The long-gun registry seems to have gone out with a whimper instead of a bang.
Bill C-19 received royal assent on April 5, killing the long-gun registry in every province but Quebec (where a court battle over destroying registry records prompted a judge to issue an injunction keeping it temporarily alive).
Longtime registry opponent Fred Tait said he was surprised by the low-key reaction at his local coffee shop.
“It doesn’t seem to have generated much comment in the local knowledge centre (coffee shop),” joked Tait, a rancher and National Farmers Union co-ordinator from Portage.
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“I would have expected something more celebratory.”
It was back to the future for gun dealers like Travis Vandaele, owner of Jo-Brook Firearms in Brandon, who have returned to the old ledger system.
“Most customers are quite happy with it — it takes a little less time to sell a gun,” he said. “We still have to record everything in a ledger and check that person’s licence is valid.”
The ledger, a big white-covered book that contains the Possession and Acquisition Licence (PAL) number, names, addresses and contact information for gun buyers as well as the serial numbers of their purchases, was in use for decades prior to the passage of the revised Firearms Act in 1995.
Sales of restricted and prohibited class firearms, such as pistols and some military-style assault rifles, must still be called in. Before a buyer can take such weapons home, they must be fitted with a trigger lock inside a locked case and a temporary Authorization for Transport must be secured from the province’s chief firearms officer.
But for most gun owners, things are more straightforward, said Brad Meyers, owner of Meyer’s Auction Service.
Registration with the Canadian Firearms Centre used to take up to three hours, said Meyers, who takes hundreds of guns on consignment for annual spring and fall gun auctions in Arden.
“I think it is going to cut down on our waiting times,” said Meyers. “We’ll make sure the guy’s got a PAL, it’s current, and we’ll carry on from there.”
However, Meyers will still need to keep his own “mini-registry” of consignors and buyers — the big white ledger book — in case a gun turns out to be stolen.
“If a year down the road, the police come and ask me where I got it from, if I can’t verify it, then what do I do?”
That happened to him once and it took a year to settle the matter, with Meyer being out the cost of the gun.
“It was not a perfect system,” said Meyer. “But you were a little more sure of yourself.”
Tait, an avid hunter and gun collector, was active in the 17-year battle to axe the registry, which he described as “bad policy” combined with the “poorest administration you could imagine.”
The licensing of gun owners and safe storage requirements introduced in Bill C-68 make sense to him, but other aspects still irk him.
For example, he said it was absurd his prized .308 FN FAL was classed a prohibited weapon. He said that’s made it into a virtually worthless “safe queen” that can never again be loaded or taken to the local licensed gun range.
“I think it’s the greatest stupidity that I couldn’t talk about without uttering a lot of four-letter words,” said Tait, terming it “de facto confiscation.”
Blair Hagen, a spokesman for the National Firearms Association, said that Bill C-19’s passage is only part of the election promise made by Stephen Harper’s government to gun owners.
“The firearms community’s objections to Canada’s gun control laws go far beyond the ending of long-gun registry,” said Hagen, adding that the group will continue to press for further changes to the “broken” Firearms Act.
