PARLIAMENT HILL—Seven million rifles and shotguns in Canada have “dropped off the radar” following destruction of all the registry data and elimination of mandatory sales records for gun dealers and stores, says a chief firearms officer who lost a battle over rifle and shotgun sales with Public Safety Minister Vic Toews last June.In the wake of a gunman’s massacre of 20 school children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, Dec. 14, Ontario Chief Firearms Officer Chris Wyatt told The Hill Times elimination of the long-gun registry, along with regulations later passed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and his Cabinet, will make it virtually impossible to trace long guns, including powerful semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, once they leave store shelves and gun dealer shops.
“Seven million firearms, nationally, have just dropped off the radar, seven million long guns,” Mr. Wyatt, a superintendent with the Ontario Provincial Police, said in an interview. Mr. Wyatt said, among other developments, that Canadian Tire, which he lauded as a “model business” when it comes to controlling rifle and shotgun sales even without pressure from government agencies, has already begun expanding the number of its stores that stock and display firearms, after the iconic chain reduced or eliminated gun displays in many of its stores after the federal registry began to be phased in nearly two decades ago.
The Firearms Act required confirmation of possession and acquisition licences before any store or person could transfer or sell anyone a rifle or shotgun, known as non-restricted firearms. Under the law, gun sellers also had to report their sales to the RCMP-administered Canadian Firearms Centre.
Those requirements no longer exist, following the day Bill C-19 took effect last April 5 and Cabinet’s June passage of regulations forbidding provincial firearms officers from requiring gun stores or other businesses that sell firearms to maintain a ledger of all sales.
“I think it’s open to abuse. We had a really good system beforehand, a means of checking that unlicensed persons or criminals weren’t legally acquiring firearms. Now we have something close to what they have in the States,” said Mr. Wyatt.
The Firearms Act amendments and regulatory retreat have come back to haunt the Conservative government following the Sandy Hook killings, with a spate of news stories this past week pointing out Canada’s decision to ease off control over rifles and shotguns, while maintaining tight restrictions over restricted handguns and restricted, but still legal, versions of rapid-fire semi-automatic rifles.
The variant of a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle version used by Newtown gunman Adam Lanza, 20, whose mother owned the rifle and had it registered in the state, according to reports, is prohibited in Canada under the act because of its military style and appearance. But another 14 variants of the same Bushmaster semi-automatic rifles are legal and continue to be registered as restricted long guns in Canada, used mostly by gun-club members and target enthusiasts. The .223 calibre bore of the rifle, barely wider than a .22 calibre rifle, makes it too small for large-game hunting.
Stores or gun dealers that sell rifles such as the Bushmaster AR-15 must still report the transactions, and names of the buyers, to the Canadian Firearms Centre, where they will be entered in a registry that continues for handguns and specialized rifles used or maintained by clubs or target-range shooters.
Mr. Wyatt predicted that with the shifting landscape of control over rifle and shotgun sales and ownership in Canada since last March, when the Conservative majority pushed Bill C-19 to end the registry and destroy its records through the House of Commons and the Senate, will send gun control in Canada closer to the free-for-all attitude espoused and fiercely advocated by radical firearm owners in the United States, who base their position on American revolution-era U.S. Constitutional guarantees of freedom to bear arms and maintain citizen militias.
Mr. Wyatt explained that when he and Mr. Toews locked horns last June over his insistence that dealers and stores continue to keep ledgers of sales, even though the registry had been eliminated, he and other provincial chief firearms officers across the country imposed the measure under a section of the Firearms Act that authorizes them to institute safety and storage rules on licence holders, including gun shops.
Mr. Toews (Provencher, Man.) and the federal Cabinet passed a regulation circumventing that provision, apparently a loophole the government overlooked when it passed Bill C-19. Mr. Toews argued store ledgers were an attempt to maintain a “back door” registry that conflicted with the intent of the law ending the federal system.
A spokesperson for Mr. Toews said people who want to obtain firearms must go through a rigorous screening process before obtaining a licence to acquire guns. The screening includes questions about mental health, criminal background checks and internet checks, communications director Julie Carmichael said.
She said all individuals with firearms licences are checked against police databases to determine whether they have been involved in any illegal or high-risk incidents.
"Rather than putting a piece of paper next to a firearm through an ineffective registry, our government is focused on ensuring that firearms stay out of the hands of criminals and those who are not suitable," said Ms. Carmichael, who said also that the government has invested $7-million in the licensing system.
Mr. Wyatt said once rifles and shotguns are sold to individuals, they will be impossible to trace because there is no requirement for individuals to record or report rifle and shotgun sales and transfers to other individuals, which was required under the registry system.
Mr. Wyatt said most if not all gun dealers and stores maintained the ledger system of recording gun sales, first established in 1973, throughout the period when all long-gun sales were reported to the Canadian Firearms Centre.
“It was nothing new, I didn’t change anything, [there had been] just the repeal of the long gun registry, we had had that (ledger system) before. That’s what I tried to say, ‘This is nothing new.’ I’m not trying to have some sort of backdoor registry, which they were accusing me of,” Mr. Wyatt said.
Without the registry, and under the amended Firearms Act, which does not require gun shops or stores to confirm a rifle or shotgun buyer has a licence, Mr. Wyatt said he believes public risk of violence will increase in Canada.
He said he believes the risks will also increase for institutions such as schools and colleges, sites where disturbed individuals have wreaked havoc in the U.S. incidents like the Newtown massacre and earlier shootings, though the Sandy Hook attack was the first resulting in the mass deaths of such young children.
The 1989 shooting death of 14 women engineering students at Montreal’s L’École Polytechnique was a leading driver behind Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government’s decision to bring in legislation to establish the rifle and shotgun registry in 1995. Then justice minister Allan Rock, now president of the University of Ottawa, was given charge of the project and came under ferocious attack, including personal threats, from gun owners.
Mr. Wyatt mentioned one of his gun-culture foes, Tony Bernardo, head of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, is one of 12 firearms enthusiasts and registry opponents who make up Mr. Toews’ Canadian Firearms Advisory Committee. Mr. Bernardo was one of the most active gun lobbyists behind the Conservative decision to get rid of the long-gun registry, and his group later called on rifle and shotgun owners to simply trade firearms among themselves to thwart any remnant of registration control.
The advisory group last March urged Mr. Toews to end the classification of prohibited long guns in Canada and include those kinds of weapons, including fully automatic rifles, in effect machine guns, and ‘Saturday night special’ handguns in the restricted category, legal but registered.
Facing pressure in the House of Commons over that recommendation, Mr. Harper responded that the idea was not government policy. The government, however, acceded to an advisory committee recommendation to finally scrap regulations for tougher firearms office control over gun shows, which had been first passed in 1998 and never put into force through a series of Liberal and Conservative governments.
The Hill Times asked Mr. Wyatt whether the risks to public safety, and to institutions such as schools, as in the Newtown tragedy, will increase under the new gun-control regime in Canada.
“Tony Bernardo would tell you no, but I wouldn’t agree with that,” Mr. Wyatt said. “It’s really close to impossible to trace long guns once they have left the business,” he said.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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