Today, I received photocopies of 16 of the new paper registration certificates. The plastic card registration certificate has been scrapped. The new system uses small pieces of paper, with up to four of them printed on a single sheet. Apparently you are supposed to cut them into individual certificates with scissors. Is this an economy measure?
The retreat from the expensive plastic card system tells us that money is getting tight for the C-68 firearms control system. The layoffs of firearms control bureaucrats were the first indicators. This system has already spent over $684 million -- and apparently will spend over $350 million next year. Nearly everyone now agrees that the C-68 system is a black hole into which tax dollars pour -- and from which nothing useful comes out. This system is not worth the $1 billion it will cost by the end of 2002 -- to licence Uncle George and register his duck gun.
The first thing that struck me about the new certificates is that they contain little in the way of "identifying" information. I looked at the first one -- for a Colt semi-automatic pistol -- and could not tell which Colt semi-auto pistol it was trying to identify. All the certificate told me was that the handgun was a Colt Handgun, Semi-automatic, Prohibited (short barrel). No Calibre, no Model, no Manufacturer (some Colts aren't made by Colt).
***Jun 2003: I now have my own registration certificates for rifles and shotguns. They are even worse. They give only "Make: Unknown, Type: Rifle, Class: Non-restricted, Action: Bolt action." Er