Canada – -(Ammoland.com)- Just when you thought it couldn’t get any crazier, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has ramped up its game of doing anything it can to discredit the Harper government.
Last Thursday, after the welcomed announcement of the Royal Assent of Bill C-42 – the Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act – the RCMP Firearms Program released a Bulletin for Businesses, a Bulletin for Police and a shiny new web page outlining the RCMP’s time frame for Bill C-42’s “Coming into Force.” These documents purported some sections of the bill will take as long as 21 months to implement!
Firearms owners were dismayed at the lengthy implementation times.
Just one little thing though … it was a total fabrication. (That’s a nicer word than ‘lie’.)
You see, the bill very specifically states in its last section that the “Coming into Force” dates are to be specified by the “Governor in Council.” And to the chagrin of the gun-ban bureaucrats, that’s not the RCMP Firearms Program, it’s Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney. Incredulous government officials sprang into action, ensuring that the website was immediately changed and a new Bulletin for Businesses was issued. In a miracle worthy of canonization, no one was fired.
While heads are still reeling from this blatant attempt to wrest power from those we elect to wield it, the RCMP have struck again.
News of a new banned firearm has surfaced. A full auto? An Section 12 (whatever) gun? No, it is a simple blowback .22 rifle, just like the kind many thousands of Canadian shooters use every day. Worse, there are two models of this firearm, and the functioning parts are ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL!
The firearms in question are the Mossberg Blaze and the Mossberg Blaze 47. There are two important differences between them. The first is that the Blaze has a black plastic stock and the Blaze 47 has a wood-coloured plastic stock that vaguely resembles the racy lines of the venerable AK-47. The second difference is that the Blaze is non-restricted and the Blaze 47 is prohibited.
Other than that, they are identical.
A quick call to the importer, Mossberg International, gleaned the following information. The only time the RCMP had actually seen the rifle was on its annual Las Vegas junket to the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show. The distributor offered them a sample rifle for the purposes of evaluation, but the RCMP declined. A week or two later, the RCMP created it’s prohibited Firearms Reference Table (FRT) entry – presumably because of its cheesy resemblance to the AK – since it and its sister are functionally identical.
Let’s say that again: The RCMP banned a .22 rimfire rifle it had never examined because of its looks.
How could this be?
Since we would never … ever … insinuate that the RCMP Firearms Program is a partisan, agenda-riddled bureaucracy attempting to influence an election by humiliating its political masters, we must then assume by default that the RCMP is totally incompetent. After all, no one with the tiniest shred of firearms competence could possibly conclude that a simple .22 rimfire blowback rifle could possibly be described as an AK-47 variant. Yet seemingly, as the identical rifle with the black plastic stock (the Mossberg Blaze) is FRT’d as non-restricted, that is exactly what has happened.
The Canadian Shooting Sports Association has long advocated the formation of a Firearms Experts Technical Committee because of this exact type of incompetence. This is not the first time the RCMP has been wrong, and we guarantee it won’t be the last.
Canadians Deserve Better.
The decisions being made by the RCMP affect the property of lawful, trustworthy citizens. That their property could be arbitrarily (and wrongly) prohibited by a technical report made by people that seemingly couldn’t find their butt with both hands, is a travesty.
Minister Blaney has ordered a review of the Mossberg Blaze 47 classification. One is forced to wonder how many times the RCMP has taken similar actions without it being discovered.
* The Rebel’s Brian Lilley takes on this issue. Click on THIS LINK to hear his excellent report on this issue:
About:
The Canadian Shooting Sports Association is the voice of the sport shooter and firearms enthusiast in Canada. Our national membership supports and promotes Canada’s firearms heritage, traditional target shooting competition, modern action shooting sports, hunting, and archery. We support and sponsor competitions and youth programs that promote these Canadian heritage activities. Website www.cdnshootingsports.org