When I thoroughly distilled the once-upon-a-time registered firearms in the postal code K1, or the east half of Ottawa, the following were the top cartridges:
- the top cartridge was the 12-Gauge; next came the .22 rimfire, and the next are hunting rifle cartridges, .303BR, .30-30 and .30-06.
- the most recognizable companies were Remington and Winchester each at about 11%. In 3rd place was Canada’s own Cooey brand. Browning’s name, which includes several military and European variations, was in 4th place. For ease of analysis, any rifle listed as 303 British was counted as a Lee-Enfield, except when the record was obviously a Ross or Pattern 1914. Savage No.4s were often identifiable by the serial number format, and any .303 Savage commercial guns excluded. The combined Lee-Enfield ‘Numbers’ and ‘Marks’ were the 5th most common make, coming in at 5% of all of K1’s firearms. Arguably, if there is a single most common firearm in K1, noting that 7.4% of all ammunition is a 303 British.
This analysis was of registered rifles at the dissolution of the registry, and the LGR predates the arrival of large numbers of 5.56, 7.62x39 and 7.62x54R rifles, and likely underreports many lay-away rifles.
