Hey Lawdog,
Couldn't agree more, but it is the left-wing soccer mom/urban dwellers that are making our policies. Unfortunately we've had a rash of highly publicized cases of teenagers shooting people with pellet guns or paintball guns. Of course the cry from the anti-gun crowd has been to ban all pellet guns, or at least all that look like real ones....
Of course gun bans have been EVER SOOOOOOO....effective in eradicating gun/violent crime in Britain and Australia. (Their homicide/violent crime rates have increased 200-300%???)
I don't think we have to worry too much just yet about an outright ban, but we can't let our guard down either. C-68 really screwed a lot of guys over. For instance, I sold my S&W Model 39 and inadvertently sold myself out of the "prohibited" short barreled handgun class. If you didn't know, as part of the government's gun control scheme, any handgun with a barrel less than 4.14" or 105mm was moved into the prohibited class of firearms. Only guys "grandfathered" into the class could keep their guns or buy more of the same class. The justication given for this move is that guns having less than a 4.14" bbl was too inaccurate for target practice and thus had no legitimate sporting purpose. RIGHT! That's why the RCMP is armed with 3.5" or 4" S&W 9mm and most provincial/municipal forces use 4" Glocks of S&Ws.
What it did was effectively prohibit any new shooters from buying the vast majority of handgun models manufactured today, since the industry standard barrel length is 4". As a result, full size 1911s, and over 4" revolvers have been doing brisk sales.
They also classified any air rifle/pistol with a muzzle velocity over 1000f.p.s. as a firearm. We actually need a firearms license and must pay a $25.00 transfer fee when purchasing such a "firearm". Also must store it safely, i.e., disassemble or use trigger, cable lock etc... They tried to make the law even more restrictive recently, but screwed the pooch once again. If you use their description now Paintball guns would have too high of a muzzle energy, even though it has a low MV, under their revised regs, thus making them firearms. The bureaucrats are just too stupid to realize what they've done, so basically everyone has just ignored it, cops included. Great law huh?
