GUN BAN EXCLUDES DEADLY VERSIONS
Semi-automatics partly legal under new law
• The Liberal government’s “incoherent” firearm ban excludes several rifles that are nearly identical to the so-called “military-style” firearms that Ottawa intends to outlaw, gun retailers say.
The ban, announced late last week, does not include the Chinese-made Norinco Type 97, for example, a semi-automatic version of the standard-issued rifles used by the People’s Liberation Army of China. Nor does it include the Russian-designed SKS rifle, the precursor to the popular AK-47; the Israeli-made Tavor .223, a short-barrelled semi-automatic rifle developed with the aid of the Israeli Defense Force; or the Canadian-made WK180-C, which gun publication CalibreMag said “functions much like an AR-15,” a firearm Justin Trudeau was at pains to highlight.
Meanwhile, the list bans a number of bolt-action hunting rifles used for large game. Some retailers worry the restrictions could also extend to accessorized shotguns used in bird hunts, due to broad language used in the regulations. A spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Bill Blair on Tuesday said the ban would not include shotguns, and was preparing an official statement on the matter as the National Post went to press.
Blair last week banned 11 broadly-defined firearm models, encompassing roughly 1,500 individual firearm variations. The prime minister justified the decision by saying that all firearms included under the ban were designed with an explicit purpose to “kill the largest amount of people in the shortest amount of time.”
“You don’t need an AR-15 to bring down a deer,” Trudeau said.
But retailers and distributors say the prohibition list appears to have been hastily assembled, arbitrarily excluding or including firearms, while leaving Canadian companies stuck with millions in unusable inventory.
An industry association is now calling on Ottawa to reimburse those firms by as much as $1.1 billion and clarify the apparent discrepancies.
“Minister Blair is either too inept to comprehend the scope of his regulations … or he lied to the government and Canadians,” the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association (CSAAA) said in a statement on Tuesday.
Alison de Groot, the managing director at the CSAAA, said some manufacturers are preparing to push back against the regulations, saying they prohibit certain firearms while allowing their competitors — often based in foreign countries — to continue selling in Canada.
“I’m sure they’re going to launch some kind of protest because their firearms are on the list while other firearms with very similar characteristics are not on the list,” she said.
“The list was incoherent.” The organization is now in regular calls with federal officials in an effort to hammer out various points of confusion.
In a phone call last Friday with the federal departments of Public Safety, Global Affairs Canada and others, de Groot said officials were unable to answer technical questions like how shipments of now-prohibited firearms would be handled by authorities.
One distributor, for example, was unsure whether authorities would intercept an incoming shipment that bundled legal firearms together with those that are now illegal. Officials were scrambling for answers in what appeared to be a hasty regulatory change that came as a surprise to both government and retailers.
“It was quite clear to us that those departments did not know this was coming, either,” said de Groot.
A spokesperson for Blair said certain semi-automatic rifles were not included in the ban because they did not meet certain thresholds — primarily that they are not considered to be of “modern design” and are not “present in large volumes in the Canadian market,” according to the regulations.
The Tavor .223 is a contemporary-style gun considered to be a modern take on the AR class of firearms, while the Chinese Type 97 has been sold at Cabella’s Canada outdoors box store, among other retailers across Canada.
Manufacturers, distributors and retailers are now preparing to sort through huge volumes of inventory that can no longer be sold.
“I’m stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars in parts, accessories and firearms that have been made prohibited with the stroke of a pen,” said Matthew Hipwell, president of Manitoba-based retailer Wolverine Supplies.
His initial estimates suggest as much as 25 to 40 per cent of his revenues will be evaporated by the ban.