Sault gun shop owner calls new government bill ‘a closet gun registry’

Reg Perry, Great Northern Gun and Bow Shop owner/operator, is concerned with a new federal government bill, tabled Mar. 20, which would introduce measures designed to cut down on gun-related crime.

The legislation, if passed, would allow authorities to dig deeper into the backgrounds of people who wish to buy guns.

Instead of looking into the five years of a person’s life before he/she submits a firearm licence application, personal history questions would go back to cover an individual’s entire life.

“The general firearms community doesn’t have an issue with things that are really safety oriented, but that’s not the purpose of a lot of this legislation that’s going to get imposed,” Perry said, speaking to SooToday Tuesday.

Perry said the Liberal government is trying to fix a U.S. problem in Canada, calling most Canadian gun owners peaceful, responsible citizens who simply enjoy hunting or spending time on the shooting range.

“Everyone’s concerned they’re creating this back door gun registry system.”

“It took us 20 years to get rid of the previous gun registry system (introduced by the Liberals in the 1990s and scrapped by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives) and now they’re starting to collect the same intrusive information.”

The federal government’s bill would, if passed, require gun shop owners like Perry to keep records of all firearms sales for 20 years.

“They’re placing the onus on us to collect and store this information for 20 years. Plus, we’ll have to literally phone in every sale to the RCMP. A customer could be standing right in front of you showing a valid firearms license, but you’ll have to phone it in to the RCMP giving them the details of the sale.”

“They say they’re not going to do a firearms registry but now they’re going to make us phone in (to the RCMP) and verify everybody’s firearm and have the transaction approved. It makes you feel like you’re selling restricted firearms.”

“It may not be an official gun registry but it’s going to be containing the same kind of information the old one did…it’s a closet gun registry system,” Perry said.

The bill also calls for gun owners to have a special permit to transport their guns, except when taking them home from a gun shop or to a shooting range.

The Harper government had repealed that restriction.

“People have gone through all the hoops, passed all the background checks and never had anything worse than a parking ticket, but they’re being treated like a criminal or a menace to society because they want to be able to take their gun to a gun show or to the store for repair, having to wait for two weeks for a special permit to do it,” Perry said.

“It’s just kind of silly that if you have passed all your background checks and if you’ve got a permit to go back and forth to the range, then why wouldn’t you allow people to take it to a gun show to sell it or to a gun shop to have it repaired.”

Another headache for gun shops and gun owners is an all-but-unknown United Nations Firearm Marking program, which, Perry said, Canada intends to sign on to.

350,000 firearms are imported into Canada annually, which, under the UN plan, must be marked by distributors within 60 days of arriving in this country. 

Under the UN program, each new firearm purchased by a Canadian consumer will cost an extra $200 after it is permanently stamped or engraved with ‘Canada,’ a serial number, the manufacturer’s name and the last two digits of the year the firearm was imported.

“It is a huge expense and inconvenience which is going to be transferred to the consumer,” Perry said.

“The problem is every firearm (already) has a serial number on it, you can call the manufacturer and give them the serial number of that particular firearm and they’ll tell you when it was made, when it was shipped out of the factory and things like that.”

“The more troublesome you make it to be, the more expensive you make it, the less people will be inclined to participate in firearms. The UN Firearm Marking program is going to be a huge killer of sales once that kicks in. It’s going to be real sticker shock to people.”

Perry, who has owned and operated Perry’s Gun Shop for 33 years, suggested the government is clearly mistaken on many things when it comes to gun sales.  

In a Tweet from Mar. 20, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote “if you want to buy a gun, by law you’ll have to show a license at the point of purchase. Right now that’s not a requirement.”

Wrong, Perry said, emphasizing customers have always had to show a license at the point of purchase.

Perry also questions the wisdom of another aspect of the government bill, which would give authority back to the RCMP to classify firearms without political influence.

Perry said he suspects a gun control committee the feds wish to form “will be stacked with RCMP (which Perry suspects would like to take all firearms out of peoples hands), and people like Wendy Cukier (a Ryerson University professor) of the Coalition for Firearms Control, people that know technically nothing about how a firearm works.”

“They’re based on emotion, their desire is to put everything in the prohibited category and eliminate firearms, they’re not putting people on the board from the firearms community who have an educated opinion,” Perry said.

As things now stand, most gun owners in Canada possess what are classified as non-restricted firearms, which are ordinary rifles, shotguns or combination guns.

To have a gun in Canada, you need a gun licence.

A would-be gun owner fills out an application which includes personal history, safety training certificate, references, a photo and fee, then complete and pass the Canadian Firearms Safety Course.