The Liberals new firearms bill called Bill C-71 has been criticized for being a new long gun registry and also attacking legal firearms owners while not containing enough rules to address gun violence associated with gangs, illegal gun sales and the smuggling of firearms.

Since the bill's introduction, registered firearm sellers were the first to get access to a booklet from Public Safety Canada that took the legal jargon out of the bill and provided people with a bullet point summary of the bill's intentions.

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The most controversial part of the bill that has gun owners upset is a section noted in the Public Safety Booklet on the licence verification page.

The first point on that page reads, "Anyone selling or giving a non-restricted firearm, including private sellers, will be required to verify the validity of the firearms licence of the recipient with the Canadian Firearms Program (CFP).

The CFP is a physical branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) that if bill C-71 were to pass in its current form would have to be called over the phone by a firearms seller every time a non-restricted weapon is about to transfer ownership.

Within the Record-keeping by vendors section of the booklet all businesses, excluding private sellers will be required to keep records of all the sale of their firearms and their purchasers.

This section does exclude private firearm sellers but if the bill passes as mentioned private sellers will be legally required to call the CFP when selling a firearm.

Moreover, law enforcement agencies can request the mandatory sale records from businesses and that request would also be mandatory and non-negotiable.

Gun advocates and the Conservative party have noted that there is no difference between a long gun registry kept within a collection of private business compared to all those sale records being kept within the Canadian government.

To that end between the CFP verification process and the ease in which the police can access private sales records, many are saying C-71 is a new long-gun registry.

In terms of dealing with some types of assault rifles and handguns within the transportation of restricted and prohibited firearms section of the booklet; owners of restricted/prohibited firearms who are used to receiving an automatic Authorization to Transport (ATT) certificate when transporting a restricted or prohibited firearm will only receive an automatic renewal of said certificate when bringing a newly purchased restricted or prohibited firearm into their home or taking it to an approved restricted gun-range.

All and any other reasons to transport a restricted or prohibited weapon is proposed to be subject to a physical phone-call to a Chief Firearms Officer who will grant on a person-by-person basis ATT certificate approvals, each individual firearm will require its own certificate.

A recurring point by the Conservative party and also gun owners is that tracking legal gun transactions, sales and legal gun owners falls short of keeping guns out of the hands of criminals who do not follow any firearms law.

MP Robert Kitchen, was in attendance at the Estevan Gun Show that occurred recently and was available for comment on the issue.

"They say there are creating these laws to deal with issues in Surrey, British Columbia and the Greater Toronto Area and similar places, but all we see from this, it is basically the long-gun registry 2.0.," said Kitchen.

C-71 also aims to change some rules for a select few military riles on the page entitled, Consistent Approach To Classification within the booklet it states "two groups of firearms were downgraded in 2015; these now revert to being prohibited and realign with the Criminal Code."

Not within the booklet but in the physical bill itself there is recurring mention to the CZ-58 and the Swiss Arms Rifle that the Liberals and others have been trying to make prohibited for some time.

Point four of the classification page noted that "Current legal owners of these firearms would be grandfathered under the Firearms Act if they comply with licensing and registration requirements to own prohibited firearms.”

The issue with that clause and how it relates to the CZ-58 or Swiss Arms Rifle is prohibited firearms licences stopped being issued in 1993.

Many of the owners of these guns purchased them as non-restricted firearms and are not able to obtain a prohibited firearms licence and in Canada, those who are compelled by a legal order to turn in their firearms receive no monetary composition and the Swiss Arms Rifle for example costs around $1000 to purchase brand-new.

Those who own a CZ-58 or Swiss Arms Rifle may be able to continue to own theirs within the legal framework of grandfathered firearms. If that is possible those owners would only be able to keep the firearm in their home and may not be able to do anything else with that particular firearm such as taking it to a range.

Not even touching the surface of Bill C-71 or the Public Safety Booklet there are issues with Bill C-71 and it would appear at the very least there are attempts being made to bring back the long-gun registry.

"When we talked about the cost of the long gun registry before it was horrendous and this one is basically adding more cost and the administration costs are going to be huge," said Kitchen.

