doing a school project on gun laws in Canada. i have some question could you guys help

[Chris_m]

Hi i i just have a few questions on your opinion on gun laws in Canada i don't need a lot of people to answer but more the merrier.

1. should we need to apply for all these licences on permits to be able to go hunting or even to just own a gun??

2. What is considered to be a firearm for purposes of the Firearms Act and for offences related to the Firearms Act in the Criminal Code? personal experience: i do small game hunting so i was looking at the high powered pellet guns but i cant buy one because i dont have a licence.

[jwirecom109]

moved, wrong section

[CaperJim]

1 - As long as you don't have a criminal record, you should be free to purchase a gun. The mandatory safety course is nice though for completely inexperienced people to become familiar with and handle a firearm.

2 - Anything that ejects a projectile at 500 feet per second or better is considered a gun. I'm think that includes airsoft, paintball guns, potato launchers, etc, but not completely sure

[Gaidheal]

What school is assigning projects right now?

Something doesn't quite add up... highschoolers here start final exams this week I think.

[CaperJim]

Something doesn't quite add up...

Don't let them know you're on to them

[kennymo]

1) I would prefer not, the previous system required a person to be 16 years old, and a quick visit to your neighbourhood cop shop for a background check. Accomplishes basically the same thing as our current license at far less cost to the taxpayer. There was (and still is) a safety course you must also take if you wish to purchase a hunting permit. Exact details on that vary by province.

2) As previously stated, anything that can discharge a projectile over 500 FPS. Also, the receiver of any unassembled firearm, or even a deactivated firearm that has not been deactivated as per the current standards on such things. Older government approved deactivations are grandfathered into law.

You will find that the grievances of many are not over the fact that licensing, training, etc...exist in Canada, but that they have been written into law in such a fashion to discourage firearm ownership and give us a legal tightrope to walk to continue owning firearms for hunting and target shooting. What did Allan Rock say about the firearms act? "It has nothing to do with public safety"? He was one of the architects of the Firearms Act, several others of which have said te same. Yet it was sold to the general populace as 'safety'. And we've been stuck fighting that stigma ever since...

[TheCenturion]

1: I prefer licensing to having a background check/waiting period/whatever each individual time you purchase a firearm. The license is inexpensive and has a very low barrier to entry. However, firearms ownership should be decriminalized in general. I also like the requirement of a training course; it at least means somebody has shown you the basics. It would be better if the training course included live fire, but I don't know how practicable that would be in real life.

2: Currently, the law says a firearm is something that can discharge a projective at > 500 feet/second. This means it's dead simple to build a potato cannon, for example, that you'd then require a PAL to operate.

[Chris_m]

is is a final assignment so i decided to do a write up on gun laws in Canada

[CaperJim]

If you have a spud cannon that's capable of greater than 500fps, and you take it apart, are left with a few lengths of pipe, one of them is the receiver. But it's just a simple pipe.

Another issue - how do you lock out one of these guns?

[Chris_m]

thanks for all the help so far.

[kennymo]

1: I prefer licensing to having a background check/waiting period/whatever each individual time you purchase a firearm. The license is inexpensive and has a very low barrier to entry. However, firearms ownership should be decriminalized in general. I also like the requirement of a training course; it at least means somebody has shown you the basics. It would be better if the training course included live fire, but I don't know how practicable that would be in real life.

2: Currently, the law says a firearm is something that can discharge a projective at > 500 feet/second. This means it's dead simple to build a potato cannon, for example, that you'd then require a PAL to operate.

I disagree with the 'waiting period every time'. Once you have one firearm in your possession, it's rather pointless and does little to nothing to prevent harm. Add to that you can illegally buy a firearm in any major centre through illicit sources rather quickly with a fistful of cash and questions to the right people....it's no help. The old FAC system would add a day or two for your background check if you didn't already own a gun, and there's little one can do beyond that.

[kennymo]

If you have a spud cannon that's capable of greater than 500fps, and you take it apart, are left with a few lengths of pipe, one of them is the receiver. But it's just a simple pipe.

Another issue - how do you lock out one of these guns?

In the case of mine, you take away the 120 psi compressor. Then it's useless.

[CaperJim]

In the case of mine, you take away the 120 psi compressor. Then it's useless.

The same could be said with an actual gun - put the magazine in a different room and it's useless. Still a receiver, still falls under the FA.

Are you getting this, pupil? You'll give your professor a headache with a paper on Canadian gun laws lol

[kennymo]

The same could be said with an actual gun - put the magazine in a different room and it's useless. Still a receiver, still falls under the FA.

Are you getting this, pupil? You'll give your professor a headache with a paper on Canadian gun laws lol

The compressor is the receiver. The ammunition is air and anything that fits in the barrel. Which leads to the complication of 'how do I store it separately from the ammunition?'. It's a big barrel, not much doesn't fit in there....

[RangeBob]

1. should we need to apply for all these licences on permits to be able to go hunting or even to just own a gun??

"Provincial Hunting Licences" are less of a licence, and more of a card to indicate you've taken the course. No criminal code with jail time that I know of. Also it's the first part of a use permit, the second part being the tags and seals per animal. (Ontario also has the Outdoors Card).


Possession and Acquisition licences of 1995's Firearms Act (Bill C68) ended the long standing 'firearms ownership is a right', and turned it into a privilege. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled it was a privilege in R. v. Wiles 2005 S.C.J. No.53.

