Canada bans .22 rifle because it looks similar to an AK-47

[iverglas]

47. licensing vs registration

It's confusing when it's new 2 u.

The person is licensed, to acquire/possess certain classes of firearms:
- non-restricted
- restricted
- prohibited
(they're cumulative - or at least each of restricted and prohibited includes non-restricted; prohibited probably doesn't include restricted since it's a special thing, but I'm not sure)

Firearms are classified in the regulations into one of those three categories.

If you have a non-restricted firearm licence only, you may not acquire/possess a restricted or prohibited firearm.

If you have a restricted firearm licence, you may not acquire/possess a prohibited firearm.

Firearms registration is separate. You have to have the appropriate licence to acquire and possess the firearm. And to register it, you have have the appropriate licence.

This situation arose because the guy in the case owned the firearm before there was a registration requirement for long guns. And I'm assuming that because it wasn't named on the prohibited list, it was just being sold to anybody with a licence -- or, if it was before the licensing requirement, to anybody. (Marc Lépine who killed 14 women at the Montréal Polytechnique in 1989 just bought his Mini-14 over the counter, no licence and no requirement to register.)

Today, any sale at retail has to be registered at time of sale, at least as I understand it; private transfers must be registered but it can be done on line.

The guy in the case didn't have a prohibited firearm licence, and wasn't required to register the AP80 at the time he acquired it. Here's the background.

5 Mr. Henderson purchased his AP80 in 1984 from a gun shop in Brampton. It is a .22 calibre rifle that is semi-automatic, meaning that a bullet can be fired with each separate pull of the trigger and the gun automatically reloads after each discharge. At the time, it did not have to be registered with the government and Mr. Henderson was entitled to acquire it.

6 The Firearms Act, S.C. 1995, c. 39 (the Act) was enacted in 1995 as part of the tightening of government control of the possession of firearms. Its purpose is to provide for the issuance of licences, registration certificates and authorizations to permit the possession of firearms in circumstances that would otherwise constitute an offence under the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46. A license allows an individual to possess firearms of particular kinds. A registration certificate allows the individual to possess a specific firearm. An authorization allows the individual to do certain things with a firearm, such as importing. In this case we are concerned with a registration certificate.

7 On December 28, 2000, Mr. Henderson applied to the Registrar for a registration certificate for his AP80. The application form required only the model number, serial number, calibre and barrel length of his firearm. He had no further correspondence with the Registrar until he received notice of the Registrar’s refusal to issue the registration certificate on June 2, 2008. This long delay was apparently caused by the volume of registration applications following the introduction of the Act.

At the time he bought it there was no requirement that it be registered, as an ordinary long gun. There was also no requirement that he have a licence, to purchase an ordinary long gun.

The registration requirement for non-restricted long guns was enacted later. He chose to comply by applying for registration. From what I can tell, the classification as prohibited was already in effect by then, but it took 8 years for the firearms officer to reject the registration. Let us recall that these were a tumultuous 8 years for the registry, and it was under attack by people having their dogs register guns, you know how that goes. That's still pretty shoddy performance.

So he finally got the refusal in 2008 and challenged it in court, and the Court of Appeal decision (on appeal from the Superior Court, on appeal from the Provincial Court) upheld the firearms officer's decision in 2011.

So ... it's not his certification that is revoked. He is licensed to posess whatever his licence says (as I say, I'm not seeing whether it was for restricted or just non-restricted). He can't register (legally own) the thing in question because it isn't covered by his licence. His licence subsists intact.


I would just repeat that the ruling isn't "silly" if in fact the AP80 is functionally identical to the AK-22. You might think the AK-22 itself doesn't belong on the list.
I'm a bit confused on this one statement. Are you saying that the AP80 shouldn't be on the prohibited list? Or that the AK-22 should be on the prohibited list?

I'm not expressing any opinion about what should be on the list. I'm just saying that
- if the AK-22 is on the list
- if the AP80 is functionally equivalent to the AK-22
then the court's decision was valid in law, and it's the inclusion of the AK-22 that is in issue (which was outside the purview of the court in that case).

Now actually you may be raising a possibly interesting question, possibly without knowing it.

If it really is demonstrably false to describe the AK-22 as a variant of the AK-47, then trying to bring the AP80 under that rubric could be arguably bad, since it is not expressly named in the list, and what the list says is

The firearm of the design commonly known as the AK-47 rifle, and any variant or modified version of it except for the Valmet Hunter, the Valmet Hunter Auto and the Valmet M78 rifles, but including the ... AK-22

"Variant" is not defined. The Ct of Appeal said:

The Ontario Court of Justice identified the issue in these terms: is the AP80 an “unnamed variant” of the AK-47 for the purpose of s. 64 of Part I of the Schedule

The AP80 is not an AK-22 (although there is apparently no actual difference between them), so if it is not itself a "variant or modified version of" the AK-47, well, you have a law school exam question.



I'll take a stab at why the AP80 is prohibited, but its not very charitable. I think who ever decided this doesn't really know the difference between the AP80 and an AK47.

(And I'll read AP80 as being AK-22.)

I would not make that assumption, or think it a particularly reasonable hypothesis. The RCMP holds the firearms expertise at the federal level here, and I have no reason to think their people in this field are idiots. The regs would not have been drafted by legislative drafters at Justice who just threw some gun names in the air to see where they landed. These are technical regs, and the people with the technical expertise are the ones who tell the drafters what to draft.

Basically, I would guess that it's the fact that it's semi-automatic and was not in common use in Canada for any hunting or pest/predator control purposes (which is how the Mini-14 escapes the fate it deserves, I gather). If you're a bank employee looking at a thing that looks like an AK-47, you're not going to know that it just shoots pellets. And back in the 90s was when Montreal was the bank robbery capital of the world (or more likely that was the 80s; I can't remember and google only wants to tell me how Vancouver was the bank robbery capital of North America until recently). And bank robbers there didn't use handguns, they used big honking long guns. What a gun looks like sometimes does matter.