Quote:
Originally Posted by FNG_13
On topic, I'm not sure about licensing replica owners...as previously stated, any law that came into effect would most assuredly result in REALLY stupid stipulations for replica owners.
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Once again, these are not Replica Firearms, the people behind the article do not know their laws or are being lazy with their legal terms. The guns in the article are airguns which falls under a special subset of Firearms based on s.84(3) of the Criminal Code of Canada.
There will almost certainly never, ever be a licence for Replica Firearms, because we're not suppose to get them. That was the purpose of having them fall under Prohibited Devices and a pseudo form of Grandfathering. I say pseudo because real Grandfathering is explicitly provided in the Firearms Act and permits transfer of the Grandfathered item. You can only keep Replica Firearms you have from before 1998, you cannot pass it down as you would be a legally owned Prohibited Firearm.
Thus, having a civilian licence for Replica Firearms means more Replica Firearms in the hands of the people, not less. This would not address the concerns of the people in the article.
It is possible, though requiring significant legal amendments to the Criminal Code, the Firearms Act and at least one existing supporting regulation, and probably the creation of a new regulation, to licence air weapons. People who clamor for this outcome should heed this warning: the changes required would make it far easier to ban airguns in Canada. I am generally not a fan of the slippery slope argument, but if there was ever a situation where the slippery slope argument held any real truth, this would be it.
In addition, the only way that such a new licence would apply to airsoft is if airsoft was the same classification as pellet guns and paintball guns. Otherwise, any new licence for airguns are meaningless to airsoft. Firearms and Replica Firearms are the polar opposite of each other in Canadian law.