I agree with screwtape's entire rant except this part, minor inaccuracy:
Lugers have barrels that can be removed by unscrewing them from that toggle action. Joe Dlask and others make nice 108mm replacement barrels for a couple of hundred dollars, but the pistol is no longer "all original". I suspect it's more accurate. Screwtape, you may be thinking of the Mauser C96 (such as the Red 9) which has a permanently attached barrel, but can still be (carefully) gunsmithed into 106mm+ barrel length.
You're all right, 12(6) is totally stupid, and evil.
No, I was thinking more of the fact that, if you have a WW1 trophy 'capture' Luger, complete with original belt, holster and letter from the CEF soldier who 'collected' it, the only way to allow it to continue to be bought, sold or traded in Canada as the irreplaceably valuable collector piece it is is if you first completely destroy its "untouched original straight-from-the-battlefied" value...
Other self-loaders like the Colt .45 or the later Browning HP have a 'drop-in' barrel that is completely covered by the outer slide. If you have to, you can swap barrels without obviously affecting the outer appearance of the gun. The barrel on the Luger is like the barrel on a revolver - fully exposed and a solidly attached part of the whole pistol. Any change to it can be spotted by a collector from about 10m away - unless you employ the services of a really really good 'restoration' expert (aka 'forger') to exactly match both the finish type and colour
and the patina of wear on the original barrel.
Same thing, for that matter, with the early 'bird's beak handled' Webleys. I had a pair once that were given by the town council of Peterborough ON to a guy before he went away to serve as an officer in the Boer War. He later also carried them as a colonel in WW1, until he died of pneumonia around 1917. Beautiful big revolvers, about the size of construction bricks and weighing almost as much - with 3 1/2" barrels. Came complete with the original presentation letter from the city, his photograph, book about the Boer War with his photo in it, verifying affidavit from his son, complete line of old registration papers back to the first pistol registration legislation of 1934, etc.
I bought the pair in the 1980s long before the 12(6) nonsense, when they were simply restricted (as they had been for a few decades). Cost me a couple thousand and cheap at the time. I sold them again (fortunately for
my investment) just a couple years before the "prohibited" nonsense - at a nice profit. A few years after that, the new owner probably tore his hair out as he watched
his investment go down the drain.
Oh sure, he could have re-barrelled them back to restricted status again - could probably even find a couple old Webley Mk VI 6" barrels and unscrew the original ones and screw these longer still-WW1 era ones on in their place. But they would no longer be the same guns that were carried through two different wars by that Canadian officer. (One had holster wear on the outer finish, a slight chip on one grip and the bore showed signs of use; the other was practically factory-fresh. The officer had clearly carried the one in his holster on service, and left the other in his gear as a "spare" that he never had to use.)
However, the only way he was probably ever able actually to recoup his investment in the pair would be if he sold them down into the US through some auction house like Butterworths - as has happened to a
lot of historic firearms from Canada since C-68.
Just like, when C-68 passed, my brother and I between us had well over 300 WW1, interwar and WW2 issued European pistols that fell into the new 12(6) category. If you collected early 20th century military self-loading pistols, as we both did, almost everything except the Colt .45s, Browning High Powers and P-38s was suddenly prohibited. Pistols that sold for $500-$1000 apiece at collector gun auctions before the legislation passed were suddenly worth $50 to $100.
Fortunately for our retirement savings, England had not yet been infected by the anti-pistol stupidity, and collectors in France and Germany could also buy and import old pistols easily. So we were able to crate up our 300+ German WW1- and WW2-issued Lugers, Mauser 1914s, Walther PPs and PPKs, Browning 1910s, Mauser HScs, and other European military handguns and ship them over to England for sale by an arms auction house there to eager collectors in the UK and across Europe. In the end, we were able to unload our investment-grade firearms collection at a nice profit after all, absolutely no thanks to Alan Rock and his f*ing cronies. Then, a month after the last of our "cheap, concealable handguns" had sold at that auction, the Dunblane shooting happened in the UK, and all at once they banned
all handguns there...
Sorry. I guess even after 18 years, I still have not fully managed to "come to terms with my loss", "forgive the federal Liberal government for the emotional harm it inflicted upon me by intentionally destroying a part of my culture" and thus "achieve closure" and "move forward with my life". I'll just go sit quietly in the corner now...