The federal Liberals' new firearms bill was heavily criticized during a roundtable discussion Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies MP Bob Zimmer hosted Monday.
A major point of concern was the lack of a process for appealing the classification of a firearm. A section of Bill C-71 would take away cabinet's power to override RCMP's decisions on such matters.
A nonpartisan board that would include other stakeholders as well as the RCMP, should be given the responsibility, argued one of the 11 people who attended the meeting at the Conservative MP's Prince George office.
"I think that would be one thing that would make it a lot easier for the firearms community to accept," said Brock Bailey, the sporting clays director for the Prince George Rod and Gun Club.
Whether to classify a firearm as non-restricted, restricted or prohibited is often based on the ease with which it can be converted from semi-automatic to automatic. But what can be achieved in an RCMP laboratory may not be so straight forward for a regular person, Bailey contended.
"In the (RCMP) firearms lab, they have all the tools and machines, etcetera and work on those things for quite awhile and make things fit," he said.
It was one of a number of concerns raised during the meeting which drew other members of the PGRGC, a handful of guide outfitters, a gun-rights advocate and one non-gun owner.
Federal public safety minister Ralph Goodale pointed to a rise in gang-related homicides in which a gun was used as the reason the bill calls for extending background checks for criminal activity to a purchaser's entire life from five years. According to the ministry gun homicides doubled over four years, rising to 223 in 2016, with over half of them gang related.
Depending on how the provincial governments respond, the background checks could include an examination of the purchaser's mental-health history.
Looking back over a person's entire life raised questions for PGRGC secretary Roy Nagel, particularly when if it's applied to mental health.
"Do you go back to the point when Johnny was 14 and he used a slingshot to clear the cats off the front lawn and therefore he has the tendency to mistreat animals? Who knows where this can go?," he said.
"Five years I always thought was adequate. If they wanted to go 10, I suppose that might be a bargaining point. But going back over a person's entire life to find anything that could disqualify a person from owning and using a firearm is extreme and I don't believe it is necessary.
"We live in the present. Most of the things we do are dictated by our experiences over the past five years or so."
Gun retailers will also be required to keep records of firearms inventory and sales for at least 20 years and require the purchaser of a hunting rifle or shotgun to present a firearms licence, while the seller would have to ensure its validity. That move was roundly criticized as amounting to a "back-door registry" for long guns.
Charles Scott, who sits on a Conservative electoral district association, was the only person who does not own a gun who attended the meeting. He said the bill caters to a concern that "greater fire power equates to greater body count" and suggested there are more important priorities Zimmer could pursue.
Others suggested more thorough education on how Canada's gun laws work, along with a more assertive publicity campaign, would help clear the air.
"It will pull the fuse out of the people who are gun control crazy and make it more apparent to the public out there, especially the news coverage, to show that there are sensible, reasonable people from all walks of life who know how to smooth out the humps of this thing and how to make our society safer without threatening individual privileges," Nagel said. "And they're privileges not rights."
Zimmer said he hosted the event to get a sense of the direction he should take on the issue and had invited people in favour of tighter controls on firearms to attend but none took up his offer. He said the bill will be headed to committee when the House of Commons reconvenes next week.
