Beating The Shadow Registry

The Shadow Registry is diabolically clever when you consider that the end game is to simply take all guns.

But there is a way to hide what you buy from the government without breaking the law.  These 3 points need to be satisfied:

- Firstly, for this to work you can only buy from a private seller or a grey market seller (no licensed businesses).  This is because the law requires all the information to be stored on the purchase by licensed dealers.

- Secondly, the gun being purchased must have been in private seller hands before May 2022.  After May 2022, it likely entered the Shadow Registry via dealer and is unsafe.

- Thirdly, you need to have been licensed to own firearms before May 2022.

Sales between private sellers do not require that you tell the registrar what you are selling or buying.  Without the link back to a licensed dealer, the gun truly can not be tracked.  Yes, your total has gone up by one but if you have been licensed, pre-registry, they don’t have a starting number to begin with.

No matter what the person (registrar) on the phone says; you do not need to tell them what you are selling.  DON’T VOLUNTEER INFORMATION YOU ARE NOT LEGALLY REQUIRED TO GIVE.

The Long Gun Registry Ressurected

For years we, in the gun community, knew that the C-71 Shadow Registry would one day appear.   That day is rapidly approaching.  On May 18th, 2022 the future purchase of firearms will be tracked and recorded.  For those who have never read a history book, registration ALWAYS leads to confiscation.

C-71 was a law passed years ago by Crime Minister Trudeau to require 2 things:

1) That all business sales be recorded with the identity of the purchaser

2) All private sales require a transfer authorization number from the registrar of firearms.

Through an inefficient network of transfer numbers leading back to the business point of sale, all guns will eventually be captured in this new registry.

You need to understand 2 critical points.

Firstly, all the guns you own before the registry are still legal.  They do not need to be registered.  They will only end up in this system if you sell or buy after the 18th.  If you want something; you have only days to buy it.

Secondly, this is not actually about what type of guns you own.  This is about how many you own.  If you buy 6 and sell 2 (under this system), the expectation is you will have 4 guns.  If the CFO inspects your storage (permitted under the firearms act) and the numbers don't match up, you could be in a lot of trouble.   This is especially true if the numbers are less than expected.  

If you have had your license prior to this system, a larger number is expected.  But that number will be corrected should an inspection take place.

What should you do?

1) If there is something you want, buy it right now.  Do not hesitate; get it.

2) If you are inspected by the CFO and have guns from pre-C71 your total number will be corrected.  You will be trapped in the system.  I strongly suggest storing your one or two favorite non-restricted guns away from the rest to protect them from government scrutiny and eventual seizure.

The Shadow Registry and Specter Arms

The new bill, C-71, is poised to create a nightmare scenario by establishing a Shadow Registry.  It is essentially a registry jointly maintained by both the government and licensed firearms dealers as a condition of their license.

So what is the purpose of the Shadow Registry?  Firstly if we think the registrar will follow the letter of the law and not ask for the make and model (like the law suggests) we are deluding ourselves.  But let us assume that they follow the law to the letter.  With private transfers, there is nothing to say that non-restricted transfers need a model or serial number.  Just a verification that a transfer has taken place.  This allows for the government to accurately determine how many firearms are owned.  Inevitably this will help prevent enterprising individuals from using methods to obscure the Shadow Registry kept by gun dealers.  You might ask “what value does knowing that a gun has been transferred with no other attached information?”  To get the answer you need to look at the inferred and stated goals of Canada’s gun control scheme; disarm everyone.  By recording how many people had firearms transferred to them and how many went out, the government can accurately determine the real amounts of guns owned by new generation shooters.  When it comes time to send the door kickers to take the guns, they either get them all or arrest the gun owner because the numbers don’t match up.

And then there is the lie that gun records from retail businesses will need a warrant to access.  Retail records do not need a warrant.  This is a holdover from the old Long Gun Registry (LGR) (which became irrelevant when it was abolished).  Although it is said the records will require a warrant, it does not repeal the section that permits “looking at the books” and making copies whenever they want.  It is not common knowledge but a firearms business is given their ledger to record firearm sales.  This ledger is provided by the Chief Firearms Officer of the province they are operating out of.  This alone is a subtle reminder that you don’t own the ledger or the information within.

What does this mean for Specter Arms?

