OK, legal beagles, jump in here, but from my limited understanding of Canadian law.
1) To get a conviction, the Crown must prove that both Actus Reas, and Mens Reas have occured. In English, that a crime has occured, and that there was the intent to commit the crime.
2) The crime is in question. Taking a prohib out of it's registered address without a SAP is a crime. However, as Skip points out, the owner can claim with some authority that his gun seems to be placed outside the definition of prohib. In the case of the FN/FAL, the registration of the gun has come under review at least twice. In the early 90's, the FN/FAL was subject to an inspection and re-registration. The same gun would have been subject to a second review when the registration was entered into the new registry. The Feds have had two opportunities in recent history to reclassify this gun, and they find it to be a restricted, rather than prohibited firearm. The owner while required to be aware of and to comply with the current firearms regulation, has no duty to assume his documentation is in error given the level of scrutiny. Why would a reasonable man assume his level of expertese should exceed an entire department of paid experts?
Given that the owner has every reason to assume his particular gun is properly registered, and that he has an ATT that allows him to transport restricted rifles, a reasonable man could believe that transporting his restricted rifle to an approved range was a legal activity.
Now, do I personally believe that there is a subclass of FN/FAL rifles that falls out of the prohib class and is instead only restricted, NO. Then again, I would have assumed the same of all the Sterling SMG varients if someone had not pushed the issue.
