The year 2023 proved to be a contentious year for gun control in Canada. After much acrimony in both the House of Commons and the Senate, Bill C-21 was finally passed unamended, and received Royal Assent shortly before Christmas.
Whether or not this is to be considered a good thing depends on where one sits in the Canadian gun control debate.
C-21 ushered in a huge, sweeping net of laws and regulations. For the proponents of gun control in Canada — Polysesouvient, Doctors for Protection Against Guns and the Coalition for Gun Control — C-21 is largely satisfactory, as well it should be as in its essence. It is a shopping list of their sundry gun control demands of the Trudeau government.
Nevertheless, they have not been shy in stating that it does not mark the end of their demands. On the other side of the issue, groups such as the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, the National Firearms Association and various provincial hunting/sportsmen’s organizations have been steadfast in their opposition to C-21. They claim it will do very little in terms of combatting crime committed with firearms while further hobbling the firearms/hunting industry in Canada and burdening legal gun owners with yet more pointless layers of red tape and bureaucracy.
Bill exploits voter ignorance
Gun control in Canada is one of those strange policy realms in which people can be considered as knowledgeable or pretty much in the dark. C-21 was crafted by people who should be knowledgeable to appeal to those in the latter group. As such, it has several elements that exploit any lack of knowledge of Canada’s gun control regime. For instance, so called “red” and “yellow flag laws”.
Red and yellow flag laws are redundant and simply an appeal to the sensibilities of those who don’t know any better. Currently, under Canada’s existing gun control regime, anybody can call to report any gun owner to the authorities at any time for pretty much any “relevant” reason; and the police will show up.
If the reason for the visit is deemed to be legitimate, then all firearms will be seized. That this is already open to abuse in terms of vexatious and petty complaints is of no concern to anyone, save unsuspecting gun owners paid an unexpected visit by police for no reason save a grudge or the ego of someone with an axe to grind.
Further, these complaint calls can be done anonymously under the current system.
Under C-21, the subject of the complaint can know who made the complaint. While that may be of some interest to the gun owner about to undergo punishment by process, it is of great concern to women’s groups as it will reveal the identity of complainants in legitimate instances, as they themselves may have to petition slow moving courts to act. (1)
Problems with C-21 do not end there.
With C-21 as the law of the land, components like magazines and barrels will need licence verification prior to being bought, sold or traded between licenced individuals. This issue highlights some of the pitfalls of legislation based on ideology.
This reality comes into sharp focus when one considers just what exactly a firearm “barrel” is. What is it? A hollow tube. Not at first. Metal? Sure. What kind of metal? Which metal do you want? Polymer? Absolutely. Rifled? Not always. Threaded or pinned to fit into firearm receivers? Not all. Of certain lengths? Nope. What length do you want? Able to withstand high gas pressures? Again, nope, not all. Of specific diameter? Nope, try again.
From a practical standpoint, lengths of hollow metal or polymer pipe or rods purchased at any home improvement big box store can be used as a gun barrel with varying degrees of success, from one shot to hundreds or more. Even the bodies of ball point pens have proven to be sufficient.
Given this reality, the transfer of gun barrels cannot possibly be regulated as per the wishes of Trudeau and his gun control whisperers; all of which is to say the measure is nothing more than performative public safety theatre.
C21 is similarly problematic when it comes to popular semi-automatic firearms, but only if you are a legal gun owner who has meticulously obeyed the law.
Consider the case of the Ruger 10-22
C-21 bans the future introduction into the Canadian marketplace of semi-automatic long guns that have or can accept magazines of over the current legal capacity of five rounds. One of the problems here is that like all other recreational items and activities, firearms have their own cottage industry in terms of modifications and accessories.
So, while semi-automatic long gun XYZ may come from the factory with only a three-, four- or five-round magazine, enterprising individuals in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world can and will make larger capacity after-market magazines for it. The response by government will then be to ban that rifle or shotgun, even though the importation or possession of such magazines is already a criminal offence. A consequence of that ban will be the criminalization of any Canadian who had already purchased that firearm.
Lest anyone think that such a scenario is absurd, consider the case of the Ruger 10-22.
The 10-22 is a semi-automatic rimfire rifle introduced by Ruger in 1964. It comes from the factory with a 10-round magazine. However, the rifle is extremely popular with hunters and sport shooters on both sides of the border, and as a result is one of the most modified rifles in existence.
Consequently, there are after-market magazines with various 10+ rimfire cartridge capacities in existence. Canadian shooters have been using them without issue for decades.
Then, in 2007, Ruger rolled out a not-so-successful pistol version of the 10-22 rifle, called the Charger. The pistol was sold in the States, but not in Canada. Still, all 10+ capacity magazines for the 10-22 became prohibited devices as they were decreed to be pistol magazines made for the Charger, even though they were specifically manufactured for a rimfire rifle that had been in existence for more than 40 years prior to that U.S.-only introduction of the Charger pistol.
