Most Border Seizures are Legal Guns

Interesting story in the Canadian media.  Most of the guns they seize at the border aren’t seized off of gun smugglers, as the media would have us believe.

Crossings into British Columbia account for the largest percentage of all gun seizures, and about a third of all handguns, the agency says. A high percentage are in transit to Alaska and not intended for the illicit firearms market, the report says.

Americans travelling through Canada between Alaska and the lower 48 states, often doing seasonal work, can take their guns if they declare them.

My understanding is that you can’t declare restricted firearms, which are basically pistols, and many semi-auto rifles.  For those you need to get a special permit to transport restricted firearms through Canada to Alaska, which you can get if you jump through the hoops.  Still, it’s not shocking that most of the guns seized are from people who don’t realize our government is one of the few to recignize a right to bear arms for self-defense.

5 thoughts on “Most Border Seizures are Legal Guns”

  1. The last time I crossed the border into Canada was in 2005. I was asked if I had firearms in my vehicle, as well as pepper spray and martial arts weapons. I had none of these things and I said so. My vehicle was searched anyway, but it was not really much of a search.

    The Canadian border official doing the search was some young scrawny kid wearing a black nylon vest that was made to look like a ballistic vest, but I could tell that it really wasn’t. If I had really wanted to smuggle guns into Canada at the time, this kid would not have found them. All he did was ask me to open my trunk, which I did, and he unzipped my travel case that I had inside, but he did not even feel around the interior of it at all.

    After all this I went up to Toronto, where there were shootings all throughout that year in this city, including one on the day after I returned to the states. This was despite all of Canada’s draconian gun laws, and the politicians up there kept blaming the USA for supplying the crime guns, instead of saying anything about their own country’s revolving-door criminal justice system.

  2. To be fair, DirtCrashr, common sense breaks out more rapidly there than it does here. Editorials for the most part were quick to condemn the handgun ban in the city as having no effect on crime. Mayor went and passed it away and that’s leading to a court challenge. Whether or not the Court will side with the citizens remains to be seen.

    Of course, there is nothing stopping the Canadian government from moving handguns from their current “Restricted” status to “Prohibited”. When they did that for machine guns and other weapons, those who had them were grandfathered in. No news ones could be sold or registered but those who had them could keep them. Not sure how they deal with inheritance on that.

    And there is nothing stopping the Canadian Government from going the UK route and banning all guns and then using the registration records to round them up. Understand in Canada although we have equivalents to the 4th and 5th Amendments, they do not provide protection the way the US Constitutional ones do and can be ignored. Think of them as guidelines rather than rules. There are no Miranda rights in Canada. You are quite free to talk your way into jail and the police assume you know your rights in advance.

    Here’s what it takes to take US guns into Canada (e.g. Travelling to Alaska). Half my collection would be screwed and would need to take the slow boat there.

  3. my understanding is that the easiest way to travel to Alaska with guns is to take the ferry from WA to AK…

  4. This is why I’ve always advocated for the annexation of British Columbia and the Yukon. :P

    If I were traveling to Alaska with firearms, I’d much rather take the ferry than risk the trip through Canada.

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