Saskatchewan’s cities and towns won’t be passing a bylaw banning handguns because they can’t.

Newly tabled federal gun legislation would allow municipalities to ban handguns through bylaws restricting their possession, storage and transportation.

Speaking on Tuesday during the province’s COVID-19 briefing, Premier Scott Moe says something has already been done prohibiting municipalities from making such bans.

“We passed legislation this last session that really makes that portion of the announcement that the federal government made today, with respect to municipalities enacting bans on how handguns are moved around, or any type of municipal legislation with respect to handguns, isn’t available to Saskatchewan municipalities. We passed that legislation last session.” Moe said. ”

Moe says when he looks at what the Trudeau government has done, his main concern is that it was done without a real lack of consultation amongst provincial governments.

“In fact, I think our consultation has ultimately, you know, amounted to a phone call after the legislation was introduced publicly. That’s the degree of consultation that our province, at least Saskatchewan, has had. So we’ve had to be fairly proactive in our efforts of passing legislation last section that would prevent this patchwork of numerous different municipal laws in different communities across Saskatchewan.” Moe said. “Had we been consulted, I think we would have quickly indicated to the federal government that it isn’t law-abiding firearms owners that are the problem when it comes to crime rates, using firearms. It most certainly is firearms that are acquired by a different way, either smuggled and I think they’re addressing that here today, but also store stolen firearms, that are responsible for many of the challenges that we have with firearms-related offenses here in Saskatchewan.