Walnut Hill
The Latest in Prohibs
column By: Terry Wieland | May, 25
We’ll get to that in a moment, but first I should enlighten you regarding something of a puzzle that existed when last I wrote about this. A PAL needs to be renewed every five years, and mine came due in 2023. As recommended, I applied six months ahead of its expiry; those six months came and went with no word, and I was well into the post-expiry six-month grace period before I heard from the authorities in Ottawa.
This came in the form of a phone call from a bureaucrat in a department I’d never heard of, enquiring about the whereabouts of two dozen handguns which their records showed were in my possession. Where, he asked, were these guns now?
“Waddaya mean?” “sezzi.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Well, he told me patiently, he’d been on to the provincial police in Ontario (my former residence) as well as the Mounties in Alberta (where I’ve never lived) trying to trace these handguns. What I needed to do, he said, was write them a letter explaining where each one was, and how it had been disposed of. Well, I responded, can you give me a list of the guns in question? He said he’d get back to me.
About three weeks later, another guy called. He had the list of guns, he said. “Did I have a pen?” “Why don’t you just read me the list and maybe I can tell you,” I said. “Well, okay.” He sounded suspicious.
To cut to the chase, these were all handguns I owned in 2004 when I left the country. Some I sold, some I left in storage since you have to have one of every prohibited gun you are licensed for; otherwise, your license will lapse, never to be recalled. This is Canadian bureaucracy at work, and Liberal Party admiration of Stalinist Russia extends to the vast network of apparatchiks who collect outlandish salaries for making everyone’s life miserable.
Anyway, back to the list. So, a couple of prohibs are in storage (check!) and I sold a couple (check!) and about a dozen of the others I brought with me to the U.S. To do that, I needed an export permit from the federal Department of Foreign Affairs, a transport permit from the Ontario Provincial Police (to carry them from my home to the border), and an American import permit via the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
In a cold pre-dawn, in pouring rain, I reached the border at Sarnia.
Because I was not allowed to carry cases containing firearms into the Canada Customs building, as the rain pelted down, I and two Customs officers huddled under the raised hatch of my Grand Cherokee as one held a flashlight and read off serial numbers, and the other held a clipboard and wrote them down. This adventure, as you might imagine, is engraved in my memory.
Crossing into the U.S. was simpler, although U.S. Customs did find a hunting knife in my driver’s door pocket. This was forbidden by Michigan law. It should have been in the trunk, out of reach. Well, I said, since I carry it there in case I plunge into a river and have to cut and batter my way out of a sinking car, it’s not much use in the trunk. All became well, however, when I showed them my Missouri concealed-carry permit, which somehow made it all right.
Meanwhile, back in Canada, the Customs agents never bothered to pass along to the relevant functionaries in Ottawa that the guns had been duly exported and were out of the country, no longer a menace to the Canadian polity. There the matter rested, through almost 20 years and three PAL renewals complete with background checks, until 2023, when five bureaucrats in three departments realized these guns were still registered to me in Canada, and where the hell were they? Where? Where?
A two-hour phone call ensued, during which I racked my memory to recall each gun, then where and when I disposed of it. At least two I denied all knowledge of. The friendly apparatchik assured me that, no, I had to have owned them because their records could NOT be wrong. This statement is so wildly absurd I could think of no appropriate response. Finally, he grudgingly agreed to take my word for it, and, magically, about six weeks later, my new PAL arrived in the mail.
This gives you an idea of what we are dealing with, so now on to the latest from the Mounties as they tackle the scourge of illicit firearms. I read the new list of prohibs, scanning it for anything familiar. The last one they floated, a year or so ago, included all Lee-Enfields, all Weatherby Mark Vs and even the Ruger No. 1. The latter two were included on the grounds that they could easily - by any guy with a vise and a pipe wrench, presumably - be converted to the dastardly 460 Weatherby, whose muzzle energy exceeds (or can exceed) the arbitrary 10,000 foot-pounds (ft-lb) limit.
The new list goes on for 30-some pages, listing rifle after rifle whose names mean nothing to me. Presumably, these are small-manufacture variations on military or paramilitary rifles. The criteria, apparently, are holding too many cartridges, having too long an effective range, or looking especially scary.
What did catch my eye, however, were a couple of golden oldies: the Maxim Machine Gun MARK I and the Vickers Machine Gun MARK I (Water Cooled.) The Maxim dates back to the Nile campaign against the Mahdi in 1898, while the Vickers is a veteran of the Great War (1914-18) and has not been in use with the Canadian Army, to the best of my knowledge, since the Armistice. Any examples that still exist are, I expect, in the Canadian War Museum. I have never known anyone to own one in Canada, even devoted machine-gun collectors like my old friend Dick Henderson. Dick had a collection of 250 Thompsons, along with a Schmeisser or two and one Sterling, among others.
Speaking of which, both the Sterling and the Sten, the design from which it descended, are on the list as well. I trained with both while I was in the army; both are submachine guns, and I would have thought they were long since on any prohibited list. It seemed to me they were throwing in anything they could, to make the list look impressive.
Also of note: The Mauser M-15, a 22 Long Rifle semiautomatic with a 22-round magazine. Its deadly sin? It has what is called a “modern tactical look.” Oooo, frightening.
We could go on, considering the list includes 200 types, some with as many as 20 variants. A related document states that 104 families of firearms have now been prohibited, “encompassing 324 unique makes and models.”
Helpfully, our friendly bureaucrats add, there are still “over 19,000 unrestricted makes and models, equating to over 127,000 variations” that remain available for hunting and sport shooting. It adds that a committee of “experts” will continue to examine and recommend further additions to the prohib list.
Gee, with 127,000 variations - how on earth did they arrive at that number? The committee should be able to meet non-stop and employ hordes of government apparatchiks and functionaries along the way.
As a job-creation program, one could hardly ask for better.