Une petite histoire , pour les intéressé.
On November 15, 2015, a friend of mine was charged with possession of a prohibited device at an Alberta Fish and Wildlife check stop west of Caroline at the Clearwater Crossing Trading Post. He was charged because of the .50 calibre Beowulf magazines he was using for his Tavor under the reasoning that even though that the magazines were legal for use in a .50 beowulf, they were being used in a prohibited manner by using them for .223.
I then subsequently made a post on this forum which then exploded with tens of thousands of views and hundreds of replies.
On Monday December 7, 2015, the Charges against my friend were dropped and his magazines were also returned to him.
I will now be turning over the keyboard to my friend, so that he may tell his experience in his own words.
"Hello everyone, first off id like to start with the fact that all of the officers I have dealt with on this matter were very courteous and professional and I continue to hold them all in the highest respect. After this whole ordeal was settled on Monday the 7th, when the possession charges were dropped, in person, by the officer who had arrested me on the 15th the previous month and my magazines were returned to me, all i wanted to find out was wither or not these devices were truly legal or not or resided in some ambiguous grey area.
Firstly, the officer who arrested me stated that they were in fact prohibited devices explaining that they are "dual purpose" magazines and that they must follow the 5-round cap of the lesser calibre. At the same time as he was explaining this I was handed my magazines by the RCMP that, according to the RCMP, were prohibited devices. I was also given the number of a Sergeant of the Canadian Firearms Commission to help explain further. After talking at length with him about the interpretation of the Special Bulletin for Businesses No. 72, Sec. 4, stating that:
---"The maximum permitted capacity of a magazine is determined by the kind of firearm it is designed or manufactured for use in and not the kind of firearm it might actually be used in. As a consequence, the maximum permitted capacity remains the same regardless of which firearm it might be used in."---
This official persisted that the .50 Beowulf magazines are prohibited under the justification that the AR-15 platform that was designed in 1959 was originally chambered for 5.56x45mm. Therefore the technology and design of the AR receiver and magazines are limited to use of 5.56 and thus the capacity of the magazine remains 5. The development of different calibres and chambering for the AR-15 including; .300 Blackout, .458 Socom, .50 Beowulf, etc. do not translate perfectly because they are simply "modifications" of the original 5.56 design and therefore must develop their own design and technology removing the functionality of the original 5.56 in order to not be considered "dual use" and therefore prohibited. This kind of logic creates a myriad of complications to other examples of "dual use" such as the Camp Carbine rifle that takes 1911 handgun magazines.
Later that day i went to my favorite sporting goods store, there I found a basket of metal .50 Beowulf magazines for sale. I took one to the sales associate at the firearms desk and asked him about the prohibition of these devices, he assured me with a veritable "NO" they are not prohibited devices. Explaining that, in the weeks past with the temporary ban on their sale and extensive debate with law enforcement, there was no explicit law against possession or sale of these devices. Following up with a statement by the CSAAA read here (
http://www.csaaa.org/csaaa-communique-re-beowulf-magazines/) of which there was a seizure of a single shipment of AA Beowulf magazines earlier in the year, not a complete ban on possession, sale and importation of the devices as a whole. The local retailer I mentioned before imported these metal Beowulf magazines quite a while after the above mentioned shipment of AA Mags was seized.
Immediately after that I looked to my last contact, my lawyer from Edmonton who specializes in firearms law. After congratulating me on the resolution of the charges without incident, he explained that due to the complexity of the situation and the obvious deficiency of workable logic in Canadian firearms law we wont know wither these devices are truly legal or not until either someone gets thrown in front of a judge and tried, or the RCMP comes out with another special bulletin pertaining to the specific use, of this specific device, in a specific firearm.
TL;DR I have no idea if i was arrested under reasonable charges, if it was all a mistake, or if this was just a very elaborate demonstration of how confused everyone is about firearms law. All i can say is Thank You to everyone who gave their support during this ordeal, and everyone who was interested or participated in our previous thread. My only words of advice are to do your own research, put your trust in whichever part of the system you desire, and go out and enjoy your medium capacity loopholes, but do so quietly. Well... as quietly as 15 rounds of 5.56 can be i guess."