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Local and national firearms advocacy groups are sounding the alarm over what they perceive as an attempt by the federal government to effectively recreate the long-gun registry, which was scrapped in 2012 amid huge cost overruns.

While the federal Liberals have vowed not to resurrect the registry, firearms groups fear that a plan to rewrite controversial gun marking rules will be the “final piece” in the puzzle that connects every gun in the country to its owner.

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Those regulations, which have been deferred eight times by four successive federal governments, most recently last month, are now being modernized, according to Ottawa. The federal government now expects them to come into force in late 2020.

Ottawa says it is “premature to speculate” about what the rewritten regulations will include, but gun rights advocacy groups are worried about a suggestion published late last month that they will be aimed at identifying gun owners.