Kitchen also noted during a briefing he attended by the public safety minister who is Ralph Goodale, the Conservatives did question him about the logistics of having firearms owners call the already overburdened CFP commutations lines every time a non-restricted weapon transfers ownership.

Kitchen said that during that briefing Goodale said in response to questions regarding the phone-call verification issue "We will get it done." Kitchen expressed that Goodale provided no further information on the topic and after that statement walked out of the briefing and the meeting was over.

Also in attendance at the Estevan Gun show was Greg Illerburn, he is the chair of the Recreational Firearms Community of Saskatchewan (RFCOS) and he also has been apart of parliamentary public safety committees in the past, when bringing his concerns and suggestions to Ottawa every time new gun legislation is proposed.

He noted that his experience this year at the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities convention was a lot of upset farmers and other rural residents who are aggravated by the lack of police enforcement in rural areas that has led to the rise of rural crime and property theft.

Kitchen also noted this point when he said, "We are hearing concern not just in my constituency nor just in Saskatchewan about the issues of rural crime."

"We have talked about the idea of hiring more police in rural areas within our caucus and it needs to be looked at. As I mentioned before the past budget that came out recently the Liberals want to hire Carbon Cops (in relation to enforcing the Carbon Tax) and that cost is more money than the government spends on training new RCMP officers," he added.

Illerburn took a similar tone saying the current government could have spent billions of dollars on hiring more police but instead is funnelling it towards the new gun bill and the result is " a bureaucracy that does nothing to stop criminals and gang-bangers from misusing firearms."

"The people who have been alienated the most by this bill is rural Canada and they are the ones that need something done about rural crime the most, we could have lots of police in rural Canada if we stopped wasting money on tracking legal firearms owners," said Illerburn.

He noted that within the booklet he obtained from Public Safety Canada he sees useful gun legislation with the proposed changes to the eligibility standards for issuing new firearms licences to new gun owners.

Within that section it states anyone who has a criminal history, convicted or discharged whether by summary, indictment, absolute discharge or has been granted alternative measures by a court of law whose charges relate to criminal harassment, drugs, firearms trafficking, assault, domestic violence, uttering threats, mental illness associated with violence or has a history of behaviour that includes violence either threatened or attempted is proposed to be information the RCMP will have access to when issuing a new firearms licence.

Farmers with Firearms is a group in Saskatchewan that has stirred up a lot of controversy around firearms ownership and due to the connection between C-71, gun ownership and rural crime in the province and elsewhere, the Mercury was able to get a few words with its creator Lee De Coninck Smith.

Smith pointed to some issues the RCMP and himself are facing in rural Saskatchewan in terms of rural crime and self-defence of property and life.

"With me, I can't really speak for anyone else but my experience with calling the police for rural crime in my immediate area is it usually takes a couple of hours before they show up or they say over the phone they will come out the next mourning and take a statement," said Smith.

On the topic of the police only being the ones legally entrusted to determine how much force is necessary during the commencement of a crime Smith answered.

"How do they determine that they show up afterwards and say you've done this all wrong and people end up in court, how are people suppose to know these things when the police are not present when someone is stealing or robbing something," he added.

Smith said that just dropping RCMP officers in rural areas, who are not from the community or even the province might not be the best solution since the affected communities in his opinion are "tight-knit" and an outsider won't work well with people they have never meet or knew.

On the topic of some News trends that have gained traction since the Stanley trial verdict that allege rural crime in the province is a battle between white rural farmers and Indigenous peoples, he noted a slump in the economy causes a rise in crime everywhere.

"After the oil cash we all saw a spike in crime and if employment goes south anywhere there is going to be more crime, I wouldn't say one group of people are responsible for rural crime," said Smith.

"Some people living on Indigenous reserves have trouble getting access to good employment that is seen elsewhere in the province and that is not helping the rise in rural crime that has a lot of people upset," he added.

Ralph Goodale has said publicly a few times he is aware of rural crime issues in Canada and how that relates to a lack police enforcement however he has not yet provided further detail on any ideas associated with hiring more police officers as a means to stop rural crime.