Bureaucratic nepotism at its best. You gotta read it to believe it....
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Did you know you can order guns by phone and Canada Post will deliver them? And did you know that if you are not home, Canada Post may leave them on your doorstep?
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Hmmm....but might guns disappear?
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Well, that's exactly what happened last month in Oshawa. And guess what? The guns are missing and presumed stolen, leaving Durham Region Police scrambling to retrieve a Remington Super Mag Combo 12-gauge shotgun, a Ruger Deluxe .22-calibre rifle, and ammunition-assembling equipment.
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hmmm....but doesn't that mean Canada Post is responsible for the stolen guns? Why was Canada Post stupid enough to leave the guns with someone who didn't sign for them? hmm....
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Simply put, the transaction ran afoul of a strange catch-22 in the law: Canada Post is required to get a signature from the recipient when delivering weapons — but the shipper isn't required to inform Canada Post that there are guns in the parcel.
According to police, the guns were shipped from the Calgary store assembled and in the original manufacturers' boxes. They were wrapped in brown paper, then shipped as one package through the mail.
There was no label identifying the contents, nor is there a requirement to put one there unless the weapon is going across the border, according to the post office.
"We don't know what's in the package. There is no way for us to know what's in a package," said Francois Legault, a media relations officer for Canada Post.
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Query? Wouldn't these guns qualify as "dangerous goods" under Canada Post's policies? But I guess guns don't qualify in some round about way.
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Canada Post usually refers queries about mailing weapons to the Canadian Firearms Registry for clarification, Legault said.
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So Canada Post doesn't know how weapons are shipped and needs another government body to tell them how to ship something. So what exactly is Canada Post's supposed specialty anyway? RIGHT! Shipping items across Canada and around the world. So why would the Canadian Firearms Registry need to provide clarification on behalf of Canada Post?
Because....Canada Post doesn't know how to ship firearms (not to mention several other things like golf clubs from Halifax to Ottawa, paperwork from Toronto to Vancouver, paperwork from Toronto to Markham....all I have experienced lost just like these guns).
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The question is, was it the shipper or was it Canada Post?
Federal regulations say Canada Post can handle gun shipments "only if the firearm is posted using the most secure means of transmission by post that is offered by the Canada Post Corporation that includes the requirement to obtain a signature on delivery." According to police, that wasn't done in this case Legault says Canada Post will sometimes leave a package on a doorstep — called a "safe drop" — if the receiver requests it. But he couldn't confirm whether that happened in this case.
Det. Const. Steve Rhoden said the store did send the guns with a notice requiring signature on delivery. But Canada Post didn't follow through, Rhoden said.
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Stop there. The Detective Missed a very important item. From the Canada Post Website guidelines on shipping items: "Items requiring a signature will not be safe dropped,..."
Case closed, I think you know who screwed this one up. And it wasn't the receiver or the sender.
Bibliography
Brazao, Dale. "Guns came by mail . . . and left by theft; Postie left gun parcel on porch Weapons label not required by law." Toronto Star. 12 May 2006: A1.
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