There was a list of prohibited firearms prior to this, which I posted a link to earlier in this thread. I don’t know enough about guns to assess why those particular guns were on the prohibited list.
The CBC did an article on the proposal which gives some details on some of the guns which will be prohibited with pictures: Trudeau announces ban on 1,500 types of ‘assault-style’ firearms — effective immediately
All firearms ownership is significantly restricted through the licensing requirements, however there are varying degrees of restriction based on the characteristics of the firearms, and the whims of previous governments:
In basic form there are three classification of firearms in Canada:
Non-restricted: You need a license to own, storage and transport is slightly less strict, can be used for hunting, target shooting on crown land, etc. Broadly speaking these are longarms (rifles and shotguns), over a specific barrel and overall length, not prescribed by regulation as Restricted or Prohibited.
Restricted: You need to have a restricted license, a permit for transport, can only use at a certified range, much more restrictive for storage, opens you up to on-demand inspections by police. Generally speaking these will be short barrelled rifles, pistols (with barrels over 105mm, not of a proscribed caliber), and rifles prescribed a restricted by name. AR-15’s were so prescribed.
Prohibited: You need to have owned these before they were classified as prohibited or directly inherited from an immediate relative who did or you cannot possess these. There are several classifications of prohibited firearms and such “Grandfathering” only allows continuous possession of that particular type. If at anytime you lapse in possession of the firearm or a valid license you forever lose the ability to own that type again. Various Prohibited firearms include handguns with barrels less than 105mm, .25 and .32 pistols (except competition models prescribed as Restricted), Rifles that were converted from full-auto, and any firearms prescribed by name to be prohibited. AK-47’s and all variants (except the Valmet Hunter models, used by Inuit Peoples) are so classified, as are several semi-auto .50 Rifles.
Prohibited Device: These are not necessarily firearms, but several accessories are so designated. These include over-capacity magazines, suppressors, grenades, brass knuckles, barrels shorter than 105mm, specific (typically explosive, incendiary, or armour piercing) ammunition, etc.
Firearms are classified in various ways. A firearm new to the potential Canadian market will be submitted to the RCMP lab for testing and classification. They test to ensure that overall length requirements are met, and to see if the firearm can be relatively easily converted to full-automatic (if so, it will be classified as Prohibited and cannot be imported). If the firearm was initially offered somewhere in full-automatic, it will be classified as prohibited (as a converted from automatic), even if the fire control group was completely redesigned. The Firearms Act also allows for prescription by Order in Council, which is how this new ban was issued.
In Canada, as in the United States, a firearm is legally the serial numbered receiver or frame. This is the controlled (and if restricted or prohibited, the registered) part of the firearm. This is also partly how a firearm that was previously offered in a full-automatic version can be classified as a full-auto conversion even if none of the other necessary parts are available. The receiver is the gun. Most other pieces do not require a license to purchase or possess. You do need a firearms license to purchase ammunition.
So now we get to the new list. There are ~1500 new rifles added to the Prohibited list via Order in Council. The AR-15’s previously classified as Restricted are now designated as Prohibited. The new ban also reclassifies the previously unrestricted upper receiver as a Prohibited Device.
Anything that looks like or functions remotely like an AR-15 (e.g. semi-auto, military cartridge) is now Prohibited even if it was previously a non-restricted rifle. This includes the aforementioned Ruger Mini-14, which doesn’t use the same mechanism as the AR-15, and doesn’t even use the same magazines.
The list includes several previously non-restricted PCC’s (Pistol Caliber Carbines), commonly used for sport shooting and even hunting. (These are typically semi-auto, and black plastic)
The list also reclassifies all .50 target rifles as Prohibited, most of which were non-restricted (and by the way prohibitively expensive to own and shoot, and utterly impractical to do crime with).
The list prohibits anti-aircraft/anti-material firearms including grenade launchers (not that ammo was in any way available for these).
The list also prohibits any M1A type rifles and variants (semi-auto, military cartridge, black plastic or wooden furniture), which also were previously unrestricted. I’ve seen plenty of “hunting rifles” scarier looking than these.