MP Garry Breitkreuz (con), soon to be retired, believes as I do that possession should be decriminalized, and that the existence of a prohibition order (or bail condition) should dictate if you may possess or not. When Bill C68 was written, prohibition orders were held at court houses and not centralized, but with today's computers and a decade of screaming at court houses to forward their prohibition orders today's prohibition orders are all available centrally, thus a system based upon prohibition orders only is quite feasible in 2015 in a way that it wasn't in 1995.

Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said "To possess a firearm is a right, and it's a right that comes with responsibilities." Several cited R. v. Wiles contradicting him, but they forget that its the existence of the Firearms Act's licencing and resultant criminal code section that makes it a privilege -- and Blaney is an MP, and MPs can re-write and discard Acts at their pleasure.

gun ownership in rural areas “wasn’t just for the farm. It was also for a certain level of security when you’re a ways from immediate police assistance.”
-- Prime Minister Stephen Harper, (here)

Honourable senators, the main purpose of Bill C-68, the Firearms Act, was supposed to be to improve public safety. In the Supreme Court of Canada reference decision, the court observed that the registry for long guns was an attempt to bring an end to the problems arising from the criminal or dangerous use of firearms in cases such as suicide, accidental shootings and domestic violence. The court said the registry sought to deter the improper use of firearms and control access to them based on the person filing the application and the type of firearm.
With all due respect, honourable senators, creating a specific non-restricted or long-gun sub-registry of the existing Canadian Firearms Information System has done nothing further to increase public safety.
-- Senator St. Germain, http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/Sen/Ch...02-28-e.htm#53

"Lewis Drummond, provided the clearest evidence that a belief in the right to bear arms existed in the minds of some Canadian legislators. Drummond called the bill a 'tyrannical and arbitrary measure' expressly invoking the 'constitutional right that all men possessed to keep and bear arms for the protection of their property' ...
statements of Baldwin, Alwin, Cauchon, and Smith, suggest that a limited right to bear arms -- to protect property -- was relatively common view in the mid 1840s, at least amongst men with some legal training. No member of the Assembly, it should be noted, spoke against such a right."
...
"In 1859, the Province of Canada prohibited the carrying of daggers, dirks, iron knuckles, skull crackers, slung shots, or other offensive weapons of like character. Weapons like the bowie knife were 'un-English' and were 'used only by cowards'. The law, however, did not apply to firearms. The bill introduced in the legislature had mentioned pistols, but legislators removed the reference in the final act."
...
A number of leading politicians, including John A McDonald and Edward Blake, suggested that British subjects possessed a right to possess weapons grounded in the English Bill Of Rights. Ottawa thus refused to respond aggressively to the "pistol problem"
-- "Arming and disarming" pg 34 and pg 47
Prominent Liberal MP, and future Supreme Court of Canada Justice, David Mills, also raised this constitutional concern. He called the bill "very objectionable" for the British Constitution held that it was "one of the rights of a British subject to have firearms in his possession" It was "one of the provisions of the declaration of rights", he declared referring to the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Mills, like Blake, even referenced the American Second Amendment as a source for his claim, arguing that the American constitution had simply copied the "fundamental privileges of British liberty".
-- "Arming and disarming" pg 59

In March, 1877, Dominick Blake, the Minister of Justice in the Liberal cabinet of Prime Minister Alexander Mackensie, reported to Parliament that the "...practive of carrying fire-arms [sic] was becoming too common" especially among "...the rowdy and reckless characters and boys and young men". He introduced legislation which specified a criminal penalty for persons "...whosoever should present a pistol, without reasonable cause, at anyone, might be bound over to keep the peace for six months" (Hansard, 1877, p. 850).
Both Blake and Sir John A. Macdonald had concerns about the proposal. Both recognized that firearms, and handguns in particular, were routinely carried by law-abiding Canadians for self defense. Blake realized that criminals would probably ignore the law "...while the sober, law-abiding citizen would be unprotected". Sir John A. Macdonald stated that the law "...might have the effect of disarming the person who ought to be armed, and arming the rowdies" (Hansard, 1877, p. 851).
The bill was passed by Parliament in April of 1877; however, the controversy it generated indicated that it established early in Canada's history that it was both reasonable and necessary for law-abiding Canadians to carry firearms, and handguns in particular, as a deterrent to criminal assault.

For more on the history of Firearms As A Right in Canada, please see

http://www.cufoa.ca/articles/armes/armes_15_july_2007.html

Note that Joyce Lee Malcomn's testimony was accepted as true by the US Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008);
whereas the case brought by Dr. Edward B Hudson at http://www.cufoa.ca/1.html was after R. v. Wiles 2005 so the lower court was powerless to consider that firearms were a right in Canada as they had to use the decision and judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Foxer, and others, occasionally assert that there should be 'use licences' (a licence for hunting, a licence for target shooting, a licence for ...), and probably more clarity in law about misuse and negligence. (because firearms have a 1000m reach, unlike most other dangerous things in a household).

Senator Anne Cools:

http://senatorcools.sencanada.ca/Speech-in-Senate-Chamber-Senator-Cools-speaks-to-Bill-C-68-An-Act-respecting-Firearms-and-Other-Weapons-particularly-the-limited-use-of-firearms-in-spousalintimate-homicides/

http://senatorcools.sencanada.ca/Speech-in-Senate-Chamber-Senator-Cools-supports-a-reduction-to-the-Justice-Department-Estimates-in-order-to-deny-new-funding-for-the-wasteful-and-ineffective-Firearms-Program/

This is worth a read as well, for some of the Firearms Act history around 1994

http://www.rangebob.com/PassionatePoliticsOfShaughnessyCohenBySusanDelacourt/BillC-68.pdf