Feds uncertain firearm buy-back will start before amnesty for banned guns ends

There have been a few floated in news articles but anyone can figure it out using simple math. When the Liberals announced a potential buy back, they promised "fair market value" for the firearms.

The AR-15 is just one of the models banned. Fair market value in Canada for an AR-15 when I was last looking around was about $900 for the cheapest one (S&W M&P 15 Sport, or a Chinese knock off). When it comes to quality American made ones, or Canadian ones like the Diemaco/Colt Canada you are closer to $3000 and up.

There are about 60,000 AR-15s in Canada. So, lets say they absolutely low ball every one of those and offer $900 per rifle (which would be unacceptable to people who have $3500 rifles, but I will set that aside).

$900 x 60,000... That is $540,000,000 - JUST TO BUY BACK AR-15s at the LOWEST possible "fair market price". If you up that to $1500, which is probably a more realistic average fair market value for an AR-15, you now have $900,000,000 just for AR-15s.

And the AR-15 is just one of the models mentioned. The actual list includes I think 10 separate firearm families and thousands of variants.

They also banned the M-14 variants, and Vz58, among others. Those are generally cheaper than AR-15s, but are insanely common in Canada. We can't even know for sure how many are out there because they are non-restricted and they are not registered.

Add on top of that, there will be massive administrative costs to actually find these rifles (especially the ones that are non-restricted/not registered), contact owners, and process the buy back.

So I think 1bn is actually a conservative estimate, unless they completely lied about the "fair market value", or the buy back is optional.

/r/canada Thread Parent Link - ipolitics.ca