r/canadaguns • u/AutoModerator • May 25 '26

Recurring Canadaguns Politics and Debate Thread

Please post all your Gun Politics or Ban-related ideas, questions, initiatives, comments, suggestions, news articles, and recommendations in this thread. This thread recurs every 14 days.

First and foremost, this is a Canadian Gun subreddit, so keep it at least decently related to both of those things.

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To prevent the main sub being flooded with dozens of similar threads, text posts complaining about/asking about/chatting about gun politics will be sent here.

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Keep this Canadian gun politics related and polite. Off-topic stuff, flame wars, negative generalizations against groups, personal attacks and gate-keeping will be removed. Please flag any comments to bring to the attention of mods otherwise exercise your upvoting and downvoting ability.

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u/YourSnipingOperator Jun 04 '26

That backdoor registry is essentially useless. Once the gun is out of the stores hands, all the new owner needs to do is get a transfer reference number with another PAL holder, which doesnt track what is being sold/traded. Now do that three times with your friends and they do it three times with their friends. 

Let's say you buy a Carmel this summer. Go verify three of your friends PALs afterwards. Now that information from the store is useless the second one of your friends gets a PAL verification done somewhere else. Dont get me started on the effort it takes to lawfully get that information in the first place.

This is why as I said before, restricted owners are fucked. You dont have a way to obfuscate anything. You own x gun with x serial number at x address tied to x PAL number. You're not going to win a game of chicken with them. This is why I participated and dont fault anyone with restricteds who did. There's a reason the liberals wanted a registry of everything because it gives them an easy list of who to target. May as well make it expensive for them and get something for it. Go buy more non restricteds with the money and do a bunch of PAL verifications. Go buy a case of beer and invite all your buddies over for a PAL verification party

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u/Brapika Jun 04 '26

How accessible is the backdoor registry though? If the first owner of a rifle has never had a transfer record and is not able to produce a former non-restricted rifle they're kinda boned at an information dead end. Automatically guilty of something.

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u/YourSnipingOperator Jun 04 '26

Its not as easy as you think, but the information exists. Generally id need an active investigation to access that information, and its all compartmentalized with the CFO/registrar, not readily available to Frontline police. But yes, say you bought an NR bren 2 in 2024 and didnt buy anything since, you would be correct. However, that still isnt proof that you own it anymore. You could have destroyed it in 2025. Maybe sold it and forgot to get a reference number. Maybe even lost it. 105(1)(a) in the criminal code applies but I think defense would have an easy time creating reasonable doubt. Things need to be slam dunk in court these days.

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u/Natural_Comparison21 Jun 04 '26

I mean the burden of proof in Canada for criminal justice has always been "Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." So someone could easily say "Oh no I destroyed that gun." and because you don't need to report NRs destroyed your right that it creates reasonable doubt. It also creates reasonable doubt if you did a license verification at one point and even if the police were to go and investigate who you did that license verification for they could say "Na I didn't buy the gun after all." But who are you going to believe? The individual who said they sold it to them or the individual claiming they did not buy it. It's one persons word against another and both stories are 100% reasonable enough that any judge would go "Okay sorry but they could have just as easily sold it when it was legal to do so or they could have not done it. However that places a reasonable doubt in my mind that they still have this NR firearm. Which without any other evidence... I got to say they are not guilty."