Shooters up North celebrated a rare gun-rights victory in April, when the Canadian federal government finally euthanized its expensive and useless ‘Long Gun Registry.’ The celebrations were short, however. Eager to appease suburban voters and swinging liberals, Ottawa promptly moved to ban ‘body armour.’ Then PM Stephen Harper’s ‘Conservative’ party has quietly announced that all Canadian gun owners will have to start paying a $60 fee to renew their firearm licenses every five years. It gets better: owners of handguns and other ‘restricted’ firearms (ooh, that sounds evil, doesn’t it?) have to fork over $80 . . .

These fees have actually been on the books for years, but the Conservative government has waived them since 2006. In hindsight, those waivers seem to have been a nakedly cynical gesture to shore up support among rural Tory voters while the party worked to repeal the Long Gun Registry. Now that the registry is gone, the Tory party considers its promise fulfilled. So now it’s time to throw gun owners under the bus in order to avoid appearing too ‘gun-friendly’ to suburban swing voters.

As bad as our ATF and Justice Department are, our northern neighbor reminds us that things could be so much worse.

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21 COMMENTS

      • another person who thinks he knows california.

        I don’t think you can really compare Canada and cali- there are too many wierd pros and cons between them. In Canada, 12 inch shotguns are legal and 15 rounds in a .22 semi is as well. but they can only have 5 rounds in a centerfire rifle, manual or semi. they both have handgun registrations and no +10 round mags, and in Cali you can have 10+ rounds if either A) you bought it before 2000 or b) you bought it from a store unassembled. You can also technically buy Tech stocks w/ pistol grips and folding stocks, but you can’t actually put them on your gun. But in Canada, they can have pistol grips and all that stuff.

        in the end, don’t compare the two. they aren’t the same, they aren’t better or worse than each other- the only thing you can really say is that they are different.

        oh yeah, greetings from California. I know it sucks here, but please, don’t diss us. A lot of us don’t want it either. (and as far as I can tell, New York is worse.)

        • “but they can only have 5 rounds in a centerfire rifle, manual or semi…”

          Not true. The (asinine) 5 round limit only applies to semi-automatics. other repeaters can have as many as one wants.

        • I feel bad for poor ole Joel being stuck in the PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF COMMIEFORNIA. The PRC and NY are run by a bunch of silly dicKtators (I won’t be needing the edit button on this one), and they’re both worse than Canada.

        • “I know it sucks here, but please, don’t diss us. A lot of us don’t want it either.”
          ——
          Then don’t think of it as “dissing”. Think of it as friendly motivation to make a change.

  3. Yes body armor is so evil isn’t it?? think about the children!!!!
    All those life saving vests floating around could go nuts and start shooting the children!
    Ok sarcasm off..
    Well ok the laws have been on the books, and well I guess it is just time to enforce it. Now they can try and repeal that as well.

  4. Gun registry isn’t really “dead” either. Some CFOs are completely ignoring the order to stop and are still recording information in “ledgers” just like it used to be before the registry was in place. Well that law was removed when the registry came in and wasn’t put back when the registry died. Mind you, some provinces are obeying the government’s orders but others are going to court.

    To everyone in the US, protect your gun rights or you’ll end up like us or worse.

  6. I have an idea for a post but am not sure how to transfer that idea to the mods of TTAG, could someone point me to an email address or have a mod send me an email I can respond to? Or is my best bet calling the phone num at the top of the page?
    -Thanks!

  7. So the author of this piece thinks forking over up to 80$ per year is WORSE than a gun registry???? More like two steps forward one step back.

    • You have a 240 dollar gun. How would you feel about paying a fee equal to it’s value every 4 years? Or even 3? And know full well the money goes straight on regular nonsense.

      • The fee is every 5 years. And as a soon to be licensed (Canadian) gun owner, I would trade pay to play for that BS LGR ANY day. That thing was a total invasion of privacy and pork barreled spending boondoggle.

  8. Outlawing body armor is like outlawing seatbelts. The incredible stupidity of outlawing a purely life-saving garment is unfathomable. LA had those bank robbers in the ’90’s that were hard to bring down because they had body armor … That and the LAPD didn’t have any long guns. Does this mean that you should outlaw body armor? Heck no. You want to restrict access to guns so that only the criminal elements have access to the most effective onese, and then also restrict access to the thing that is designed to reduce the lethality of those guns. It defies logic … Unless, of course, you are a member of that criminal element; which–despite a tonne (that’s a metric ton, folks) of evidence–I still refuse to believe is true in the case of the majority of civil servants.

    • Sorry for the spelling … The comment editor is broken; or, at least it isn’t working for me.

  9. A buddy and I are going to Canada next week on a week fishing trip. They require us to spend money and get an outdoor card which means nothing. Its more money for Canada out of US sportman that supply a major amount of the economy up north. I have done bow bear hunting in Canada for 5 years. A bow is defined in the hunting regulations as a firearm. It won’t be long we will have to pay a firearm feed to take our bows up north. I am going to spend my money down here after this year. The great socialist country is sucking the life blood of their own economy dry. Is that not what socialist countries do? You Bet.

    • Hey Rich,

      Do you know what sport fees are for? Things like stocking a fished out lake with fingerlings to replenish the population. Things like conservation officer’s salaries to try to catch poachers who illegally hunt over their quota and / or protected species.

      It’s obvious that you don’t know the actual definition of communism / socialism, else you wouldn’t expose your ignorance so blatantly by describing Canada as such. Yeah, we care about species that may be endangered of extinction. I think you’d get more of a rise by calling us momma’s boys than socialists if you really want to piss us off. Nonetheless you did succeed in raising my ire, if only because of your ignorance.

      I’m glad you want to spend your money south of our border from now on. I have nothing against Americans in general, but we definitely don’t want your type up here.

      That means more moose / elk / deer for me. Oh crap, I made an assumption. Perhaps you were hunting bunny rabbits. Socialist bunny rabbits. They taste better because they don’t work. I get it now. My bad, sorry… boy.

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