TheGunBlog.ca — The Liberal Party of Canada, assisted by its allies in parliament and in the RCMP, is working to confiscate every gun that government-licensed firearm owners have registered with the administration.
The confiscation fantasy isn’t new.
It’s the latest and most obvious example of an old concept that many gun owners refuse to believe: Registration leads to confiscation.
More accurately: Registration leads to attempted confiscation. Many attempts fail.
The Numbers
Canada’s 2.35 million licensed gun users have registered about 1.4 million of our firearms with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Canadian Firearms Program.
- Handguns: 1.3 million (91% of registrations)
- Rifles: 125,000 (9% of registrations)
- Shotguns: ~500 (~0% of registrations)
Thousands of previously registered and legally owned firearms labeled as “Prohibited” have been seized and destroyed since their owners died, because it’s illegal in most cases to transfer their registrations to another person.
How We Got Here
- June 1969: Liberal Party of Canada passes Bill C-150, inventing a law to confiscate firearms by assigning them to arbitrary categories.
- December 1991: Conservative Party of Canada passes Bill C-17 authorizing cabinet to arbitrarily assign certain firearms to the pre-confiscation categories for eventual destruction.
- December 1995: Liberal Party expands the mass criminalization of gun users by so much that they create a spinoff of the Criminal Code: the Firearms Act (Bill C-68). They invent the current anti-gun regime, including: the criminalization of gun users who aren’t government approved, and the arbitrary and misleading gun-confiscation labels of “Prohibited,” “Restricted” and “Non-Restricted.”
- May 2020: Liberals order the confiscation of almost all “Restricted” rifles (110,000, mostly AR-15s), and tens/hundreds of thousands of unregistered “Non-Restricted” rifles and shotguns.
- October 2022: Liberals order the confiscation of all 1.3 million legally owned and registered handguns after their owners die. The forced seizures in slow motion become law in Bill C-21 in December 2023.
What’s Next
- Pending: The Liberals have said they will order the forced surrender of existing rifles and shotguns that are centrefire, semi-automatic, and take detachable ammo mags. (Bill C-21 prohibits future designs of such firearms.)
Notes on the Numbers
- Estimates suggest that Canada has about 3 million to 4 million gun owners, about half of whom have a licence (PAL).
- Estimates/guesses suggest that licensed gun owners registered roughly half their rifles and shotguns between 1998 and 2012, when Liberal politicians had made it the law to do so. Conservatives undid that law.
- Registered Handguns: Includes about 1.1 million “Restricted” handguns and 150,000 “Prohibited” handguns.
- Registered Rifles: Includes about 110,000 rifles that the Liberals+RCMP de-registered and declared “Prohibited” as of 01 May 2020 and that were registered and deemed “Restricted” before then, plus about 12,000 “Prohibited” rifles, plus 40,000-400,000 unregistered “Non-Restricted” rifles.
- Registered Shotguns: Includes about 400 “Restricted” models and 100 “Prohibited” models. The Liberals haven’t targeted all their owners for forced seizures.
Note on the May 2020 Firearm-Confiscation Fantasy
The fantasy died the instant the Liberals delayed their surrender deadline until after the next election. Opinion polls show they are likely to lose by a landslide to the Conservatives, who have pledged to reverse Liberal policies.
Key Takeaway
Gun owners don’t register their guns, former gun owners do.
