The Canadian government has introduced a bill in Parliament that will abolish the registration system for rifles and shotguns. The current Canadian law requires all gun owners to be licensed and all guns to be registered. Only handguns will be required to be registered if the bill passes. This would leave more than 7 million rifles and shotguns unregistered.  

According to the Canadian Coalition on Gun Control, rifles and shotguns are the guns most frequently found in people’s homes and therefore used most in domestic violence, suicide and accidents. Half the police officers shot dead in Canada are killed with rifles and shotguns. Semi-automatic rifles have been used in several high-profile attacks including the Dawson College shooting in 2006 and the shooting at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989, in which 14 female engineering students were murdered.

The Montreal murders led to a new stronger gun law in 1991, and since then homicides by rifles and shotguns have declined significantly, especially among women.

The bill introduced by the Conservative Party government is identical to one proposed in 2006 which did not go to vote, due to opposition from public health and women’s groups.

Meanwhile the government has also postponed a regulation requiring all imported firearms to be marked when they enter the country. The marking of imported guns to enable tracing is a requirement of the UN Firearms Protocol. The decision to postpone the regulation has been strongly condemned by the Canadian police.