You May Not Like Guns—but You Should Still Care About the Supreme Court Firearms Case

Commentary

Ever since the federal government issued new regulations in 2020 banning 1,500 “military-style assault weapons” and their “variants” from circulation—a number that has since been increased to 2,500—there’s been widespread confusion and even conspiracy about the legal implications of the prohibited list. In fact, no one seems to know exactly which firearms are legal or not.

That’s a big problem.

At the Supreme Court this week, the government argued that the “Firearms Reference Table,” first introduced in 1996, is merely an administrative list of prohibited, restricted weapons—not binding legislation.

In contrast, the appellants at the Supreme Court—joined by intervenors including the Canadian Constitution Foundation and Attorneys General of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Ontario—have challenged the 2020 regulations on a number of grounds.

They argue that it’s difficult to decipher which guns are illegal with so little clarity about which ones are “variants”—and that the federal government unlawfully delegated its authority to the RCMP to determine that.

They also submit that the federal government didn’t have the authority to ban certain assault weapons based on their “reasonable use” for hunting and sporting, and that the Charter’s Section 7 (“life, liberty and security of the person”) applies based on widespread uncertainty about which weapons are actually prohibited. Gun owners can also face actual prison time for owning weapons on the list.

That’s important. Any law should be understandable in advance to a reasonable person. Using publicly-available information, Canadian firearms owners should be able to determine what consequences could flow from their weapons being on the prohibited list.

Since the introduction of the new federal regulations, firearms owners have complained that they face continually changing goalposts and insufficient warning about what handguns, rifles, and other weapons are on or off the firearms reference table. In the meantime, they’re prohibited from selling their weapons or passing historic or heirloom variations onto their children.

There’s also the matter of compensation. Last year, the federal government announced that funding for the voluntary buyback program would be capped at $742 million and offered on a “first-come, first-served” basis. That means there’s no guarantee of compensation for firearms owners once that cap is reached—and in some provinces, like Alberta and Saskatchewan, no guarantee that compensation will even be offered.

Accordingly, several provinces have introduced innovative approaches to challenge the federal program and protect legal firearms owners. Saskatchewan, for example, introduced legislation in 2022 stipulating that federal confiscation agents must be licensed by the provincial Chief Firearms Officer and fair compensation provided for any seized firearm—which also has to undergo ballistic testing before being destroyed.

In new amended legislation, Saskatchewan cited Section 117.08 of the Criminal Code, which provides firearms exemptions for police, military members and people who are under the authority of federal or provincial governments.

As a result, Saskatchewan gun owners can apply for a “certificate of exemption,” which allows them to retain the right to possess and store prohibited firearms on behalf of the province until they’re compensated by the feds. The Saskatchewan Firearms Office will also issue value appraisals which firearms owners can rely on as evidence if they challenge the federal government for fair market value compensation.

It’s all a bit of a mess—a “public safety debacle,” as one counsel put it in court this week. Legal firearms owners are being asked to voluntarily hand in their weapons or destroy them, potentially without compensation. By default, hiding weapons is indirectly encouraged, which leads to “ghost guns.” At the very least, firearms groups are trying to delay-delay-delay until the federal government reverses the ban—which, given the Liberals’ recent majority, won’t happen for a while.

In the meantime, procedural fairness is on trial before the Supreme Court this week, which should matter to us all.

Bronwyn Eyre is senior counsel with the Canadian Constitution Foundation and Saskatchewan’s former Attorney General and Minister of Justice.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.