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VANCOUVER — Home-care workers were attending the home of an 87-year-old B.C. man recently when they stumbled across a 1960s-era pistol long forgotten in a corner of his apartment.

“I’m 87 years old, I’m not going to go around looking for it,” said Lynn Henshaw, a Korean War veteran who has lived in Sidney, B.C., for the past 15 years.

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Regardless, an RCMP visit later and Mr. Henshaw was staring down a mandatory three-year prison sentence, the result of Canada’s recently toughened gun possession laws.

“I knew the gun laws had changed, but I didn’t know it was that bad. At 87, you don’t pay attention to things like that,” he said.

The weapon that landed him in court was a .38 Colt that Mr. Henshaw had purchased when he was the administrator of a college in Maui.

Rather than hire a security guard to shuttle the school’s tuition to a bank, he said, he bought a sidearm to do it himself.

“I was trying to save money; cut the budget down … all it cost me was the price of a .38 Colt,” he said.