You mention a museum. My advice is to resist the urge to give anything to any museum ever. Having worked in and around historic collections in the past, I will tell you with absolute certainty, no one at the museum cares more than you do. The map and archives curator at the Canadian War Museum told me that they have over fifty of the 1917 Vimy Ridge trench system maps. Every donor thinks they have the Holy Grail in an old foot locker, when in reality, it is just another artifact. The War Museum would accept your donation, but unless it is absolutely THE best example they've ever seen, it will disappear into the vaults pending someone's deaccession decision. Their mandate is not to show everything in the collection, but to use the artifacts to tell stories. Like it or not, the current flavour is to present military history stories, expressed with a sprinkling of trinkets or badges, of just about every part of society to the deliberate exclusion of showing perfect examples of technology. They don't care.
You are better off using this handgun, which is not complete or original, as a political beating stick to tell politicians how important Canada's handgun history really is and what truly interesting artifacts continually emerge. Explain your dilemma to your MP - do your destroy an experimental design or surrender it to the cops for destruction? Your pride as a Canadian refuses to do either. Shout at them so they understand!
