It’s been a very long time coming, but we’ve finally taken a very small step away from the abyss. As of midnight last night there is no longer a requirement to register non-restricted firearms (most rifles and shotguns) in Canada.
The RCMP posted the highlights of the change in law on their Canadian Firearms Program website almost immediately, with the caveat that the change in law does not affect Quebec residents due to a court injunction. The Quebec government is attempting to implement a provincial gun registry but wants to start with the error-ridden records of the federal government’s database.
Yes, that’s stupid and useless, but then so are most Quebec politicians if they think solving gun crime is best handled by importing a database so flawed it can’t be used in court.
From the RCMP’s Canadian Firearms Program website:
Hi:
Is there anybody that can tell me the real purpose of the POL?
If a person is responsible enough to own a gun and ammunation for
it, he or she should be responsible enough to buy a gun sell or
trade as well as the person that owns a PAL.
Maybe im wrong but as far as im concern its a system that the
liberal invented to have less people buying guns in the country.
Pal or POl is two different pieces of paper for the same
person. Why two licences?
Thanks Herve
Hi Herve,
You could have one or the other, but not both, Herve, and the entire 1995 Firearms Act and its Criminal Code amendments were about getting guns out of the hands of law-abiding Canadians. It was all about placing barriers in front of people and it’s worked amazingly well.
The sole purpose of the POL was to inflate compliance numbers. At that time I don’t think the Liberals cared whether or not Canadians could buy/sell firearms so much as they wanted big numbers so they could claim success. Sure, stopping people from buying and selling firearms was always a part of their plan, but the POL was all about selling the public that compliance with their law was high.
The POL was only $10, where the Possession and Acquisition License was $60-$80 depending on whether or not you owned handguns.
With the POL there was also no requirement to pass the Canadian Firearms Safety Course, and I think it was also restricted to long gun owners only. If you owned handguns you were forced to get the PAL. I could be wrong on that last point though.
The Liberals sent university students to shopping malls to “sell” Possession Only licenses. There was at least one case that made the news where all the licenses they’d sold at one mall were stolen from the rental van.
At the height of their “success” they claimed to have 2.8 million of the 3.2 million gun owners in Canada in their system. Of course there were probably more than 7 million gun owners at the time, but not according to Liberals. The official number of licensed gun owners in Canada is now below 1.9 million, so of their so-called success at 2.8 million POL/PAL license holders, almost one million of those have not bothered to renew. A portion of that will also be people who have since passed away.
Also… thanks for the coffee, Herve! Much appreciated.
Yours in Liberty,
Christopher di Armani
Regarding the new changs brought in by Bill C-19.
I assume that the POL and PAL (regarding non-restricted guns) is vertually the same thing. If long guns are no longer regestered then I would assume that people with POL’s could be buying used guns from there neighbours and they would still be within the law as there is no way to proove that they didn’t own them prior.?? AM I missing something?
The POL is “possession only” with no legal ability to acquire additional firearms. It is still illegal to sell a firearm to someone who does NOT have a PAL (Possession and Acquisition License)… that hasn’t changed. Under the changes that C-19 made to the Firearms Act and Criminal Code it is incumbent upon the seller of the firearm to ensure the prospective purchaser has a PAL before selling the firearm.
So anyone with a POL buying a firearm would be breaking the law, as would the seller of the firearm. Can people get around it? Of course. Gang members, for example, have been getting around the restrictions on handguns for almost 80 years now. Nobody seems to care about that, though. It’s just us law-abiding folks everyone is all freaked out about.
As wiser men than me have said before, “Laws only affect the law-abiding.”