This section is going to be set up as an FAQ with lots of internal references. Questions that might be posed to a pro-rights person by an anti-rights / anti gun person will be asked, with the best set of references to the right answer that I can find. A lot of this information is already available in many other pro rights web sites, including Skeeter's Legacy, but I wanted to put it all in one place.
Disclaimer
No part of this FAQ or any of it's sub-sections should be viewed as legal
advice or a definitive source for any information. The author bears no
responsibility whatsoever for incorrect information. This entire FAQ
and all sub-sections are a compendium of information gathered from postings
to the CFD and from other knowlegeable sources. Permission is explicitly
given to distribute this FAQ in its entirety only if no changes are made and
if this disclaimer is included.
Comments / Suggestions
If you have any comments or suggestions about this page, tell the
Author. He would love to have more
good info to share, and wants to make sure that there are no mistakes and lots
of references to prove that this info is correct.
Nobody knows how many guns are in Canada, and that is a good thing! :)
The most definitive study done to date, that is public information, was published in March of 1976, by the "Ministry of the Solicitor General, Research and Development Branch, Ottawa" and called "Statistics Relating to the Gun Control Question". Based on this study, the official estimate of firemarms in Canada was 10,607,758 guns in 1974. This estimate is very clear in stating that it does not include military guns, or guns that have been smuggled into Canada.
Dr. Boris Gimbarzevsky used this study and some other information to create an estimate of guns in Canada of 14,000,000 in 1995.
Dr. Gimbarzevsky has a more up to date estimate of the number of guns in Canada as part of the (can.talk.guns) newsgroup FAQ where he states that there could be as many as 7,000,000 gun owners and 21,000,000 guns in Canada in 1993.
Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton, SK also has an estimate of the number of guns in Canada using Stats Canada and RCMP estimates. A number of useful numbers can be derived from this document.
Mr. Breitkreuz's research tells us that Statistics Canada did not track the number of guns manufactured in Canada, but they did track the number of guns imported and exported into Canada since 1962. During the period of 1970-1998, there were 4,978,028 guns imported into Canada, and 1,668,506 guns exported from Canada.
Another useful fact gleaned from Garry Breitkreuz's document includes the fact that 287,052 registered firearms were deactivated, destroyed or exported by the RCMP from 1978-2000.
The Firearms Statistics Tables produced by the RCMP also provide a good source for counting the number of guns that are in Canada. Skeeter's Legacy has a copy of the August 1996 Tables. From these tables, the following information can be gleaned.
During the period of 1979 to 1995, there were 2,778,909 FAC's issued to Canadians.
The following are the sections of the criminal code that deal with safe
storage and some interpretation of their meaning.
Section 86 of the Criminal Code