Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
Did you read the article Nyah posted?
Canadians are buying guns legally, then re-selling them. Better tracking makes it harder for them to do that, and increases the risk to those who will ignore the rules.
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It doesn't increase the risk to criminals selling firearms outside of the law. It is already illegal to buy a firearm as an unauthorized person, it is already illegal to sell a firearm to an unauthorized person and it is already illegal to engage in a straw purchase. C-71 doesn't change that whatsoever
That CBC seems to try and tie all domestically sourced firearms to license holders selling firearms on the black market with no substantiation, aside from some very generic statements from a TPS detective (not the RCMP CFP or NWEST).
Domestically sourced numbers might have increased, but it includes the following:
- Theft from licensed holders
- Theft from retailers
- Firearms purchased fraudulently with stolen license info
- Straw purchases
C-71 doesn't really address any of those. While there is a provision for private sales to require a transfer number, that transfer number would not be tied to a specific firearm (or so the government has claimed). Secondly, someone who is intent on selling a firearm to an unauthorized person isn't going to be calling in to the CFP for a transfer number.
As a side note, there was an access to information request a little while ago that got the RCMP to give up the information on the source of recovered firearms for the Western provinces. It showed, using actual numbers, that they were able to trace about 30% of recovered firearms and of those, half were sourced domestically. So 15% of firearms recovered in the Western region were domestically sourced (not broken down by the categories above). I imagine it would be very enlightening to see the national statistics and the Ontario statistics.