Canadian hoplophobes have gotten their seizure program into its final stages, or so it looked like—but as we discussed earlier this month, they’ve run into trouble this summer, and it looks like more setbacks are ahead. Since that write-up, the problems have actually gotten worse for the gun seizures, on three different fronts.
More Problems For Canada’s Gun Seizure Program
Guns in Canada @ TFB:
The problem of the Supreme Court case
We’ve already told you that the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights (CCFR), the country’s strongest gun rights organization, has managed to get its appeal against the seizures on the radar of the Supreme Court of Canada. They have a court date set for October of 2026. Until that court case is decided, which could take months, the government has extended the amnesty of its so-called buyback (technically, a seizure with payment).
At first, the case saw the CCFR and a few other parties combining their legal action against the federal government, but that list has grown considerably since, as “interveners” have joined the case. In Canadian courts, an intervener is a party who will be affected by the case, or who may have expertise related to the case. A list of several interveners was added to the appeal, including other firearms-related or outdoors organizations, and more significantly, the Attorney General of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario.
The federal government will have a harder time depicting firearms owners as crazies obsessed with “black rifles” once the provinces’ lawyers take the stand. [Zac K.]
That’s a big deal, because much of the pushback against the federal gun grab has come from Canada’s provincial governments, whose politicians view the move as a violation of law-abiding citizens’ rights as well as a waste of taxpayer money. While the feds might mischaracterize individual gun owners or their organizations as wild-eyed weapons-wavers in court, they will be unable to do so with these provinces’ seasoned lawyers. Having the AG of Ontario, the largest province, is particularly significant, especially since Ontario’s Premier Rob Ford recently said, “Gun owners, protect your guns. Simple as that, don’t ever give them away,” during a press conference with federal bigwigs standing by.
Even some civilian-focused bolt-action rifles have gotten caught up in the impending bans, which has gotten groups like Safari Club International involved. [Zac K.]
It’s not all good news for the CCFR’s case. Speaking of taxpayers, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation was denied in their application for intervener status. The other interveners were told, “The proposed interveners are not entitled to raise new issues, adduce further evidence, or otherwise supplement the record of the parties,” which raises the question of what possible good they can actually do in court. And the Supreme Court also gave the Coalition for Gun Control the right to appear as intervener, saying “given the number of firearms organizations seeking to intervene, an intervention by a civil society gun control organization may assist in maintaining a balance in the arguments before the Court.” So despite the positive developments for the CCFR, there’s a lot of work ahead.
The problem of Canadian crime
Even as the feds say they’re seizing firearms from legally licensed gun owners to stop crime, the country is seeing a massive increase in shootings and other criminal activity from bad guys with no licensing at all.
Big drug busts with massive firepower included are making the federal government’s official line a bit hard to take. [OPP]
We’ve already told you about a big smuggling bust in late May, where law enforcement in upstate New York managed to stop criminals from smuggling 89 illegal firearms into Canada. More recently, Project Bay, another cross-border case ended in police seizing $139M in drugs and multiple prohibited weapons, including a Finnish World War II-era Lahti L-39 20mm anti-tank rifle—with ammunition.
The federal firearms confiscation-with-payment program does nothing to address these problems, and law enforcement officers (many of whom are directly targeted by the federal gun seizures, as they own ARs and other now-banned guns) are unhappy. It’s incredibly bad PR for the feds’ program every time a bust like this happens. It gets even worse when it turns out that Michael Moscone, one of the people charged in the Project Bay bust, was already in jail on a double-murder charge, awaiting trial. New charges for Moscone include 11 counts of unauthorized possession of a firearm.
When the bad guys have anti-tank rifles and police and jail guards are being targeted by criminals, as has happened in Ontario lately, then law enforcement wants to push to have their focus on the actual problem, not law-abiding gun owners. [OPP]
Tack that on to this summer’s headlines of a murder-for-hire gang running shootings in Toronto, including attacks on Jewish community buildings and an attack on the U.S. consulate, and you can see hoplophobic opinion still against firearms in general, but also a growing realization that government resources are being wasted on the wrong targets.
The problem of growing firearms owner numbers
Although Canada has fewer firearms than its neighbors to the south, the country is still filled with gun owners, and that number is growing. As of the end of 2025, 2,458,677 Canadians held a Possession-Acquisition License (PAL). This is a legal requirement to own a firearm in Canada, and numbers have been going up over the past half-decade. That boost to nearly 2.5 million PAL holders came after an increase of almost 47,000 PAL licenses nationwide in 2025. That’s an increase of just under 2 percent.
Most Canadian gun owners are Fudds, but the constantly-growing number of younger shooters care deeply about all shooters’ rights. [Zac K.]
And the numbers are still going up; The province of Quebec, ground zero for gun control activism, now has half a million legal PAL holders. That still might seem insignificant for a population of nine million Quebecers, but also remember that this does not include the thousands of otherwise law-abiding residents who own firearms but do not have a PAL—this is a significant portion of firearms ownership all across Canada, and has been since Bill C-68 enacted the now-shut-down long gun registry in 1995 (which still persists only in Quebec).
The bottom line
Canada’s federal government will have its way—it always does. However, reading the political winds, it seems likely that even if the feds don’t abandon their plans for gun seizure, they will at least run the court case out to buy themselves more time, and hope to regain control of the narrative, which has run distinctly opposed to their rhetoric against legal gun owners over the last few months. And when you add more time into the equation, anything is possible. Canadian AR owners may get to keep their firearms yet.
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