Unpopular opinion: prohibiting the SKS would be great for gun owners

[u/1955FL]

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.

[u/jayecal]

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.