David Pugiliese, the reporter on Canadian Forces and military issues, has been following the saga of replacing and destroying the Browning Hi-Power pistols, which have been used by the Canadian military since WWII. Most of the pistols were part of a production run done at the end of the war. The Canadian military has been working on the project for many years. From David Pugiliese, Ottowa Citizen October 13, 2022:
At this time the Canadian Forces has 11,896 Browning handguns in its inventory, National Defence spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier told this newspaper. Of those, 1,323 are non-functioning.
As the Browning 9mm pistol is currently in use, the details of a disposal plan still have to be worked out, Le Bouthillier explained. “However at this time it is anticipated that given the age and wear of the pistol fleet as well as the fact that the Browning is a restricted firearm and the magazine is a prohibited device, disposal will be through destruction by smelting,” he added.
The magazines of a typical Browning Hi-Power, put into production in 1935, typically hold 13 rounds. They are forbidden in Canada. The highly restrictive Firearms Act of 1995 was passed into law as an extreme mass murder in Montreal.
A semi-automatic rifle was used to commit the murders. The murder was committed by Gamil Rodrigue Garbi, who changed his name to Marc Lépine because he hated his father. His father had repeatedly beaten the boy before the family broke up when Gamil was 7. Gamil changed his name to Marc Lépine when he was 13.
Handguns with barrels of less than 105 mm (4 1/8 inches) were banned, as were magazines that held more than 10 rounds. No handgun was used in the mass murder. The barrel length was specifically crafted in the law to ban most handguns. Browning Hi-Powers have a barrel of 4.7 inches or 119 mm.
On April 24, 2024, David Pugiliese, an Ottowa Citizen, received an email confirming the long-held plans:
The Canadian military plans to destroy 11,000 of its Second World War-era pistols by the end of this year.
The move comes as the Canadian Forces confirmed it has received the final deliveries of a new 9-mm pistol as part of a $19.4-million project.
The Canadian Forces Browning Hi-Power pistols are described, on the net, by Canadian Military veterans as “worn out” “antiquated”, heavy, and lacking spare parts. This may be so. However, pistols are one of the least fired firearms in any military, given their specialized role.
The service life of a Hi-Power should be 30,000 – 50,000 rounds. As these pistols are nearly seventy years old, they would have to have been shot about 500 rounds per year to be worn out. This is not an unreasonable figure, if ten people were qualified on each pistol each year. Several veterans said most of the problems they experienced with the pistols were cured when a new magazine was substituted for the old magazine.
There is a market for these historical guns, especially in the United States. It would ordinarily not be too hard for the Canadian government to sell them to an American distributor. However, with the hard commitment of both the Trudeau administration in Canada, and the Biden administration in the United States, to proclaim the ownership of pistols or “weapons of war” by anyone except a government, to be an intrinsic evil, such an eventuality is extremely remote.
The historic pistols will be melted down as a sacrifice to the gods of governmental power.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
Just more proof, if anyone with a brain actually needed any, that Democrats and their Canadian twins are complete morons. They are probably also planning to close gas stations and melt down or crush gasoline vehicles because of fake climate change. Almost everyone I meet of that persuasion is a poisonous combination of ignorant and arrogant.
Ignorance can be corrected thru patience and education. Arrogance can sometimes be defeated.
Stupidity on the other hand is incurable and often a fatal condition!
“Dear Justin Castro and the LibTard Canuck government…..HERE’S YOUR SIGN”
I doubt many of those pistols have even been fired a total of 500 rds. in the last seventy years. What a waste to destroy these pistols. I wouldn’t mind having a couple of them in my personal collection. Even the ones that are non-functioning can be repaired. Parts can be found. What are those idiot canucks thinking?
What are they thinking? If they think at all on the subject of guns, they think that they’re evil.
guns -> evil
It’s just that simple.
X10. Idiots!
When Florida was considering its switch to a “shall issue” CCW in 1987, one of my neighbors told a police official that he didn’t want his neighbors going about armed because he didn’t want to be shot. The cop asked him what he’d been doing that would cause his neighbors to want him dead.
Food for thought for those Liberals who still can think for themselves. What have you been doing to your neighbors that would make them want you dead?
Voting in people and policies that make ALL of us miserable.
The Left, I mean every one of them, Is wrong on EVERY ISSUE! How do they do that? I mean, try as I might, I am not ALWAYS right on EVERY issue.
