Getting a Firearms Licence (P.A.L.) in Canada

A lot has changed in the past ten years in terms of how one acquires firearms in Canada. Now, irrespective of you gun politics and what you think of this, it now requires a bit more work in order to get a licence to possess and acquire firearms. In the old days, you'd just need to drop by a police station to get the application form for the Firearms Acquisition Certificate, or F.A.C. Send it in, along with a fee, and once they do a background check on you in sufficient time, they will issue you a F.A.C. The F.A.C. was not needed to possess firearms, just acquire them. Technically, you could have had a Posession Only Licence (P.O.L.) which allowed you to keep the firearms you already had, but not get any more. Ammunition back then did not require a firearms licence, but rather, you just needed to be over 18 and show a valid driver's licence.

In 1998, the Chretien Liberals scrapped that and replaced it with a licence called a Possession and Acquisition Licence (P.A.L.), which is not as easy to get. Now, you are required to pass two exams (one written, the other practical - which involved actually handling firearms) for the Canadian Firearms Security Course. Then comes the application itself which you require your spouse to sign off on, two references, a photo, etc. It is also a long wait to get your licence, since there are mandatory waiting periods. Also, there are different licences that you can get: the common non-restricted P.A.L. is for long guns: essentially rifles and shotguns. The restricted P.A.L. is primarily for handguns (some rifles apply to this - there are some measurement details). There is also a licence to acquire/possess prohibited weapons, but that is next to impossible to get, and the Canadian government have only issued a handful of those. Further, there are other licences you can get, like the Minor's Licence, which allows those 12-17 to use firearms as long as they are in immediate direct supervision of a person legally licenced to possess and use the firearms that the minor is using. And there are some other stipulations and / or exceptions for those who hunt to sustain their families (ie. Aboriginals on a reserve, etc.). The Possession-Only Licence was scrapped in 2001, so that is no longer obtainable, unless you are renewing an existing one.

Why was I considering getting a P.A.L.? As an avid recreational airgun shooter, I was quite happy at the selection of under 500FPS pistols and rifles that were available. Airgunning has grown in popularity and there are shooting clubs which are more or less for airgunners (I am a member of one here in the Toronto area). Still, there is an entire class of airguns which require a firearms licence - because they exceed the Canadian government's criteria of exceeding 500FPS velocity and exceeding 4.2 FPE (foot pounds energy) - as such, these primarily air rifles are classified as firearms and require a P.A.L. to purchase. That being said, right now the highest velocity air rifle shoots at around 1600FPS velocity (not sure of the FPE on that) with a special .177 caliber alloy pellet. Most P.A.L. rated air rifles will shoot between 700-1000 FPS. Consider that your average centerfire cartridge yields over 3500 FPS velocity and well over 1000 FPE, you can see that side by side, the most powerful air rifle still cannot hold a candle to its gunpowder-based comrades. Essentially that is why I originally chose and continue to choose airguns to shoot. I've been to several shooting ranges and while under 500 FPS airguns work at ranges which have its targets at 20 yards, you lose performance very quickly when shooting at the professional grade shooting facilities, built for centerfire rifles and handguns, which has the target around 50-100+ yards away. As such, I thought it would be good for me to get my P.A.L. in order to acquire better performing airguns (and one of the few air shotguns out there requires a P.A.L. - my local gunshop has this on hold for me).

Of course, I consulted with my wife first, who is not a firearms afficianado per se, but recognized my serious interest in sport shooting. She was more than happy to OK my request to attend the Canadian Firearms Safety Course one weekend, and was also OK that I applied for a firearms licence, since she knew why I was doing so. At the course, a few people looked at me strange, since most of them were getting their P.A.L. because they wanted to hunt, or because their job/vocation called for them to obtain a P.A.L. (ie. security guard or police officer). I simply want to be able to get better airguns - I have no interest in hunting - never have, never will, as long as I can buy my food at the grocery store (I'll let someone else deal with the mess in the slaughter house). Besides, I don't like the gamey taste of wild meat anyway.

So I thought I'd get a leg up by buying the course materials (which are only available from certain places, like some shooting ranges and of course, from the certified firearms instructors (see here for a list: http://www.fseso.org/),
signed up for the course, which ran one weekend. You don't need to buy the manuals before the course, but as I said, I wanted to get a leg up on the materials and read them beforehand - otherwise, they are supplied by the course instructor at the class itself (they are $15.00 per manual). The course itself is $120.00 for the non-restricted firearms course and $120.00 for the restricted course. You can take both together for $200.00 on the same weekend.

Despite my instructor strongly encouraging me to take both non-restricted and restricted, I was pretty adamant in taking the non-restricted only. I have no interest in handguns and since there are virtually no air pistols that are firearms-grade, I had no reason to take it, despite the savings (why pay for something I will never use?) Even for airguns, I far prefer the rifles over the pistols, due to the amount of tweaking and accessories you can get - I am a sucker for optics like scopes and sighting devices. So I signed up for the non-restricted P.A.L., which will allow me to purchase the higher-powered air rifles and should I be interested later on, in rimfire (maybe) and centerfire (probably not) rifles as well as shotguns (the only shotguns I could see myself buying are for skeet shooting, but I think I just prefer the stationary paper targets).

