University, and Levitt captioned her reposts simply with, wow. So, I didn't even hear there was an earthquake. So if there was an earthquake, I didn't hear it. So I'm really, I'm doubly, like, I don't even know if that earthquake is a real part of the story. So.

Of course. No, it's... I wouldn't put it past Carolyn Levitt to make a biblical... I'm going to say it's real. It's fact. Yeah. Yep, there we go. And he's back.

On the board. On the board. And it counts. It's good. And I hope you're playing at home as well. They're on the road. Play at home. All right.

Story number three. Defense Secretary Pete Haxeth has ordered the troops needing a facial hair exemption for more than a year must be discharged. though commanders can still grant temporary waivers if paired with a medical treatment plan. Exit said the policy which affects all services is meant to uphold grooming standards that underpin the warrior ethos. Most waivers address pseudo-folucolitis barbe, which is a shaving-related skin condition that disproportionately affect black men. So I think I heard something about this. I think I did.

So, yeah, there are certain people have certain issues and it can really hurt. So I'm going to say it's real. A similar event did take place. Oh, you see what's happening here? You see what's happening? The right side of history is winning again. Yes. I've got short-term memory loss.

Every dog has his day, and you had two, my friend, in a row. Okay, let's keep going. Let's see what Ben can do here now that he's got the wind in his sale. Story number four, please. Nepal's Gen Z protesters selected their next interim prime minister through a vote on Discord after K.P. Sharma Ali resigned amid deadly anti-corruption protests. The youth-led movement organized on the server Youths Against Corruption rallied against Ali's ban.

On 26 social media platforms that sparked clashes, it killed 51, injured over 1,300. Former Chief Justice, Susheila Karki, known for her anti-corruption record, won the online vote, is expected to be formally appointed. The move has drawn global attention, with some praising it as a bold step in digital democracy and others questioning its legitimacy. Okay, so I heard a little bit about this. I didn't follow it. I was, I don't know what I was doing at the time. I think I was watching, I think I was watching Gen V on Prime. So, I would. There were protests.

Yeah, there were protests. Did they actually elect someone through Discord? It's electing somebody on Facebook or on Twitter. Hey, zip it. Zip it. It happened. Your work is done. Okay?

You set it and you break the wrist and you walk away. Okay, that's all you do. You want, you're trying to. None of you are giving me anything here. I'm going to say it's real. It happened. You were correct. It's fact.

See, what she did is you pushed it there when you said, trying to vote on someone. You shouldn't have done that. I did push it. Were you going to go the other way? What's that? Were you going to go the other way? I might have.

Had you not said that. Yeah. I don't know if I would have. That would make you feel bad. Okay. Story number five. In 2023, Manchester anesthesiologist, Dr. Suhail and Jum left a patient

mid-surgery after claiming he needed a comfort break, only to be found having sex with a nurse in another operating room. He returned eight minutes later to finish the gallbladder procedure. The incident resurfaced after he applied to work again in the U.K. With a medical panel now reviewing whether or not he was fit to practice, and Jim admitted the misconduct blaming marital stress following his premature daughter's birth. Okay, this is a gross story. I found

I was having a nurse I remember 8 minutes First of all Eight minutes Good job man Yeah Yeah

Okay I'm gonna say it's false It happened Damn it I went for five reel in a row Yeah I won this one I won

Hey thank you guys very much And My win streak is at one All right Up next When a political stunt backfires It makes for good rate So stick around.

This is the Ben Mulroney show. This show is by Better Help. Let's be honest. We've all shared our problems in some pretty funny places, the group chat, your barber, maybe even a stranger on a plane.

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slash Mulruni. That's better, help.com slash Mulrooney. Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection, and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web. Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security.

Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. Yes, yes, yes, you are. On this Friday, you're listening to the Ben Mulringy show, and we thank you. And we thank you. You're listening to the show, but where you're listening, I have no idea. You might be listening on the radio live.

You might be listening syndicated. You might be listening on a streaming app like the IHeart radio app. But we're also on all the podcast platforms. We're also on social media. We're very, very popular on the Instagram machine. And we're also on YouTube where you can see this face that I was, you know, when I took this job in radio, I was really excited because I was like, I don't have to wear me. anymore. I don't have to do my hair. I don't have to do any of that stuff. And then we get the makeup. Then we get the, then we get the YouTube. And they pulled me back in. They sucked you back in. They sucked you back in. Yes. And later today, I'm going to go shoot the West block for global news, which will air on Sunday on global across the country. So, and that does require, that does require makeup. Okay. So the best laid plans, right? You have the best intentions and you can lay out, uh,

what you want and hope to God, everything goes according to plan. And sometimes God has other plans. And the NDP in Newfoundland got a taste of that in real time. So the provincial campaign was making an announcement on housing. And the NDP have a, like, it's their strategy to blame the housing shortage on the lack of available units. and in order to bolster that claim, they want to hear from an everyday Newfoundlander.

And so they invited their star, a woman by name of Shirley Gallagher, to the stage. And the hope was to have a regular person come and corroborate this political position, right? And because it's not political if it comes from somebody's lived experience. And so this is from a CBC story. So why don't you listen?

Keep in mind, the NDP claims that the housing shortage is due to a lack of available units. Here's what the star of this press conference had to say, and it's a little bit different than a messaging of the NDP. Yes, that's why there's a crisis. I mean, there are too many people in, apparently, obviously, and that's why, I mean, I'm a Canadian citizen. I work 50 years of my life, and I can't afford a house. Yeah, it's the immigrants.

