Interesting "Research" from the Ottawa Citizen Database

Andy

Andy

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Has anyone else taken a crack at the database pulled together by the Ottawa Citizen using data obtained from the CFC through an ATIP request?

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/...fire/form.html

I have assumed that the data is mostly accurate, but you need to use as many possible names for a firearm you can think of to maximize your hits (e.g. Carcano and Mannlicher-Carcano). I found it interesting on a number of fronts:

- only one (1) of a firearm I possess is registered. Many other examples of fewer than 10. This gives a decent feel for rarity and hence value;
- I get a sense of what's registered in my "Hood" (first two letters of Postal Code);
- I see a few of my "Holy Grails" registered here and there, so I know they are out there; and
- several antiques are registered (odd).

Let's leave the political stuff and critcisms of the serires and its author to the other forums. Who else has played with it? Any other uses for us Milsurp collectors you can see?
 
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I think the biggest problem with trying to use this database is the woeful inaccuracy of the information. Now, all restricted firearms had to be reregistered because it was known that the previous registry was inaccurate to the point of being legally useless, but it doesn't seem as if the current descriptors are any more accurate. Just play with "Smith & Wesson" and you will see what I mean. Pretty hard to tell what variation, model for many of the entries. Because I'm interested in Ross rifles, I searched for these, and there are a lot of Ross rifles, but apart from that, it is just about impossible to learn anything about most of them.
If anyone is interested in playing with this database, might be an idea to do it in the near future. No reason to assume that the newspaper is going to have it available indefinitely, and the Registry is revealed to be such an embarrassing mess that the CFC must be mortified.
 
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How Bad Could The Registry Be???????

I just ran the Ross rifle in my area code. I came up with a list shorter than I had imagined...descriptions ran from Remington Ross to Lee Enfield Ross to just plain old Ross. I guess this is what you get when you start with people who know zero and don't really care anyway. Actually a good thing for us as it will mean a quicker death for the registry.
 
transitsc said:
Are you saying you can somehow tap into CFC records via the Ottawa Citizen?
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There's discussions of it all over the Articles section. Here's a link:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/rapidfire/form.html


For those of you that are searching, here are some tips.

I wanted to know how many Schmidt-Rubin 1889s there are in Canada like mine. You can only search for model or make, and I knew people would have all sorts of weird spellings. Here's what I did:

put in Non Restricted
Type: Rifle
Bolt Action
model: 1889

It'll return at least 200 results, but only 176 of them are of various iterations of the spelling 'schmidt-rubin'. Now this only works for relatively 'rare' guns, not something like a 1910 Ross.
 
Hello,

I found a couple of my guns by looking at the date registered.

I don't think that they can track down exactly who owns what on this site. Unfortunatly, I am sure a hacker would be able to get into all of the personal information of us.

Cam
 
Cam_S said:
Hello,

I found a couple of my guns by looking at the date registered.

I don't think that they can track down exactly who owns what on this site. Unfortunatly, I am sure a hacker would be able to get into all of the personal information of us.

Cam
Click to expand...


wanna bet?
 
wow, that's disgusting. Imagine if any other information about an individual was to leak, and what a stir it would cause...

I guess there's only one safe place for my high power! PVC pipe and GPS!
 
The biggest risk are for people who made their own guns and have them registered with their full names in the 'make'.

Other than that, it would be much easier for a thief to follow you home from the range.
 
There is some intersting tidbits which can be gained from this database, especially for the milsurp enthusiast.
Here are some:
SMG C1s registered in private hands: Converted auto=5, full auto =16
C2A1s in Canada: 3 converted auto, and 3 full auto. There are another 4 registered full autos as C2 (including one as a C2 1) and one more converted auto.
For C1A1s (also C1s), there are over 200. You have to search province by province to find them...the bulk (around 160) are in Ontario. One lucky Ontario owner even has one that is only restricted.
Now for some rare guns: EX1 and EX2s in private hands: a total of 4. (2 of each)
How about those North American Arms 1911s, of which 200 or so were made at the Ross rifle factory? I can find 2 in private hands, both in Quebec. Do you think the owners know what they have?

You can also use this database to figure out whether you have to rush out and buy your semi-auto 1919s and MG34s from certain suppliers? Do a search with Business and Commercial variant selected. Confirm the first digits of their postal code. It's as if you can see into their warehouse. A check for PTRD's and PTRS will also let you see that there is another Ontario business with quite a reasonable stock of these in inventory.

Another query that I found interesting is how many Sterling SMGs were out there in semi auto. The number is around 24 in private hands, and one with a business; one more with a New Brunswick museum. Some are listed as rifles, but show as restricted all the same.
Many guns in the database are incorrectly listed, so you have to be careful not to reduce your search parameters too far.
 
I just discoverd that if you search for m1 carbines (restricted due to 18" barrel" by make IE IBM rockola inland ect they are ALL non restricted:runaway: :dancingbanana:

even a bolt action m1 carbine in ont.......
 
Just wanted to add that as Tiriaq mentioned, this database may not be online forever, so if you did want to do some research on number quantities, best hurry up. Be nice if we kept this thread to looking for numbers of some of the rare stuff, as opposed to the errors of the registry, and the politics of good/bad privacy issues. Those are being well addressed on some of the other threads.
Kind of a shame this database won't allow a search of both make and model, as that could lead to some better data.
 
Wow, the War Museum has 132 various Ross Rifles. Cool, I always knew they had a nice collection.
Also have 5 No 4 Mk1T

Only one No 5 though, odd.

Only 39 Mosin-Nagants.

They have 8 M2s though!

They've also got 2 New Zealand Pattern Carbines... that means there are 15 others in Canadian hands besides mine :D

If anyone wants to search the War Museum, type in 'K1' for postal code, and Museum for client.
 
Everyone will be happy to know that the RCMP and RNC have safeguarded us from the evil 1894 Winchester assault weapon.

Look up the A0 area code and search for restricted rifles. Looks like the Ross and Martin Henry also are restricted.

Edit Also found a Winchester 92 as Prohib.
 
There are 1045 properly registered Ross 1910s in individual hands.

Funny how when you look at what Canuck223 posted, this obviously is not a proper count :rolleyes: Makes you wonder how exactly they would even begin to try to use this to ID any guns... If the long gun registry is this screwed, how bad is the restricted one which has been around since the 30s?
 
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