So one Friday evening early last month, I went directly from work to a shooting facility about 30 minutes from my home and sat with a class of 10 other people who were looking to get their P.A.L. for one reason or another. Now, I have to confess, I was expecting to see a certain demographic of people there, especially when this facility was far away from Toronto in a more rural area. I was expecting to see your standard stereotypical redneck in suspenders, unwholesome bikers, mafia and other crime types, and some loner types, all of whom were Caucasian. I was quite surprised (and glad) to see that my perceptions were challenged. I ended up sitting at the same table as an older Greek grandfather guy who was a retired medical doctor. In front of us was a 20-something Black girl, who was a university student. Beside me sat an young Asian couple, who were also students in their 20s, there were a couple of Italian tough-guys behind us, but in conversations with one of the guys the next day, he was telling me that they were to-be hunters and he had people give him strange looks about taking the course (probably assumed he was a mobster as well) - and he said that criminals wouldn't be taking firearms safety courses, showing their face in public, etc. That is true. We also had a younger guy who was a security guard, and a couple of other guys who were a bit harder to read, though one of them was a married Russian guy - the other guy may have been the aforementioned loner type). Shortly before class began, two East Indian young guys walked in, with baggy pants and all, who wanted to take the restricted course to get their handgun licence - they didn't want to take the mandatory non-restricted course...I wondered about those guys...). Anyhow...

For those who have never handled a firearm or any type of gun in your life (squirt guns don't count), this course is a MUST. There are some firearms enthusiasts who don't have their P.A.L., but have worked with firearms long enough to know the terminology and parts and ammunition, that they would likely be able to pass both the written and practical portions of the RCMP-issued exam (the pass for both written and practical is 80% and you MUST pass BOTH). For me, it was a non-issue, since knowing the parts and workings of an airgun hardly qualifies me as knowledgeable in firearms. I'm glad I took the in-class portion. For the non-restricted course, it was about 12 hours of instruction in total. Some of the course involved videos, but the bulk of the course was the instructor going through the course manual piece-by-piece, giving a comprehensive understanding of the history of firearms, the class of firearms, the types of firearms, the types of ammo, and of course, the heavy component which involve gun safety from usage (loading/unloading/shooting), choosing and using the right ammunition (and recognizing the differences), using safeties to transport and storage, and social responsibilities, all of which was under the ACTS and PROVE principles (the course explains all this). You will get an opportunity to interact with different types of long-guns (rifles/shotguns), none of which actually involve live firing.

Most of the FSESO instructors will run their course as a "one-stop shop" for the whole process. They will administer the actual course, and will provide you the manuals, provide the P.A.L. application forms and run through the process with you, but the administering of the exams will be done by a third party examiner brought in. For the exams, you will fail if you get under 80%, but also, an instant fail is given if at any point, the firearm is pointed at someone, including yourself. You will lose points for not identifying the right ammo, and lose points badly if you put your finger inside the trigger guard or on the trigger at any point during the practical test. I scored 100% on the written test (much of this I attribute to reading the manual before the class and remembering a lot of it - which wasn't all that hard, since I had a keen interest in this stuff to begin with), and I scored 98% on the practical hands-on portion (only point I lost was when I did not check the size of the shot shell that I grabbed from a pile of ammo, before loading it into a pump-action shotgun - I already knew it was a 3" shell, but they docked me points for not checking before loading).

Once the course is done, the tests are all sent to the Chief Firearms Officer in your province to certify, after which they will send you back a copy of the test results by mail. At that point, you would fill out the application for the P.A.L., get your spouse (if you have one) to sign, get two references to sign, include a copy of your test results, include a photo that is to the government's guidelines, have a photo guarantor sign to confirm that that's you, and include your fee ($60.00 for non-restricted, $80.00 for restricted) to pay for your licence (which is good for five years).

Any time you subsequently buy a firearm (whether it be a gunpowder based firearm or a high power air rifle), you will need to show your P.A.L. They will then ring up the sale and if it is a good store, they will actually register the firearm with the federal government's gun registry for you while you wait (yeah, the gun registry sucks, but that's another discuss for another time). The gun registry is used by police, amongst other things, to alert them to a potential household that may have firearms if they are responding to a call (ie. domestic abuse, etc.). Of course, from what I understand, there have been search and seizure of homes that house firearms without notice (though those who fear this happening to them have not really read the cases where this has happened - the cops always have reasonable cause to ring your doorbell and ask to look at your firearms - they don't just do this out of the blue).

Except for the long gun registry, I personally like this process. It sure beats the U.S., where anyone can go into a store and buy a gun, with only a quick background check to verify non-criminal behaviour. That's how guys like Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, was able to buy his guns, even though he had severe mental and emotional problems. Sure, it's a pain in the butt for me to have to wait months (literally) to get my P.A.L., but I'd rather them go through this process and cause a legitimate law-abiding citizen like me some inconvenience, rather than to not do the due diligence and issue firearms licences like they were free tickets. The government has turned down thousands of P.A.L. applications and have revoked many others. And while some may view the safety course as an impediment, its value to any one handling firearms is invaluable.