Unfortunately the intent of verification is to uniquely identify the firearm, but that it turns out is impossible. A firearm registration certificate may be issued only for a firearm that (a) bears a serial number sufficient to distinguish it from other firearms, or (b) that is described in the prescribed manner." Then Regulation 1.1 says, "For the purposes of paragraph 14(b) of the Act, the manner of describing a firearm is by referring to its make, class, type, action and calibre or gauge." Those two combine to destroy much of the usefulness of the firearms registration system. A firearms registration certificate is useless, because it fails to uniquely identify a firearm because it may describe a number of other firearms. Serial numbers are re-used by manufacturers, older firearms may not contain any information at all. Information taken from a firearm that is not stamped into the "frame or receiver" of that firearm is untrustworthy, and cannot be used by an applicant to identify the firearm. (The majority of firearms have most or all of their identifying information stamped into the barrel, the slide, or some other uncontrolled, interchangeable spare part that may or may not have been part of the firearm on the day it was manufactured. Such data is unusable.) Even data stamped into the "frame or receiver" is unreliable, as it may be a "house name," or the name of an importer, or the name of a distributor, rather than the name of the maker. It goes on and on.
The Firearms Reference Table (nicknamed FaRT by its users) is a program that comes on a CD from the government that is both slow, doesn't contain all the firearms, and is frequently complained about by those that try to use it. Several users noted that it may never be complete, given the nearly infinite number of combinations and permutations of firearms. Other users indicated that it is complex as a result of attempting to make it forensically correct. For example, a FaRT search for a "Make: Fabrique Nationale" handgun, "Model: 1935," will often fail because the firearm is registered as a "Make: Browning" handgun, "Model: High Power" -- an equally valid description of the same firearm. That particular handgun, according to FaRT, may be correctly registered if any one of six possible entries for "Make" was used, and any one of twelve "Model" entries, making a total of 72 different ways to register the same gun. The other way happens too: e.g. three quite different rifles have been marketed as the "Winchester Model 70". The FRT disks are also perpetually out of date, and always must be.
(NOTE: Few people use the disks any more. Most dealers use the online version because it is updated daily. The RCMP tanked the civilian verifier's network. Now it is pretty much limited to dealers and a select few non-dealer verifiers working for clubs, etc and "official" agents. At one time the Liberals planned on making a fortune selling their FRT to foreign countries as a valuable crime fighting "resource." We all know just how successful they were with those sales.)
The Canadian Verifier's Program was all but shut down in 2002, and there are no verifiers within hundreds of kilometers of people even in major cities within Canada. The current registration system uses the Calibre, Class, Type, Action, Shots (magazine capacity), and Barrel length to help identify the firearm. All of those identifying entries can be, and often are, changed by the addition, removal and/or substitution of uncontrolled interchangeable spare parts. They are largely useless as features used for unique identification. Make, Model and Manufacturer as defined to be primary "identifying" information. As an example, one of the new registration certificates "identifies" a firearm as being a "Make: Savage, Type: Rifle, Action: Bolt, Class: Non-restricted" firearm. Comparing that information with the data on the Firearms Reference Table CD-ROM, we learn that the registration certificate is describing any one of 195 different firearms manufactured by Savage. Similarly, comparing the new registration certificate for a "Make: Smith and Wesson, Type: Handgun, Action: Revolver, Class: Restricted" firearm with the CD-ROM data results in the "identification" of the firearm as being any one of 276 revolvers manufactured by Smith and Wesson. few people are aware there are often two or more perfectly valid serial numbers on the same firearm -- and yes, that does mean multiple serial numbers on the "frame or receiver." The NFA had to send an expert witness to Toronto to clear up a case regarding two Sten submachine guns and two registration certificates. The guns were not registered using the original British serial number, a situation that baffled the Crown's experts. They were registered using a valid serial number applied well after manufacture by the French government. The French apparently did not like the location of the British Serial number -- which was on an uncontrolled spare part. The French number was on the "frame or receiver," and was therefore preferable for "identification." The Serial numbers of German military firearms -- which are very common in Canada -- are useless for unique identification, by reason of frequent and deliberate duplication. Iver Johnson revolvers share that problem, and so do many other firearms. On some firearms, the Serial number is hidden or not easily recognized as a Serial number. At one point, the Registry had over a dozen Walther semi-automatic handguns registered in a manner that showed the Patent number as being the Serial number. Serial numbers are often found on the replaceable barrel (a part that wears out), yet the reciever is the official 'gun', not the barrel. Many firearms have no Serial number at all, because the law, at the time and place of manufacture, did not require the manufacturer to stamp Serial numbers on that type of firearm. Some military surplus firearms have no Serial numbers because a government ordered them made that way
If, on any day after the issuance of registration certificates, the owner moves to a new location, emigrates, or dies -- and no one tells the Registry -- all firearms certificates in the name of that person are still in the Registry, but they have become meaningless. The firearms are "gone guns". The NFA's best estimate is that somewhere over 30 per cent of all firearms recorded in the Registry are ghost guns or gone guns. Those records are meaningless and useless. In Jan 2001, the registry admitted that of the 1,250,000 registration records in their system, at least 650,000 are meaningless -- and have now been recognized as spurious.
In the registration transfer system, the transferor has no way of knowing whether or not his "informing the Registrar" will actually result in the firearm being deleted from the Registry's records of his own holdings. He may still be shown on the Registry's records as still being in possession of a "ghost gun" twenty years after transferring the firearm -- lawfully -- to another. [C-15B s. 105, FA s. 23(c)] The Registry makes that error often, because the Registry is, always has been, and apparently always will be, riddled with errors, omissions, and duplications. As proof of that statement, please note that firearms dealers usually have 20 to 50 per cent more firearms in stock in the Registry records than they do in the store. It is utterly unacceptable to impose the Registry's defective registration record system on any owner, possessor, dealer or borrower -- and then criminalize him on that basis.
The law C-68 was known when it was authored to be so badly written and riddled with things that wouldn't work, that it was peppered with 'prescribed' and 'regulation', so that any part of it may be overridden by orders in council to fix it when the rules turn out to be unworkable, as they so often have been. Criminal law is our most serious law, and yet using regulations as part of law has side effects too. e.g. R v. Rusk (Saskatchewan Provincial Court in Prince Albert, Jun 2 2000) dealt with Regulation 4, in the "Storage of Non-Restricted Firearms Regulations." However, the Regulation they were looking at became null and void on 01 Dec 1998. It was part of a set of Regulations that had been superseded by a new set of Regulations that were made in Mar 1998, but did not come into force until 01 Dec 1998. The offence in question took place on 04 Aug 1999, so the new Regulation -- 5, not 4, and with differing wording -- should have been the subject of the trial. Apparently no one -- Crown, defence or judge -- was aware of the fact that they were looking at an invalid Regulation. How can a citizen know what law is in effect, when lawyers with a duty and the time to find out the law, don't notice it either.
Even the head of the registry has no idea what's in his system, and how to get information out of it. The Registry sent a sworn document to the Crown prosecutor saying that a careful search of their data base for "Chinese machine gun, calibre 9mm, Serial Number 001120" showed that the gun had never been registered. Another certified document was sent to the defence lawyer in that case. It was a certified true copy of the Registry's copy of the registration certificate for that particular submachine gun. Both documents were signed by the same man -- the head of the Registry -- on the same day. A danger of error and resulting injustice arises from the combined incompetence of those who initiate and those who process search requests. Police don't trust the paper registration certificate when its handed to them, and check the 'official' source, the database, which even the head of the registry can't use with any certainty.
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