RCMP to confiscate more guns before registry ends By Jeff Davis, Postmedia News January 6, 2012
Some gun owners are considering a legal challenge against the RCMP's move to reclassify and revoke licences for certain scary-looking weapons.
Photograph by: Handout, RCMP
With the firearms registry on death's door, the RCMP are using what little time remains to reclassify and seize certain scary-looking guns from Canadian firearms owners.
Among the guns being seized is a small-calibre varmint rifle called the Armi Jager AP80. Like many non-restricted rifles, it is semi-automatic and fires the .22-calibre bullet, the smallest and weakest used in any long gun.
The AP80 has been singled out because it looks too much like the infamous AK-47 assault rifle, although it shares no parts or technical similarities with that infamous battle rifle.
On Dec. 20, the RCMP Canadian Firearms Program — the office charged with administering gun control regulations in Canada — served hundreds of registered firearms owners with a "notice of revocation."
"This notice is to inform you that the firearm registration certificates indicated below have been revoked," says the letter, obtained by Postmedia News. "You have 30 days to deliver your firearms to a peace officer, firearms officer . . . or to otherwise lawfully dispose of them."
The letter says the AP80 was "incorrectly registered" in the past, and is being banned because it is now considered a member of the AK-47 family.
"The above mention firearm is prohibited as a variant of the design of the firearm commonly known as the AK-47 rifle," the letter says.
Until Dec. 20, the AP80 was classified as a non-restricted firearm, the most lightly controlled category of firearms in Canada. It has now been moved to most tightly controlled category: the prohibited firearms list.
As a result, the AP80 can now be owned or used only by people possessing certain rare "grandfathered" prohibited licences.
The RCMP also issued a notice of revocation for the Walther G22 rifle on Dec. 30. This gun, also a .22-calibre semi-automatic, was prohibited because it has a removable "bullpup" style shoulder stock.
The Walther G22 vaguely resembles the Beretta Storm carbine, used in the Dawson College shootings.
The letters say nothing about compensating gun owners for the seizures.
Michael Patton, a spokesman for Public Security Minister Vic Toews, said these recent changes do not foreshadow a broader reclassification effort.
"As classification of firearms is a manual process, from time to time there are errors that need to be corrected," he wrote in an email. "However, let me be clear: there is no plan to broadly reclassify firearms."
Ottawa firearms lawyer Solomon Friedman says the consequences could be severe for any owners who don't comply with the confiscation notice.
"If you don't surrender this without compensation, the RCMP can come to your home, seize it and charge you with possession of a prohibited firearm," he said.
Friedman says some owners of the AP80 are considering challenging the seizure order in court.
Under current firearms law, bureaucrats at the Canadian Firearms Program can reclassify any firearm through orders-in-council. Such reclassifications are done without parliamentary input or oversight.
Friedman said this confiscation effort contradicts the spirit of Bill C-19, the Harper government's legislation that will relax gun control, which is currently before the House. He noted the RCMP served its letters of confiscation while MPs were away on holidays.
Moving these firearms into higher classification brackets means their owners will still have to register them even after the Harper government's firearms law passes.
By changing classifications now, the RCMP will retain records of these owners even after the long-gun-registry data is destroyed.
Friedman says activist bureaucrats at the Canadian Firearms Program are using what little time remains to move more firearms into the restricted and prohibited categories.
"Remember, once the gun registry is eliminated, the RCMP will lose their ability to identify, target and harass law-abiding owners on non-restricted firearms," he said. "They only took notice of (the AP80) when the gun registry is in its death throes."
Friedman says there is a broader movement at the Canadian Firearms Program to seize small-calibre rifles that are dressed up to look like assault weapons.
They include .22-calibre semi-automatics made to resemble guns such as the M-16 assault rifle and MP5 submachine-gun used by police and military.
Tony Bernardo, executive director of the Canadian Sports Shooting Association, says the RCMP is in the midst of a "campaign of confiscation."
He said his membership is "appalled" by these efforts.
He described the AP80 and G22 as "plinking" rifles, better for little more than shooting tin cans for target practice. Bernardo called the confiscation effort "silly" and "shameful."
"These things are not assault rifles; they're .22s like every farm kid has," he says. "They happen to look racy, but that doesn't make them any deadlier."
Bernardo said seizures like this only reinforce belief in the old gun freedoms adage: "Registration leads to confiscation."
He said the RCMP is "desperate" to seize as many firearms as it can, and to alter classifications to ensure the names of as many firearms owners as possible remain on the books.
"This has a tremendous impact on RCMP's credibility when it comes to firearms issues," he said. "They're making fools of themselves when they launch these kind of campaigns."
