Chair, the intent of CPC-9 is to address the background checks and to have the lifetime background check on a new applicant, or someone who has not held a continuous licence, or has a firearms licence that has lapsed or been sought at a later date.
I am proposing that clause 2 be amended by adding, after line 4 on page 2, the following:
(2) Section 5 of the Act is amended by adding the following after subsection (2): (2.1) For the purposes of determining eligibility under subsection (2), in the case of an individual who is applying to renew a firearms licence or who has held a firearms licence within the previous year, only the previous five years shall be taken into account.
The government has sought to introduce lifetime background checks, notwithstanding the obvious issues that many law-abiding firearm owners don't pose a problem, as we know. They are not the problem. Criminals are the issue, but criminals usually don't seek firearms through applying for a licence, so it would seem unnecessary to have conditions on that lifetime background check.
Current firearm licence owners have been subjected to a five-year continuous screening from the time they apply and get accepted for their firearm licence. As you described on Tuesday, Mr. O'Reilly, they are having those 400 UCR codes, uniform crime reporting codes, being checked on a continuous basis. These people are already probably the most closely scrutinized and monitored of any other group in the country, I would dare say. Firearms owners are more closely watched by this government than probably the untold number of ISIS terrorists who have returned to our country.
That's true. It is. They don't get subjected to daily checks.