r/canadaguns • u/1955FL • Apr 10 '26
Application / Regulation advice Unpopular opinion: prohibiting the SKS would be great for gun owners
Let‘s be honest, they’re eventually coming for everything - semi auto shotguns and 22lr, any other gun that isn’t pump, bolt or lever action, and probably those too at some point. Considering that every cool center fire semi auto has already been prohibited, if the Liberals prohibit the SKS it would make their confiscation virtually impossible. There are 2 million + firearms owners in Canada, and the SKS is one of the most ubiquitous guns in Canada. They would have to assume at least 1 million of those licensed gun owners are more likely than not to have one in their collection, and given the embarrassingly low number of firearms declared to date, we can confidently assume that probably no more than 5-10% of all SKS would be voluntarily handed over. So that would put the government in the very unfavourable position of either knocking on 2 million doors, or admitting their gun confiscation is a complete failure. There would be no way to paint it as a success. It is well known how many SKS are in private possession, and that the vast majority would still be out there after October 30th would be front page news and completely embarrass the Liberal government. 1 million civilly disobedient firearms owners would be the most powerful political stance we could ever hope to make in the face of this gun grab.
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u/Ok_Rush_246 Apr 10 '26
Nah, all that’ll do is turn the SKS into a safe queen.
The large majority of gun owners already “stuck to their guns”. The declared firearm numbers are laughably low.
The real issue is we can’t use those guns at the range, at competitions and in the bush
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u/SpectreBallistics Spectre Ballistics International (Verified) Apr 11 '26
Any ban is bad for gun owners with our current government. They're full steam ahead on the train wreck of the buyback and there's zero indication they will stop.
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u/NEUMANN-METALWORKS Neumann Metalworks Apr 10 '26
I don't necessarily disagree with the argument, but like others said we're already at this point without banning the SKS. Everybody involved knows they cannot physically knock on doors and take the banned .22LRs, they definitely can't knock on the doors of every PAL holder asking for their SKS, people would die and they know that. You'd have 99 people complying with RCMP and that one crazy dude that ends up barricading himself inside his house, putting their family and the RCMP in danger for nothing.
Banning it just prevents gun stores from selling them, and importers from bringing more in. Grey market would obviously flourish.
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u/jayecal Apr 11 '26
We're already at this point. They opened a can of worms with the OIC bans that they don't even really know where most of the guns from those bans are. And it'd be extremely difficult to track everything down. (Not impossible but a lot of detective work and hours to get it done.)
And then there's that nigh impossible task of actually collecting everything. There's no way they could use off-duty or retired rcmp to do it all. Not to basically use them to go to over 2 million people's homes across the country and collect everything. It'd take decades to actually do it. But getting onduty RCMP to do it would be a very bad move as they're already stretched thin and can't handle the caseload already so it's just going to be bad for public safety to divert officers from things like stopping illegal arms smuggling operations to go collect grandpa Joe's shotgun... (Plus the actual optics of that would look really bad for the liberals. This program is already wildly unpopular with even non-firearms owners for a myriad of reasons. )
All banning the SKS does is further agitate people. Especially native communities.
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u/Hell-Let-Loose00 Apr 10 '26
You are going to rustle some deep-rooted Russian jimmies with nonsense ideas like this
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u/Dependent_Account603 Apr 11 '26
According to a freedom of information request, the government is only aware of 14 SKS rifles in Canada.
They would confiscate ten and call it a success.
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Apr 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Dependent_Account603 Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
The information was released from an access to information requests by either conservatives or CTF, I forget.
They know the exact number through import records. Theres probably been hundreds of thousands imported since the gun registry became defunct.
The government also claims there's only 5k or so m14 rifles in their original infographic released in 2020. Maybe true for Springfield m14 rifles but for norincos it's likely in the hundreds of thousands.
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u/Dependent_Account603 Apr 11 '26
The point isn't confiscation. The point is to cancel as many PALs as possible when they discover otherwise law abiding owners have prohibited firearms.
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u/c20710 Apr 12 '26
It's virtually impossible already. Apparently it was virtually impossible for them to even get the 130K they know about.
Periodically I see arguments that take this kind of structure, like: hey, what if the government does something so stupid that everyone will see how stupid it is, and it'll force the government to be reasonable, because obviously you can't just do something so stupid and fail so badly and get away with it...
To which, I say: man, have you not been paying attention? To everything? For years?
Personally I'm at a point where I feel the only evidence that exists the liberals aren't deliberately evil, is that if they were, they could get away with so much more than they already have. The system doesn't work. The people certainly won't hold them accountable. They could deliberately start intentionally destroying the country today, and it would just...happen, probably to the tune of CBC articles saying "...and that's a good thing"
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u/weneedafuture Apr 10 '26
We're already here, without banning the SKS.