Canada’s Conservative leader now says he will keep firearms ban

Under pressure, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole reverses course on campaign promise to repeal 2020 firearms ban.

Amid days of pressure to clarify his party’s stance on gun control legislation in Canada, the leader of the country’s Conservative Party has pledged to maintain a 2020 ban on some firearms if elected later this month. Speaking during a news conference in Vancouver on Sunday, Erin O’Toole said the Conservatives would keep in place a prohibition on some “assault-style” weapons that was imposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in March of last year. That contradicts the Conservatives’ election platform, which says the party plans to repeal last year’s ban.