Canadian Gun Confiscation

Sadly Canada never managed to abolish its long gun registry and thus any firearm you own in that country is known the the government. Many people often ask what’s the harm in the government knowing what you have unless you have something to hide? The problem with gun registration is that it leads to confiscation every single time.

Take for instance the current kerfuffle in Canada. The Canadian government has reclassified the Norinco Type 97A and are trying to confiscate them (at least they’re willing to pay $1,400 per rifle but you don’t have a choice in whether or not you’re willing to sell the gun):

Several gun owners are refusing to surrender a semi-automatic rifle that was imported from China and bought legally before the RCMP retroactively declared it a prohibited weapon.

15 97A owners are taking the government to court over the reclassification. Of course Canada isn’t the only country that reclassifies firearms on a whim, recently our own ATF decided to reclassify pistol grip equipped shotguns without a stock. Thankfully we don’t have a long gun registry so the ATF’s only method of confiscation is to visit every gun store in the country, dig through all the stores’ 4473 forms, and try to classify whether or not each shotgun sold had a pistol grip without a stock. That’s still too easy for my comfort but at least it requires some semblance of work.