Yeah, yeah, it is a 550. Anyone with half a clue knew all along that the "classic" series of PE90 rifles were nothing more than semi-auto versions of the SIG 550. Heck - mine even has "SIG" cast directly into the Rear Trunion, visible just below the Rear Sight! No big mystery there, despite the initial ignorance of the RCMP thanks to obfuscation by Swissarms/SAN at source.
Notwithstanding all of the above, can anyone in their right mind even begin to explain why the Swissarms / SIG 550 was prohibited in the first place? What is it about the SIG 550 that sets it apart from the AR15, Tavor, B+T APC, Bushmaster ACR, et-al? All are 5.56mm, all operate using similar systems, and for those firearms that share a conventional layout, they are all approximately the same length. So why single out the SIG 550 along with the Steyr AUG, AK, HK 93, FNC, etc?? Same cartridge, same operating systems. The prohibition of some rifles while others are simply restricted or even non-restricted is absolutely maddening and exposes the utter insanity that is Canadian Firearms Law.
The history books will say that the SIG 550 was prohibited back in 1992 (along with the AUG, AK-74, HK 33, FNC, etc) because it was on the civilian market at the time that Bills C68 and C17 were passed into law. The other designs (Tavor, B+T, ACR, etc) that are not (yet) prohibited came after the initial legislation and have "slipped through the cracks" over the following years. Bill C71 and ensuing OICs were intended to address that historical shortcoming by playing "catch-up" against all semi-automatic firearms in one fell swoop of prohibition, this time with a buy-back. Then along came the pandemic and upset the Liberal plans....
So where will we find ourselves after this all blows over and the "antis" find their voices again? That is a very open-ended question with a range of possible outcomes. I am hopeful that the pandemic will have made many Canadians once again aware of the comfort that comes from having the means to protect life and life-sustaining property. I am also hopeful that the economic fallout from Covid19 wil be such that Liberal plans for a buyback are simply untenable in the new post-pandemic fiscal reality. And so on and so forth. Wishful thinking? Perhaps. They say that there is nothing more persistent than a Liberal with a bad idea, so they may fall right back onto their tired old "imminent threat to public safety" schtick. Which we all know to be an outright lie. And so it goes...
The bottom line is that there is zero justification for prohibiting the Swissarms/SIG 550 series of rifles in Canada. Like the AR15, no awfully-owned and wielded Swissarms rifle has ever been used in the commission of even a single act of criminal violence in Canada. So where is this imminent threat to public safety? According to Bill Bliar, the threat lies in the potential, future misuse of a Swissarms/SIG 550 by a formerly law-abiding firearms owner. In other words, Bill Bliar can predict the future, folks. And needs to legislate against possibilities. Utter Hogwash! The fact of the matter is that corrupt, dictatorial governments fear an armed populace because they know that real power flows from the State's exclusive ownership of force. And if the populace is armed with "weapons of war designed for hunting humans" then they are an even match for the Palace Guard RCMP armed with identical "Patrol Carbines". The "Little Potato" can't have that! And so we have the Liberal campaign against continued civilian ownership of semi-automatic firearms in this country. Scary stuff!!