How do they get it wrong, every time?
How do they do that?
Canadian liberals are petrified of being shot! That’s because they intend to behave in such ways that gets liberals shot.
Well cucknadians are on the same level as kalifornians so….
You nailed that one.
They’d rather raise taxes than sell them for a revenue.
Yep, I guess the Canadian government doesn’t need or want and certainly can’t use the $2.5M+/- (USD) they’d likely get selling them to U.S. licensed resellers. And of course the Biden administration has no use for any additional federal sales tax dollars the resales would generate. Morons wrapped in stupid. Liberalism is a brain disorder.
Left ain’t right and Right ain’t wrong.
Justin Truedea and the liberals in Canada have already been ” Melted down” mentally . The broken handguns serve more of a purpose than the mentally melted idiots of Canada.
Destroying these weapons suggests that every weapon on earth is their enemy. Allowing no weapon to be an exception.
Except in the hands of their murdering enforcers, such as the AFT..
Historically significant antiques.
Too bad, “by the end of the year”. If there were more time Ammoland, GOA, SAF, other organizations, and petitions by the people, etc. could have reached out to President Trump who could have reached out to Trudeau. And after Trudeau said no, Trump would have used “the old squeeze play”, with some tarrifs on Canadian imports that Biden had removed in his quest to inflict pain on the American People. Trump would have gotten these valuable pieces of American History back. If it is publicized, FJB, Harris, Blinken, General Mark Milley will go as far as to commend Trudeau… Read more »
both regimes are known to throw good money way at bad ideas. that the fidel jr. government would rather melt these historic pistols down instead of making a good sum of money for other socialist projects that he approves of, makes the point that progs hate firearms more than almost anything else on the planet. well, maybe other than non-conformists.
history be damned, full speed ahead.
Even though the P35 Hi-Power was finalized after his death, JMB must be turning over in his grave at a high enough rate to be able to generate electricity.
Canada is lost..Like a zombie virus spreading ever where, leftism needs a vaccine before we are all doomed to its infection..
They keep pushing their idiocracy, they’ll get just that, a high speed, lead pellet, vaccine.
A bullet to the head amd a sterilizing bonfire.
How about replacing the magazines with blocked off to 10 rounds, or refurbishing the magazines to 10 rounds. Magazine size isn’t the issue.
Another idea is hang all the commies. When are they dumping Justin Castreau
So now that we know what Trudeau is doing, how long do you think it will be before O’bdum tries the same thing. Birds of a feather.
m44 – still trying to figure out what sort of birds they all are – gooney, looney or sh!t birds. Perhaps all of the above?
LMAO, thanks .
Canada is a stupid place. We should have gone in and busted them up into US territories a hundred years ago.
Isn’t their intent to destroy 11,000 Hi-Powers a valid provocation to justify invasion?
My parents were Holocaust survivors living three years in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany until Canada allowed them to emigrate in 1948. Canada was the only country to provide my parents with a home after the horrors of the Holocaust. I was born in Toronto one year later. It breaks my heart to see what Canada has become.
Insanity, but what can we expect from the folks in Canadian Government?
Maybe someone could buy the melted gun metal and build Confederate statues with it. Something just sounds perfect about that.
And as per usual, the cautiously optimistic capitalist, always looking for new and profitable opportunities, will realize that NOW is the time to invest in a Browning Hi-Power Pistol or three or more for their collection, as their value appears to be certain to go astronomically high in the very near future. Buy low, sell high. A concept so simple and easy to understand that no one on the left can seem to understand it. An alternative headline to the above article could be something like “How to make Browning Hi-Power Pistols worth more than gold, and practically guarantee a… Read more »
The Trudeau administration already announce a ban on any more handgun sales in Canada, to private citizens. This ban was announced months ago.
The Road to Serfdom. A great book. It has become Canadian contemporary history..
One gets what one votes for. The Canucks. The Kalifornicators. The Black Big City Ghetto dwellers. We cannot change THAT, until their own people WAKE T F UP!!
We can enforce a strict blockade on their territories.
Well, at least they aren’t going to give them to the Taliban. What do you think the US government is going to do with all those M4s and M16s that get replaced by the new 6.8 rifles?
I wonder if CMP could get the guns shipped to them in the US to be sold by CMP to those of us who would like to own one. They could say the purchase of the guns is a gun buy-back event. CMP could buy the excess ammo too, it’s a win-win.