Quote:
“When a weapons prohibition is ordered by courts, they give a long list of things, and they include crossbows on that list, always,” Solomon Friedman, a firearms law expert, explains. “It’s required by the wording of the Criminal Code.”
However, stores selling crossbows have no way of knowing about a court order. Unlike firearms, a licence isn’t needed to buy a crossbow.
In New Brunswick, the provincial chief firearms officer gives gun retailers lists of people who are under weapons prohibitions, Friedman says. It should be practical to scale that up to a searchable database, and open it to crossbow sellers, he says.
“I don’t think it would be a big deal to have a prohibited persons registry,” he argues. “It shouldn’t cost all that much money and shouldn’t take all that much time.”