2003

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2003 was a bit of a busy year...

The FN P90 was in use with military and police forces in over 25 countries worldwide, the 5.56x45 MK 16 emerged as the winner of a U.S. SOCOM competition to find a new rifle for Special Forces, and Savage was awarded the Manufacturer of the Year by the Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence.

Anheuser-Busch (the makers of Budweiser) stopped backing Gov. Bob Holden, in large part because of their differences over CCW. Holden was pro-gun control and had vetoed a concealed-carry bill passed by the Missouri General Assembly.

In Canada, the registration of all long guns became mandatory, with failure to do so resulting in draconian criminal sanctions. Meanwhile, the Americans passed the Tiahrt Amendment, which prohibits the BATFE from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation.

Down under, the Australian advocacy group CLASS began to wonder quite loudly and publicly about the worth of the country's infamous national gun buy-back scheme, which had completed 5 years earlier.

January

  • January 21CLASS publishes Science in the Service of Politics, outlining the foolishness of Australian gun control measures.
  • January 24 — The American Homeland Security Act comes into effect, renaming the ATF the BATFE and shifting it from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department.

February

  • The Canadian government announced "plans to strengthen the administration of the gun control program," the farcical nature and massive cost overruns of which had been exposed the previous year by Auditor General Sheila Fraser.

March

April

May

  • May 13Bill C-10A, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Firearms) and the Firearms Act, received Royal Assent. Statutory authority of all operations was consolidated under the Canadian Firearms Commissioner, who reported directly to the Solicitor General.

June

  • The Canadian long gun registry reaches a size of 6.4 million firearms, out of an estimated 18 to 24 million firearms in the country. This despite the fact that failure to register a firearm of any kind had become a criminal offence on January 1 of the year (see above).

July

  • July 11 — Canadian gun rights advocate Bruce Montague made his appearance at the CUFOA rally at Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario.

Other events

The year in pictures

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