swiss arms classification

[Kc.338Lp]

Ive been searching for the past few days on this subject and I just cant find what im looking for . I only became interested in shooting a short while ago and was shocked to see what was considered prohibited.

From what ive been reading from other people posting on the subject is a fair amount of the guns on the list were put on there based on what they looked like etc and they added the term varient to close loopholes .

my question is , why exactly is the swiss arms rifles not considered a varient of the SG551 series of rifles , im sure an unfamiliar person would look at them and say they appear to be the same and thus its a varient .

and second why does this classification not stand to other "varients" of weapons already on the prohibited list like say someone made an AUG copy that shared no internal parts with the select fire AUG and worked completely different . people would still call it a varient . and more than likely consider it a prohibited weapon.

why does the swiss arms get special treatment , same for the b and t 99 , it looks just like a steyr tmp .

 

[severus]

This is the fun involved in being a Canadian gun owner.

AFIAK the SIG series that are currently in Canada are so because they are specifically designed to be semi-auto. Many of the items that were prohibited were "mean looking" but in many cases were just semi-auto versions of the same firearm that came in full-auto as well. In other words if you were able to get hold of the full-auto fire group for your semi-auto version it would be easy to convert to full-auto.

This is the reason that when the RCMP gets a new firearm in for FRT classification the first thing they do is try to make it go full-auto with methods that a reasonable gunsmith could perform. They also check to see if the fire group from the full-auto version (if there is one) can be easily swapped or modified to work in the semi-auto version. A recent example would be the Type 97 that was allowed in to Canada as compliant only to be classed as prohibited when the RCMP figured out that it was just a semi-auto version of the full-auto military Chinese firearm.

If I remember correctly, the Swiss Arms rifles are designed to be Canadian compliant and despite looking like their military cousin, they are not the same internally. As for the AUG example, the answer is possibly, maybe, yes, and no depending on what the RCMP Firearms lab would determine.

So I hope that clears up the confusion or just reduces it a little. I am sure other members will have more to say and can likely add more detail than what I have provided.

 

[canucklehead]

Don't question it or look for logic - there isn't any.

Suffice to say that the Swiss Arms rifles are NOT variants of the SG55X series, and hence, not prohibited by name. Let's just leave it at that.

 

[cjs]

Yes - there is little to no logic for any of this.

 

[CanAm]

The real answer is not discussed on this board.

 

[Rich LPS]

"In other words if you were able to get hold of the full-auto fire group for your semi-auto version it would be easy to convert to full-auto."

In the case of the Canadian Swiss Arms Rifles this is not an accurate statement. The upper and lower receivers are quite different and you can have all the Full Auto parts you want but they will not fit or function.

Rich

 

[crazycrocket]

You should not be asking why the Swiss Arms Rifles are legal.

Instead you should be asking why are the Sig 55X Rifles not legal? (or anything else on the prohib list for that matter)

 

[sigger69]

You should not be asking why the Swiss Arms Rifles are legal.

Instead you should be asking why are the Sig 55X Rifles not legal? (or anything else on the prohib list for that matter)

And the 522.

 

[X-man]

Technically, the current Swiss Arms rifles in Canada are not variants of the SIG 55X series or civilian PE-90s, as they are prohibited "By Name" under current regs, including all variants.

The loophole in the idiotic regs that the Liberals wrote is that they basically trotted down to the local corner store, picked up a 1994-95 Guns Annual, thumbed through it and banned all the "evil" looking guns, "By Name"...no provision was made for new firearms that would be invented/developed thereafter, or wasn't to be found in their annual.

The current Swiss Arms rifles are actually based upon an eariler Swiss design, the SIG 540 that isn't NAMED specifically, thus good to go! Doesn't have to make sense, it was Liberal Gov't policy! Lucky for us they were so ill-informed and incompetent when they actually drafted the bill.

 

[Scarheart]

I think it's because they put a bunch of them out in pretty designer colors at one point! So they didn't look so scary! 8)