By Garett Williams
Thursday November 22, 2007

Bruce Montague’s criminal trial on weapons related offences continued Wednesday with expert testimony from the Centre of Forensic Sciences.

Crown witness John Paul Menard, senior forensic scientist at the centre in Toronto, tested more than 20 weapons recovered from the Montague home.

One by one he identified and described weapons he tested -- riffles, hand guns and a cross-bow -- and classified them as non-restricted, restricted or prohibited.

Several of the hand guns presented fell under the prohibited category, due to a short barrel, based on the Firearms Act, but were legal before 1998, with a licence.

One of the guns presented was an eighth of a millimetre short of the cut off. During cross-examination Menard agreed gun owners can find themselves holding prohibited firearms without even knowing it.

A number of riffles presented were classified as non-restricted. However, a few that had been modified landed in the prohibited category.

Some were found to be too short -- a few with the barrel sawed off and one with the butt-end removed -- and others were modified with a flash or sound suppressors or converted to fully-automatic.

Sound suppressors are a prohibited device, however, flash suppressors are not. Menard said he didn’t test the suppressors as flash reducers, only for sound.

Defence attorney Doug Christie argued the gun with the butt-end removed was a parts gun and Menard admitted that he tested it with “a slight amount of pain.”

He said, as he understands it, there is no law preventing a gunsmith from manufacturing or re-manufacturing guns or requiring them to report when someone brings them a gun without a serial number. However, he said for a barrel to be cut or sawed legally, it should be removed from the gun. Several converted firearms, from semi-automatic to fully-automatic, were also classified as prohibited.

Menard said the modifications were some of the best he’s seen in more that 10 years working for the forensic centre and they would have been performed by someone with a strong knowledge of firearms.

One of the converted riffles required a pin placed so accurately that a millimetre out in any direction and the gun could fire out of control until all the rounds were shot or it jammed, he said.

Menard will return to the witness box today for further cross-examination.

Peter Keen is the Crown attorney leading the prosecution.

Montague is facing 53 firearms related offenses, including the unauthorized possession and careless storage of non-restricted firearms, explosives and restricted firearms. His wife, Donna, is facing three charges -- the unauthorized possession of a firearm and two counts of careless storage of a firearm.

Montague’s constitutional challenge of the federal Firearms Act -- which aimed to strike out sections of the Criminal Code of Canada related to the act, to have their criminal charges dismissed and to have the Firearms Act declared unconstitutional -- was dismissed by Justice John Wright a week before the criminal trial began.

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