New gun bill causing headaches for gun shop owners

New gun control legislation proposed by the federal government is causing frustration for gun shop owners in Saskatchewan.

The proposed bill includes a national freeze on handguns. It doesn’t ban them outright, but makes it impossible to buy, sell, transfer or import them anywhere in the country.

The new bill also would take away gun licences from people who were involved in acts of domestic violence or criminal harassment, including stalking.

The owner at TnT Gunworks in Regina, Darryl Schemenauer, says this is just another disappointing blow for the business.

“As a business owner, it feels like the end of our business. We knew something was coming,” he said.

“There’s no compensation for dealers down the road. I mean, that’s our livelihood here. We won’t be able to sell, buy or transfer any firearms. I mean, I don’t know what happens to them.”

New steps were implemented in purchasing a gun on May 18, with there being a need to consult with the Registrar of Firearms. Whether it’s a transfer of the ownership of a gun through a store or a person-to-person purchase, the person selling or handing over the gun will need to get a reference number from the registrar.

Now, this latest bill presents another challenge for Schemenauer.

“It’s more paperwork once again, for us. We seem to be the guinea pigs for the government doing their interim tracking and giving them information on everybody else for free,” he added. “It’s another hurdle, I guess.”

Aaron Strauss, the owner of Cache Tactical Supply, shared similar feelings to Schemenauer when he first heard the announcement of the bill.

“There’s nothing about this that makes sense,” Strauss said.

“It’s overwhelming at this point because it is a major part of our business and something we had banked on going into the future, so it’s definitely going to require us to make some hard choices and pivot our business to move to other areas.”

Both shop owners stressed they felt like this decision by the federal government was a knee-jerk reaction to a problem in the United States that doesn’t exist to the same degree in Canada.

Included in the bill, the Liberals also plan to fight gun smuggling and trafficking by increasing criminal penalties, providing more tools to investigate firearm crimes and strengthening border measures, as well as creating a new “red flag” law allowing courts to require that people considered a danger to themselves or others surrender their firearms to police.

Bray weighs in on proposed bill

Regina Police Service Chief Evan Bray was happy to see the government propose a “red flag” law, giving courts the power to require people who are considered a danger to themselves or others to surrender their guns to the police.

Bray said that’s something police forces have been seeking “for quite some time.”

“Out of what happened recently in the United States (with the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas), there are a lot of people calling for that in the United States and I’m happy to see that it has made its way into at least the discussion with firearms in our country,” Bray said.

“I think that’s positive. If there are people that we know are potentially a higher risk to offend using a firearm and we can potentially intervene and prevent that from happening, that’s a real positive thing.”

Bray noted the legislation is aimed not at the people who follow the current rules and regulations, but, at those who are obtaining the guns illegally and using them to commit crimes.

Bray doesn’t believe that will add to the police service’s workload. The province’s chief firearms officer does most of the administrative work under gun legislation, but police can make recommendations to that individual if they believe someone’s licence should be revoked.

“Oftentimes our interactions with firearms are much more reactive,” Bray said. “We’re seizing them at crime scenes. We’re finding them in vehicles. We’re finding them on individuals that we arrest and we’re doing a search before we transport them to cells.

“We do have a role to play, but often, the administrative stuff is not necessarily something that falls on the laps of police.”

— With files from 980 CJME’s Dom Lucyk