Specter Arms has built its business on the philosophy that information and privacy are valuable.  As soon as the LGR was abolished, we stopped keeping this information.  We would check if the license was valid yes, but never did we hold on to that information.  Our sales literally rose over 1000% when the LGR was gone.  What once was a struggling business became viable with our annual growth (post 2012) at 13% per year.  Why was this?  Well, privacy was the big thing.  Pre 2012, there was no reason to buy from anyone except a large retailer.  There was no privacy because of the LGR and buying from a large online retailer was convenient.  This sentiment is mirrored by the fact that from the inception of the LGR to its demise, gun businesses evaporated to only 1/6th of their previous numbers.  Post 2012, new businesses flourished.

Over 99% of SA revenue comes from gun shows.  Without the means to transfer non-restricted firearms on the weekends (CFO offices are closed), the gunshow is destined to die.  No gun shows, translates into a projected decrease in revenues of over 99%.

We at SA have a sneaking suspicion that the large gun dealers and importers are happy with this scheme.  It only serves to drive more business their way by resuming the LGR trend of wiping out small and medium business competitors.  It wipes out the gun show and all the private and grey market dealers as well.

With the new Shadow Registry, we at SA need to re-evaluate our business model.  If we are unwilling to change, we will die a swift death along with the hundreds of new small firearms businesses that are destined to die.

SA has always subscribed to an intelligence driven model which uses social media, statistics and online forums to predict trends and follow those trends.  The Shadow Registry is not a surprise to us and we started transitioning away from sales to manufacturing.  This plan is uniquely the safest but also the most dangerous; it is quite the oxymoron.  It is safe because re-investing in inventory for sales is bound to leave us caught with thousands of dollars in inventory that will never be sold.  It is dangerous because if we can not get the S3 and S5 rifle projects to market before the money runs out, we will be finished.

It is a gamble but the alternative is to close down and wait for a friendly government to undo this damage.  We will not go down without a fight; who dares, wins.

Quebec Now Has a Gun Registry

I will get straight to the point: to those of you who live in Quebec I have this to say:

1) If you want to buy a gun from me, I am in no way going to bow down to your provincial government.  I will continue to respect your privacy by not recording or reporting sales information to Big Brother.  (I still need to verify a PAL as per the law).  You can make your own decision whether you are going to comply or not.

2) Once you do register your guns, a few years down the road they will force you to pay a registration fee like they do for cars (probably a yearly fee of $100 per gun).  They will break you financially to force you to give up your hobby. It is not inconceivable that they create several registration fees, perhaps $300 for semi-autos or $400 for a prescribed list of scary non-restricted guns like the VZ58.   Who can stop them from doing it?  The law is in place and everything can now be done with the bureaucracy.   The average gun owner owns 7 firearms…. How many do you own?  What will your yearly costs be for compliance?

3) Anti-gun people are never going to be happy until your guns are destroyed and you are dead in a gas chamber.  Consider that when you make decisions in the next few weeks.

4) Specter Arms continues to stand by the wrongly persecuted people of Quebec.

If 0%

If a registry came back into place in Canada or was started in the USA and no-one complied, the registry would still be a success.  That’s right, if 0% of people complied the registry would be a success.

One thing we have learned from the cowardly, teeth chattering, grave dancing, fart-suckers in the anti-gun lobby is their game is a game they plan to play over decades.

When the long gun registry was enacted in 1997 there was an estimated 30-50% compliance (depending on who you talk to).  But the fact that all the guns were not registered is irrelevant.  Every new person coming into the shooting sports was trapped in the registry system.  I was underage in 1997 so I never had the option to “not comply”.  From day one of entering the shooting sports everything I did was tightly monitored and controlled.  I committed no crime but I was more carefully monitored then a convicted crack dealer.

Over the years the spineless gun control advocates knew that time would be on their side.  Those who could have had firearms before the registry would eventually die and leave behind those who were born into the registry.

Eventually  all guns would be either unregistered and buried in PVC tubes (rendering them inert) or registered and ready for confiscation.

People say that the registry was ineffective.  It was not.  It was very effective for if it was left in place, in 20 years time, all guns would be ready for confiscation.  That was the true purpose of the registry; it had nothing to do with crime or safety and as such, was not effective in those roles.