There is a 2 year amnesty period to ensure firearms owners have the time to properly dispose of their now prohibited firearms. The Order in Council mentions the further intent of the Government to introduce legislation to compensate gun owners for fair market value of their now illegal property when surrendered sometime in the future. It also make nebulous mention of the possibility of “Grandfathering” in ownership of these prohibited firearms to some gun owners.
I found it interesting that because of the large number of non-restricted (and never registered) firearms on the new list, there is no good estimate of how many of these firearms are currently in the hands of Canadians. The Order in Council document specifically notes this as well as noting that the majority of restricted (therefore registered) firearms now prohibited are located in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario.
Assault rifles are illegal now. Hell, they’re illegal in the USA. If you’re going to advocate for a ban on things, learn what they are.
What fast and decisive action has he taken that addresses what you yourself say is the real problem?
Thanks. I had no idea. Not much of a gun person, but still glad I didn’t miss out on owning an AK-47 all these years.
It seems to me that the guy in Nova Scotia was able to kill so many people because he impersonated a law enforcement officer, not because of any particular weapon he used. So I really don’t see how this ban will affect anything; it seems to be pretty transparently a “feel-good” measure.
I’ve got numerous friends in Nova Scotia and I’ve been to many of the locations where this guy killed his victims. It’s very, very weird to see the names of these towns in the news, because they’re such sequestered communities within a province that is obscure to most people in the first place. It’s a terrible thing that happened, no question. Such shootings are exceptionally rare in Canada.
There is a difference between “assult rifles” and “military grade ‘assault-style’ rifles”.
The first term, assault rifle, is the term used in the US for rifles which are selective fire: they can fire single-shot, burst, or fully automatic. Those types of rifles are already prohibited in Canada because they fall within the definition of “automatic firearm” in the Criminal Code.
But that’s not the term the PM is using. According to the CBC article, he’s proposing banning “military-grade ‘assault-style’ weapons”. Those weapons are not currently prohibited, because they’re not capable of firing fully automatically, but they’re often referred to colloquially as “assault rifles”. I think people can be forgiven for needing assistance to understand the terminology, especially on a message board dedicated to fighting ignorance.
Dancer Flight, thanks for your detailed comments.
Have you seen a copy of the OC? I’ve not been able to track it down. Do you know of a link to it?
The picture of the Ruger Mini-14 at the end of the CBC article does have a pistol grip.
That is a Mini-14 heavily outfitted with aftermarket accessories. You can do that to many rifles. And it doesn’t make them even slightly more deadly. I can get a kit that makes my .22 plinking gun look like that. Typical of biased gun reporting to make people think that’s what a Mini-14 is.
Here’s what a Ruger Mini-14 actually looks like
That’s from Cabelas. I was going to link to the Canadian site, but they’ve already removed it.
Yes, that’s what an assault rifle is.
“Military-grade assault-style rifles” or the more popular “Assault weapons” are not coherent terms; they effectively mean “guns that kind of look badass or scary.” It’s purely a cosmetic term and has nothing whatsoever to do with how dangerous the gun is versus rifles not considered “assault weapons.”
Da nada, This is linked from the CBC Article, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6880974-Canada-Gazette-May-1-2020-Part-II.html
SG550 and variants - page 2
AR-15 models and variants - pages 3-33,
Ruger Mini-14 - Page 34
M-14/M1A - Pages 34-35
Vz58 -Pages 35-36
Robinson XCR, CZ Skorpion EVO, Sig MCX - Page 37
Large Caliber (USAians would call these destructive devices) - Pages 37-46
.50 Cal Rifles - Pages 46-52
Regulatory Impact Analysis (includes background and mention of amnesty, and yes they are using the Nova Scotia events as justification). - Pages 53-66
A summary of the prior statuses of the banned firearms is given on Pages 56-57
Page 57 also explains the rational for declaring an AR-15 type upper receiver to be a Prohibited device, this is expanded upon in pages 64-65.
