More firearms being banned without public notice following May 1 order from Ottawa

Maple Ridge, B.C., gun store co-owner Matt Mendel began reading rumours online in early May, shortly after the prime minister announced a ban on 1,500 firearms and gun parts, that even more were quietly being reclassified as prohibited. 

There was no public announcement by federal authorities. Businesses like Mendel's Wanstalls Hunting and Shooting had to find out by searching the guns they sell in the national Firearms Reference Table (FRT), available to them online.  

Mendel, 32, and his staff began to check various models and sure enough some were suddenly banned — mostly shotguns.

The RCMP, which manages the FRT through the Canadian Firearms Program, sent a written statement to CBC News confirming the re-classification was taking place beyond the original list of 1,500 banned items, and that so far no public notification has taken place.

"The Canadian Firearms Program (CFP) has been working diligently to ensure that the FRT is updated to reflect all of the classification changes resulting from the Order in Council issued May 1st," read the statement, referring to Trudeau's order, adding that there are about 187,000 different items in the FRT.

The changes are surprising, Mendel says.

For example, the Typhoon F12, a semi-automatic shotgun, was listed as non-restricted on May 14, but then a subsequent FRT search the following day showed it as prohibited.

"If I wasn't a diligent business owner and constantly kept my ear to the ground with this sort of thing, I could have been selling illegal firearms to people, and people could be possessing illegal firearms without even knowing it," said Mendel.

The Typhoon F12 has a striking resemblance to the AR-15 — a semi-automatic rifle which was named by Trudeau in his May 1 announcement. But Mendel says beyond the pistol grip, adjustable butt stock and general appearance, they're entirely different guns.

Including the one or two Typhoon F12 guns in his inventory, the store stands to lose $30,000 to $40,000 for a dozen firearm models that have been reclassified as prohibited, and much more over time on accessories and ammunition for these guns.

"As a business, we just hold on to that and we lose that money. We've paid for those firearms, and now they'll sit in my basement ... forever essentially," said Mendel.

List of banned firearms to be published 'in the near future'

The RCMP also said it will "publish a complete list of all the newly prohibited firearms and their variants in the near future."

The RCMP spokesperson who sent the statement said businesses have the options of returning the newly banned firearms to the manufacturer, transferring them to other businesses with appropriate privileges, legally exporting them or having them deactivated.

The spokesperson said people who own the banned guns can either wait for further instructions to take part in an expected buy-back program, or have the firearms deactivated or legally exported.

Mendel scoffed at the options presented by the RCMP, saying once they were paid for, the guns couldn't be returned to the manufacturers or distributors, deactivating them just meant taking the loss and he's still waiting to hear the details of the buy-back program.

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