It's the immigrants. The NDP guy, oops. That's not what we're talking about. We gave you your talking points. But that's what happened. Like, listen, you live by the everyday citizen,

you die by the everyday citizen. It happens. You're selling it on these press conferences, which I've been to a million of them, they bring out real people to say, yes, this is how it's impacting my life. And it has, you know,

that's how you push your, you make your point. But you know what? She didn't have. She didn't have a script. No. She spoke from the heart. And that may have been naivete on the part of the NDP to think she was going to speak from the heart.

And what she had to say in her heart mirrored their position. You don't do that. As as the one thing you know about lawyers is they don't ask questions. They don't already know the answers to. And the NDP should remember that. You don't put somebody up there unless you know exactly what they're going to say. Otherwise, you get what you get. But in this situation, what the NDP was doing was they were very much taking a narrow look,

a very focused narrow look at what the issue is. Yes, we don't have enough housing. Okay. Then she actually went broader and said, well, why don't we have enough housing? Well, it's because there's too many people. She's talking about immigration, which we know has caused big problems in a bunch of different areas. And yeah, we have too many people that are trying to get to live into too few spaces, which is, both things are true.

Yeah. But they just didn't want to acknowledge the other thing. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. But for the, listen, but I get it. In a campaign, you look at a problem and you say, here's the cause of the problem. And here's what we are going to bring to, to fix that problem. And they can have their, everyone can have their own theory of the crime during an election

campaign. And it's about who, who found purchase with the voter more. and so this was their theory of the crime the crime of a lack of housing it's because of a lack of supply and she came in and said wait hold on here's an alternate theory of the crime and they did not see that coming

but something tells me the next time they bring up an everyday Newfoundlander they will hand that person talking points and there are people that we see these faux pauses in press conferences all the time you don't have to top my head do you remember with the hair net in Quebec

with Jean-Jicep was Giuseppe Yeah, and when he was in the cheese factory, I think. Yeah, but yeah, exactly. And that was a faux pa because that wasn't somebody coming forward and saying something that they didn't expect. Yeah. But it's still, you get those things. Yeah, that was one of those looks that sort of saddled him with a particular image.

Michael Dukakis, same thing. With a tank. With a tank. And he looked like a little boy in a playing grown-up. Was he wearing a suit? I think he was wearing a suit. No, I don't think he was wearing a suit. but the helmet was so big on his head

and he was so small compared to the tank that he didn't come across as a commander-in-chief. Yeah. That was the problem. Jeez, what year was that? That was 19-88. Yeah. That was big.

Yeah, 1988. And then up here, obviously, when Justin Trudeau was came, he tried to get in front of the whole blackface thing. Yes, yes. He tried to get in front of the whole blackface thing, but that was difficult for him because when you're asked point blank, how many times have you dressed up in blackface and you say, I can't recall?

I don't think you can get ahead of that. If there's no number, then you can't get ahead of it because it could be bigger than where you've positioned yourself. Does that make sense? It does make sense. Yeah. But then again, now you get with press conferences. You worry mostly about if the leader's going to go off script.

And that's why they never answer questions. The media is only allowed to ask like one person. and one question and one follow-up. And usually the follow-up is, okay, you didn't answer my question. Yeah, but I will say this about this Carney Liberal Party. He does tend, in the House of Commons, I find the responses to the questions thus far to have been far more satisfying than anything I heard of the Trudeau liberals. Trudeau never answered a question.

No, none of them did. None of them did. Hear your talking points and pivot to these. and it was really frustrating as somebody who actually sees value in the debate in the House of Commons. Some people don't think it's all theater. I don't think that's the case. And I very much enjoy the real debate when it happens. But I really, I saw us living in a time where the Tories would ask a question and they wouldn't get an answer, which may, listen, that may explain why the conservatives just decided they were just going to, they were going to only make social media hits out of it.

because if you're not going to get an answer from these guys, we might as well just only take care of ourselves. It's fun as well. But in my humble estimation, I have seen more substantive, substantial responses by this Liberal Party than the previous iteration under Justin Trudeau. And that is satisfying to me. Now, I'm not to say they're answering all the questions,

but they are, they are, they are volleying back to a certain extent. And I think that's important for, for healthy debate in this country. What do you think the PR people, the press people for, I don't know, Donald Trump, do you think they have a heart attack every day he goes in front of a microphone? No, no, not anymore.

Not anymore. They let him do whatever. He grips it and rips it. And they, if you don't acknowledge failure, then you can't fail. I've never heard him say he's sorry or he made a mistake. He does not do that. So even if he, even if he puts his foot in his mouth, he's never going to admit it. So, and look, he's the president, twice elected.

He kind of knows what he's doing. Like, it doesn't look like there's rhyme or reason there, but he knows how to speak and what, and he knows who he's speaking to. And he seems to weather the storm every time he puts his foot in his mouth. You know, the other one that I was thinking about is, what happened with cannabis and Justin Trudeau? Oh, remember?

Oh, well, I do remember. I remember watching it. So for those of you at home who don't remember in 2015, during the election campaign, Justin Trudeau found himself, when he was in third place, found himself in a park in Vancouver. And he had a lot of people there showing him a lot of love. And I think he got very excited. And he said, I don't just believe in decriminalizing marijuana.

I want to legalize it. Everyone goes crazy. And that, I have no proof of this, but I've had people tell me that I'm probably on the right track. I've heard this from a number of people. That was completely spontaneous. And so the liberal party then had to go back and reverse engineer a policy. that worked with what the, with what he said, which is why they said, we're going to

tamp down on the black market and protect kids, neither of which have happened. But it's because of that reverse engineering and it wasn't an authentic policy that was born from the ground up and from a real need and from and with a real purpose behind it, that I think we have sort of the suboptimal cannabis industry in Canada that we have. Yeah, because it wasn't well thought out. And that's why we have, what, 3,000 stores? 3,000 stores and not enough companies that are competitive, either globally or domestically. All right, thank you very much for that.

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