One of the problems in the last few years is that the government has not updated or reclassified certain weapons that should be classified as restricted or prohibited weapons. Our position is that we think all assault weapons--all weapons that have military characteristics--that are designed to kill people rapidly and effectively should be banned.
Unfortunately, among the seven million long guns that will be deregistered, that will become invisible to police, you have a number of these guns that should, according to the spirit of the law and the regulations, be classified as restricted. The police will lose track of them.
To continue with my previous point, the debate about this bill has been mostly about registration, because that was the stated objection communicated by the government for this bill. At the same time, the government professes its devotion and its faith in the issue of licensing, saying that it is what real gun control is. We disagree with that, but we support licensing.
By disconnecting the transfer of gun sales from the system, by saying that you don't need to have any records of sale and that at the same time you don't need to check the validity of a licence of a person you are selling guns to, you're removing the mechanism that allows the police to enforce licensing provisions.
The way the bill is written, it builds in a default assumption that the person you're selling to has a valid licence. It is only if a reason comes up to make you believe that is not true that you are then not allowed to sell it. But if you believe the person has a licence--and we don't know what that entails--then there is no violation even if the sale of the gun to an unlicensed person is illegal. It is a huge loophole that you could drive a freight train through and it completely undermines the licensing provisions.
We do not know why this is. What possible benefit could there be for the government to do this? It has professed in the past that verifying licences is essential to protect public safety.
We have no answer. All we know is that it's a step closer to what many gun lobby groups are now advocating, which is the elimination of the licensing provisions also.