If I had to guess, a large majority of these are from gunshops or family members of deceased gun owners turning in firearms to the RCMP. There are also a lot of old farts in BC that have firearms, but their sons/daughters/grandkids don't have PALs.
My grandfather was, a few years back, dealing with a passed friend, as he was the executor. The gentleman had a gorgeous collection of firearms and reloading equipment. He didn't have the energy or room for the firearms, so he called the RCMP to come get them all. A damn shame, but I presume this sort of thing must happen all the time. If I were the gov, and my buyback program was doing horribly, I'd count every single firearm returned regardless of the circumstances to inflate my horrible numbers.
When I did my pal course the most common reason people gave for doing it was that they needed it to inherit their grandfather's gun, and one guy unfortunately was bit late and lost a family heirloom going back 3 or 4 generations to the RCMP.
The ones in my course wanted to hunt, but I doubt most of them had seen a deer. I suspect we're in different regions. 😏
When my father passed my relative gave up his handguns because he didn't want to bother with a restricted license. I believe there is a grace period, so if I'd known I would have applied at the time. He had some nice handguns.
Your reasons aren't specific to BC though? Other provinces would show similar results for those categories. It's not like BC is the only place with gun stores and deaths
I was equally surprised given how rural most of our gun owners are, until I remembered this includes businesses. We have (I guess had) a LOT of small shops that dealt mostly in "tactical" firearms. Not to mention having three bass pros that all had big ass inventories
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u/DirtCheap1972 Mar 20 '26
WTF BC come on