> Oh, I see. Now having them in Canada would not have been surprising at all.
(Big Grin!) Back then Canada was Civilized. Every kid had a BB-Gun, and every teenager had a pellet gun. We used to have pellet gun fights in the Gully when we were teenagers. Try that today and we’d all be arrested.
Of course, the muzzle velocities weren’t what they are today: they were 100 or 200 fps, as opposed to 1000 fps today.
The FAC (Firearms Acquisition Certificate) was available from the cop shop. They checked you out in a week, and posted it to you. From there you could buy and own long guns — as many as you wanted. If you wanted pistols, you could join a club, get the secretary to vouch you, sit an exam and own as many as you want.
Canada is different now. All of that changed just after I emigrated. The Nanny State is winning. The Barney-fication of my Home and Native Land is nearly complete.
well Hell, I could walk into a gun shop and do that now. As many of any gun, other than a machine gun, a "short rifle/shotgun", or a silencer, as I could afford. Only the federal background check would be required.. unfortunately one for each gun...except that a Texas concealed carry permit serves instead of the "instant check", so the only record of purchase is the form that remains with the dealer, and I have one of those, so other than having to fill out a whole bunch the same form, over and over, I'd be good to go, until I ran out money.
Those other guns, including the machine gun, take a mite more paperwork, but they are legal in Texas as long as the national government is OK with it, Texas is OK with it. But with those you are definitely on a federal list, and it's one of the worst maintained list in the world, but if you have one of the weapons, but aren't on the list, the BATFE comes to stomp your cats and shoot your kids and/or wife. (Both have happened!). There is also the little problem, for machine guns, that the thing had to be made and on the list before 1986. Since the supply is fixed and the demand is not, prices are, in a word, ridiculous.
But even Texas is kind of hinky about actually bearing those arms. I was appalled when I moved here 32 years ago. But things have improved. George W. Bush signed the concealed handgun licensing law (Before that you couldn't carry a handgun on your person, except when hunting or fishing). Now, with a license, you can carry concealed, but still not openly. However now you can also carry (loaded) concealed, in a vehicle, with no license at all. That's a big change, since until very recently you could if you were "traveling", but the courts had successively constricted the definition of "traveling", to the point where it meant a trip with an overnight stay. But recently the legislature finally defined it to mean, well, in a vehicle and going somewhere, even down to the corner store. Some local prosecutors and police didn't take the hint (always a mistake when dealing with the Texas Legislature), so then the Leg changed the law again, so that "traveling" was no longer a "defense to prosecution", but rather to make "not traveling" an element of the offense, so that the prosecutor had to prove you were not traveling, rather than the citizen having to prove that they were.
Theoretically it is legal to carry a loaded long gun. But it will get you arrested for "brandishing" and/or "disturbing the peace, in most of the urban areas, of which there are more and more every year.