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And that’s not the end of it. The gun owner must then apply for an entirely separate piece of paperwork — an authorization to transport, or ATT. This permit repeats what the firearms licence already establishes: that the lawful possessor of a registered gun can only transport it via a direct route from home to certain authorized locations.

What good is this? Anyone who qualifies to own a handgun clearly already meets the legal requirements of using it at a certified facility, and anyone who cannot legally qualify to transport a gun back and forth should not be authorized to possess one in the first place. The entire ATT system is redundant. It protects the public not a whit.

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C-42 would eliminate the ATTs and allow a valid licence to suffice. Similarly, C-42 removes the classification of firearms from unaccountable bureaucrats and puts it directly in the hands of the federal cabinet, provides a six-month amnesty period for delays in renewing firearms licences and actually makes obtaining a firearms licence slightly more difficult. Many of these are mere fiddles to Canada’s poorly written Firearms Act. But they are worthwhile, small steps toward a full overhaul of the troubled legislation.

Canada’s millions of lawful firearms owners are not a threat to the public — which is why gun crime is so vanishingly rare here despite widespread civilian gun ownership. As C-42 shows, it is possible to streamline the process of legally acquiring a firearm without reducing the already stringent controls on their ownership, and we welcome its imminent passage.

National Post