Gun Control

Communal ownership OK
Gun rules different for North Rock says

by P.J. Harston
Northern News Services

NNSL (NOV 29/96) - The federal justice minister will not make subsistence hunters or aboriginals pay to register and licence their guns.

And new regulations, tabled in the House of Commons Wednesday, will reflect the reality of aboriginal communities, said Allan Rock.

"Everyone including the aboriginal peoples of Canada will be required to licence themselves and register their firearms," Rock said Wednesday.

"But the regulations, as we have always committed, adapt those principles to the reality of the aboriginal way of life, traditional rights that aboriginal peoples possess."

Subsistence hunters and trappers, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal, will be exempt from registration and licensing fees.

All others will have to pay. The fee for a five-year possession-only licence in 1998 will be $10, rising to $60 by 2000.

They will also have to pay $10 to register all the non-restricted firearms they currently own in 1998, as long as the firearms are registered at the same time. This registration fee will rise to $18 by 2001.

And on Jan. 1, 2001, those buying ammunition will have to have a licence to possess a firearm.

Until that date, the proposed regulations will allow those who do not have a licence to use another approved form of identification, such as a drivers licence or birth certificate.

Rock said the regulation is intended to keep ammunition out of the hands of people who steal or otherwise illegally acquire firearms.

Regulations will be different in aboriginal communities, compared with other urban and rural communities, Rock said, to take into account aboriginal traditions, for example:

communal ownership of firearms

the lending of firearms

the use of firearms by children under the age of 12

the difficulty aboriginal people sometimes face taking a proficiency test, particularly if it's in a language that they don't speak

the challenge that aboriginals sometimes face in terms of safe storage if they're using their firearms in remote areas while hunting.

Wednesday's regulations weren't introduced without debate, however.

Alberta Reform MP Jack Ramsay condemned Rock for bringing down regulations to accompany gun laws that he says have nothing to do with gun control.

"This is not gun control. This is the registration of firearms," he said.

"The justice minister has never explained ... how the registration of a rifle or a shotgun is going to reduce the criminal use of firearms."

Ramsay said Rock was in the "grip of the coalition for gun control," and in with those who support a lack of common sense in the expression of legislation.