The absurdity of declaring something that has been in existence since the 1960s as having been specifically made for something that appeared in the 2000s is mind boggling. But that’s not the end of it, as legally Canadian owners of such magazines are liable to multi-year prison terms. (7)
Schrödinger’s magazine
Another central plank of Trudeau’s gun control policy is the Order-in-Council (OIC) of May 2020 in which some 1,500 types of semi-automatic long guns were declared to be prohibited firearms. It was at that time Trudeau stated, “You don’t need an AR-15 to take down a deer” — except when the government says so. Fast forward to December 2023 and Sidney Island off the BC coast, where it seems you do need an AR-15 to take down a deer. Not only AR-15s, but Americans with AR-15s, 30-round magazines, suppressors and helicopters to shoot 84 deer at a cost of $10, 000 per deer. (3)
In concert with Trudeau’s 2020 OIC, the government plans on instituting a magazine capacity cap of five rounds for all existing long guns and magazines, and for all action types, not just semi-automatics. This captures magazines that are both detachable from the firearm and those that are permanently fixed in place on the firearm. It is a particularly thorny issue.
The Trudeau government found it necessary to use semi-automatic rifles with 30-round magazines for small deer in coastal BC, but at the same time it wants to tell an elderly Inuit hunter out on the ice with his family that his old lever action rifle, chambered in a cartridge adequate for deer and caribou but unsuited to emergency use on polar bears, save for its magazine capacity, must handicap himself further and endanger their lives by having that magazine capacity reduced from seven or eight cartridges to five.
And all for the sake of satisfying gun control advocates in downtown Montreal. For despite Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s assurances that First Nations people such as this hypothetical Inuit hunter were adequately consulted and happy with his government’s gun control regime, including C21, what became evident during the various hearings was that this was, in fact, not the case. (2) (4)
The magazine capacity issue becomes even more complicated when one considers the sheer number of 10-shot Lee Enfield rifles in the possession of First Nations hunters and families. Of course, there is still the minor detail that as of at this time, there is no knowledge as to how all the various magazine capacity reductions can be done while leaving reliably functioning firearms that still retain some monetary value. And finally, there is the not so small matter of “Schrödinger’s magazine”.
Under the Firearms Act, it has always been illegal to be in possession of a magazine of capacity greater than the prescribed number of cartridges. Now, as C-21 comes into force, it will be illegal to possess a magazine that can be “modified” to beyond the prescribed capacity.
In real world terms, this means magazines that have been limited to the prescribed capacity by some mechanical means, such rivets or metal pins for example. The issue lies in the fact that for many magazines, it is not possible to determine whether it is modified or can be modified by simply looking at it. And the only way for an individual to determine as to whether the magazine is modifiable is to try and see if it can be modified, preferably before that individual is found to be in possession of it by police who then determine that it is indeed modifiable (go to jail).
And therein lies the rub.
Trying to find out if one has a prohibited device in the form of a modifiable magazine requires one to break the law by seeing exactly how many cartridges it will hold or tinkering with it to see if it can hold more than the prescribed number of cartridges. So, to determine whether one is breaking the law (possession of a modifiable magazine), one must break the law (modify the magazine). Rest assured, under C-21, doing so will result in a jail sentence, unless one is a La Presse reporter from Quebec and has the blessing of gun control advocates. (5) (6)
Little substance
All in all, C-21 provides very little substance in the way of preventing crimes with firearms. It is overly bureaucratic and restrictive towards those who willingly follow the rules of Canada’s already stringent firearms law regime, while doing very little to deter those who flout those same rules to commit crimes.
In short, there is nothing in C-21 that would have prevented people like the Nova Scotia mass killer from being able to carry out his rampage, despite what the Trudeau Liberals and their supporters would have one believe. The firearms used in that tragedy were all illegally obtained.
Nothing in C-21 would prevent the same thing from happening again. In fact, all the laws needed to prevent that tragedy from occurring are already in place. What was needed to prevent it from occurring was enforcement of existing laws, not the creation of additional laws that make it doubly illegal to obtain illegal firearms and murder with those illegal firearms.
In the end, C-21 is simply a sop to those who know little about Canadian gun laws, designed for the appearance of a government getting tough on thugs with guns, while it merely turns the screws ever tighter on those who have always played by the rules.
References/Links:
(1) https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/SECU/meeting-65/evidence
(2) https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/liberals-gun-control-bill-indigenous-hunters-risk/wcm/ccdd9524-
(3) https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/semi-automatic-assault-style-rifles-to-be-used-for-sidney-island-deer-kill/wcm/fa8f672e-7306-4c2b-b217-c36c4441888a/amp/
(4) https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/171db_2023-12-13-e#59
(5) https://cssa-cila.org/reporter-breaks-the-law-and-admits-it-so-why-no-criminal-charges/
(6) https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/2023-11-28/armes-a-feu/ottawa-bannira-les-chargeurs-modifiables.php
(7) https://www.ofah.org/firearms/rcmp-prohibition-1022-magazine/
George Fritz lives in Greater Sudbury. A rotating stable of community members share their thoughts on anything and everything, the only criteria being that it be thought-provoking. Got something on your mind to share with readers in Greater Sudbury? Climb aboard our Soapbox and have your say. Send material or pitches to [email protected].
