Over 7,400 Canadians own a CZ-858, the Czech-made rifle allegedly fired by Richard Henry Bain at the Parti Quebecois victory party at a Montreal nightclub Tuesday night.
About 5 per cent of the national total, 427, are registered in Quebec.
Denis Blanchette, 48, was shot dead and another man suffered gunshot wounds during the incident. A large TV audience saw Quebec premier-elect Pauline Marois rushed from the stage by alarmed bodyguards.
Bain, 62, faces 16 criminal charges related to the incident, including first-degree murder. He legally owned 22 firearms, a Montreal court heard Thursday.
The semi-automatic CZ-858 resembles the AK-47, the simple, durable Soviet-designed weapon carried for decades by Communist armies and guerillas around the world. Although the long-curved magazine looks like those designed to hold 30 rounds, those legally sold in Canada can hold only five.
In Canada, most CZ-858s have a legal status of “non-restricted weapon,” which means that it no longer needs to be registered, and that outside Quebec, ownership records have been deleted along with the rest of the long-gun registry.
A bill requiring the deletion of the long gun registry passed into law in April, but in Quebec, a court injunction forbids the destruction of the registry for now.
7,061 of Canada’s CZ-858s are non-restricted; the remaining 412 have a “restricted” category because of a shorter barrel length. This means that they are regulated under the stricter system also used for handguns, and that records will be retained in the future.
A gun dealership in Prince Albert, Sask. lists the rifle for $700.
The data shows that CZ-858s are most popular in Alberta and B.C., followed by Ontario. Albertans have registered over 2,200 of the weapons.
Within Quebec, CZ-858s are popular in a sprawling rural postal code covering much of the southeast of the province, J0, where 69 of the weapons are registered.
The numbers come from an RCMP database released to Global News under access-to-information laws before the long-gun registry was destroyed.
In this Youtube video, a man deonstrates a CZ-858 being fired.
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