Ok, chalk another one up for the government.

Seems that I ordered replica firearms, not toy guns.
Regardless of the orange tip.

Anyway, I’m going to fight it a little, but it’s not really worth it in the long run.
But, in my quest to find a little bit of legle wiggling, I found this interesting court decision:
http://www.citt.gc.ca/appeals/decision/ap2c009_e.asp

In brief, dude, who was an amateur FILM MAKER, wanted to import a fake gun(airsoft, close to what I wanted) into Canada. Apparently it passed the three criteria for being a replica:
(1) it must be designed or intended to exactly resemble, or to resemble with near precision, a firearm; (2) it must not itself be a firearm; and (3) it must not be designed or intended to exactly resemble, or to resemble with near precision, an antique firearm.

Well, his gun, like my own, passed (2) because they can’t kill/really hurt you.
(3) is passed because it doesn’t look old.
And this is the kicker, even though it’s made from light-weight plastic, has no metal barrel, has no firing pin, it’s close enough to “near precision” according to the RCMP officer that testified.

Now I can understand the need to keep guns out of the hands of people that would do bad things.
I’m all for stopping bad things happening, but the restriction of toys, guns that can’t HURT YOU, which is actually stated in the law, guns you can just intimidate with, those guns are being kept out of the country.
I can intimidate with an axe and a baseball bat, why can I buy those?
Meanwhile, I can get a BB gun from the States, one that fires JUST UNDER 500 FPS, that doesn’t look real, but by golly it’ll put your eye out.
Those are legal. Because they don’t look real.
And that’s what seems to be important here, what appears to be real, not what can hurt you.

It’s just odd that the first case I found describes almost exactly what I’m trying to do….
Scary….

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Filed under: Blog - @ May 5, 2004 11:57 pm