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Yet we keep getting more gun-control laws. We also keep getting longer and longer lists of banned firearms 鈥� and, in classic Liberal 鈥渄eliverology鈥� style, ever-delayed deadlines by which they鈥檙e to be confiscated.聽It鈥檚 been five years since then-prime minister Justin Trudeau 鈥渂anned鈥� assault-style rifles, a totally made-up category, and not a single one has been taken from its owner under the so-called ban.

To riff on the Liberal terminology, that鈥檚 鈥渓eadership-style governance.鈥� It sounds like leadership, but it doesn鈥檛 actually do anything.

Most gun offences in Canada are linked to organized crime and gangs, and most of the guns involved come from the United States via smuggling networks or, sometimes, drones. Every cop I鈥檝e ever spoken to who has knowledge of the subject agrees that further cracking down on legal gun owners via our gun-control laws is futile. But the Liberals keep doing it, perhaps because they like announcing it. Half of me suspects that鈥檚 why they鈥檝e never gotten around to actually seizing any guns: if they did, they鈥檇 have to stop talking about it. (The other half suspects they just haven鈥檛 been competent enough to do聽it.)

The fact is, most Canadians don鈥檛 know much about guns or our gun laws. They鈥檙e easy marks for shameless politicians.

But imagine if smugglers were bringing in huge quantities of some new form of booze, booze that was banned and/or tightly regulated here, and criminal groups were selling the smuggled booze and causing havoc. And imagine if the government responded by banning B.C. wines and raising the legal drinking age to 25 and making two pieces of ID mandatory at the LCBO.

You鈥檇 know that was absurd. You鈥檇 know that was the government just doing something to be seen to be doing something, even though it wouldn鈥檛 help.

That鈥檚 our past five years of gun control.

Gun control is important. I own firearms, and I have always complied fully with our gun laws, because I support the (theoretical) goal of keeping firearms away from criminals, the mentally unwell and anyone who might threaten another person. Because I support the laws and comply with them, I actually know what they are. That鈥檚 why I know that nothing the Liberals have proposed in the past five years has made any sense.

And it鈥檚 worse than that. The changes made in recent years have taken a once generally functional system and introduced absurdities to it. Describe a gun to me, and it鈥檚 even money if I can guess whether it鈥檚 banned or not.

There鈥檚 no logic behind any of this. Just vibes. Gun control is ostensibly about regulating the sale, possession and use of firearms by authorized individuals. Canada does that really well. What our gun-control system has become, though, is a machine that generates election ads for the Liberals.

Border security to clamp down on gun smuggling would keep Canadians safer. More resources to combat intimate-partner violence would keep Canadians safer. Every party should support such measures 鈥� and every party does.

But none of that is as exciting for the campaigning politician as announcing a new ban on thousands more rifles that the government will get around to collecting at some unknown future date. So that鈥檚 what we get.

That鈥檚 what we got for the last five years of Trudeau, anyway. There might briefly have been hope that Carney would do better. He鈥檚 already disavowed a number of Trudeau-era policies because they didn鈥檛 make sense. Gun control 脿 la Trudeau should have been one of them.

But alas, it鈥檚 not to be. Indeed, Carney never sounds more like Trudeau than when he鈥檚 talking about guns.