Discussion starting Page 65 outlines the intent to institute a buy-back and mentions the “Grandfathering” of individuals.
The difficulty of measuring compliance and the possibility of displacing ownership to unaffected/unlisted firearms (which can later be banned) is also mentioned.
The Benefits and Costs section starting on page 60 discusses the regionality of the restricted and non-restricted firearms affected.
The Amnesty Order is on Page 67-68
Cheers,
-DF
Was it really too much for you to elucidate the difference like Northern Piper did instead of replying so condescendingly as if it’s a mark of poor intelligence to not have a thorough understanding of the differences between certain classes of weaponry? Was it?
I get you’re not fond of Trudeau’s leadership at all. It doesn’t have to trigger an unpleasant attitude in response to someone reacting positively to a policy of his you strongly disagree with.
Thanks! I was looking in the wrong spot on the federal Justice webpage.
I don’t strongly disagree with the action. But it is clearly to score political points with those who want something to be seen to be done. I have been persuaded by this thread that many of its benefits - fewer events, more safety - are small beer. The government did not change handgun legislation which already can be quite restricted.
Gun owners will complain about it not helping, more regulation and red tape, plentiful alternatives and the expense. Gun companies will be upset. Lots of folks aren’t upset by this, and it may or may not impact rural voting. Already, the Star editorials day the changes were cosmetic and need to be more significant. Advocates - families of victims, doctor’s groups, etc - want changes which might make a bigger difference, as Doug Ford articulated. Do some people like the change? Of course. But it won’t change very much. Sure, it’s political, but lots of things are. I perhaps support the change but realize it is mostly hot air, and expensive at that.
I said years ago that exactly this sort of sneering response any time a non-gun-nut person used the term “assault rifle” would eventually lead to the non-gun-nuts realizing, “Well, shit, then there’s a whole lot more gun models that we need to ban, aren’t there?”
Well, here we are. Good job breaking it, gun nuts.
And really the whole, “That’s not an assault rifle, idiot!” Argument was always being made in bad faith anyways, because the same people who harp on about the definition of “assault rifle” are also the people who like to point out that full-auto firing is usually a waste of time. Controlled semi-auto fire is far more efficient, in terms of how effectively you can kill people. This has been know by the military for decades. Full auto fire has its place, and can be fun as hell, but the real killing is done with disciplined semi auto fire. Which any of the semi-auto rifles they keep defending is capable of.
So, yeah, congrats, you finally won that argument about full-auto vs. semi-auto. They’re all banned now.
I think most of “the real killing” is actually done with bombs, grenades, and missiles. But your point is well taken, at least as it pertains to infantry combat.
It does however lend strength to the argument that people could potentially use guns to resist the government - a scenario that I always see anti-gun people dismiss as absurd, “because the government has tanks and missiles and bombs.” Maybe they do, but if small arms rifle fire were totally useless, infantry soldiers wouldn’t still be deployed.
That’s my perspective as an American, though, in a country that is more and more looking like not a “country” at all but 50 fiefdoms, some of them much more backwards than others, all under the very shaky “leadership” of someone who’s more like the president of Brazil than the president of America is supposed to be, in the middle of a pandemic, with a very uncertain future. Yeah, not giving up MY guns anytime soon. Not a chance in hell.
I’d feel far less invested in this right if I were Canadian.
Can you provide a clear, succinct reason why I should give a rat’s ass over what a gun manufacturer thinks?
They own a lot of guns? 
The problem with that is that while, yes, we still deploy infantry with rifles, we do it as one part of a combined arms strategy. Guys on the ground give you better eyes on the situation on the ground, to figure out where the bombs, missiles, tanks, artillery and what not should be aiming. They have their own weapons, sure, but their main job is to call in the strikes that do most of the damage, as you noted.
Infantry by themselves, facing an opponent using a combined arms strategy, as would be the case in an uprising against the US government, usually gets slaughtered.
There’s a reason the opposition in Iraq and Afghanistan started using roadside IEDs as their main weapons to attack the US troops - when they tried it the old fashioned way with guns, they got their asses handed to them, more often than not.