Owner of Regina gun shop reacts to ban on ‘assault-style’ weapons

The owner of a Regina gun store is wondering what to do with a bulk of his inventory, now that the federal government has banned what it considers “assault-style” firearms.

Darryl Schemenauer runs TnT Gunworks and said he’s now stuck with weapons and accessories he can’t sell, a scenario that is going to cost his business big.

“That could be hundreds of thousands of dollars here that we’re not allowed to sell and we’re not really sure what’s going to happen with the firearms. The government says we can send them back to our suppliers but our suppliers aren’t going to take these firearms back. They’re banned,” Schemenauer said.

“Where can you sell the firearms, if they’re prohibited? What are you supposed to do with the firearms? That’s the thing that’s up in the air right now. There’s a lot of money tied up in a lot of these firearms. You can average a gun at possibly a thousand to two-thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money for a lot of people.”

On Friday, the federal government announced it had prohibited about 1,500 models and variants of the guns, making it illegal to use, sell or import them.

The government did so by changing regulations so the weapons would be reclassified as prohibited, rather than non-restricted or restricted.

Some of gun models include the AR-15 and the Ruger Mini-14, which was used in the Ecole Polytechnique massacre in Montreal in 1989.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pointed to that shooting, as well as the one in Nova Scotia in April, as reasons for the ban. Stricter gun control, including banning assault-style weapons was also a campaign promise by the Liberal Party during the 2019 federal election.

The move has garnered praise from survivors of mass shooters, but criticism from gun rights advocates who say the ban punishes legal gun owners, without preventing criminals from acquiring them.

Schemenauer said a number of the newly-banned weapons have been used for hunting for years. He also said Trudeau’s statement that an AR-15 isn’t needed to hunt deer betrays an ignorance of the issue.

“Well, you never could shoot a deer with an AR-15. It’s a restricted firearm and never was allowed to do that. The laws are in place in Canada for years about that. They just don’t understand firearms.”

The biggest complaint he’s heard from customers is the exception for Indigenous peoples practicing subsistence hunting during the two-year amnesty period, which protects owners from criminal liability as they comply with the new rules.

“A lot of people are very upset about that. It’s kind of a two-tiered system if we’re going to do that,” he said.

According to the government, Indigenous hunters would be able to keep using the newly-banned guns “in limited circumstances until a suitable replacement can be found. By the end of the amnesty period, all firearms owners must comply with the ban.”

Ottawa said it was planning to introduce a buyback program but Schemenauer is sceptical it will be funded enough to repossess all the guns.

“We were told, possibly there’s a $250-million bank account for the buyback program and that’s going to be used up quickly. That’s not even comparable to what’s out there for firearms, for what value these guns are worth.”

–With files from Britton Gray and Canadian Press