Firearm Storage During Deployment or an Extended Posting

 By Steller Firearms Management & Storage

If you’re a Canadian Armed Forces member, a government employee, or a contractor about to be away for six months or more, your personally owned firearms are a problem that’s easy to defer and hard to fix from a forward operating base. Here’s the short version of how to store them in Canada, lawfully, before you go.

The options, honestly

• Leave them at home. Fine if someone with the right licence for every class you own lives there and will keep them stored to regulation. Not fine if the house will be empty, rented, or occupied by family who don’t hold a PAL. Many CAF members in military housing are also directed by their unit or housing authority to make arrangements for firearms before an absence — check your own unit’s guidance.
• Leave them with a friend or relative. Same licensing requirement, plus they take on the responsibility if anything changes while you’re away.
• Sell. Final, and restricted or prohibited firearms are slow to move.
• Licensed storage. Keep ownership, hand off the responsibility, get them back when you’re home.

How licensed storage works

Steller holds Business Firearms Licence 13848590 and stores non-restricted, restricted and prohibited firearms at our facility in Delta, BC. Postings and deployments are the same process as any long-term storage:

1. Contact us with your numbers and your date. How many firearms, which classes, roughly how long. No serial numbers in the first email.
2. RCMP paperwork for restricted and prohibited firearms. They need a Request for Alternate Storage approved before they leave your home. We prepare it, you sign, the RCMP phones us both. Minimum two weeks — so start three to four weeks out, which on a deployment timeline means the day you get your warning order.
3. Ship by Canada Post from anywhere in Canada — we generate the label, shipping cost passes through.  In person transfers arranged on a Case-by-case basis.
4. Each firearm is received, photographed and recorded under a signed storage agreement and held in safes inside a fenced, gated, monitored unit.
5. Monthly or annual billing. Annual prepay is twelve months for the price of eleven, which suits a known tour length. Rates are on the storage and payment page.
6. Home on leave? Give us notice and take a firearm out for the week; restricted and prohibited firearms need a fresh RCMP approval to come back in, so allow the same two weeks.

Why members use it

Tours get extended. Six months becomes nine. Storage doesn’t care.

 Postings move the household. If you’re posted before or after the deployment, the firearms don’t have to move twice. They stay with us until you’re settled, then travel once, to the new address, by Canada Post under your new CFO’s paperwork if the class requires it. Moving outside Canada altogether? See firearm storage when moving abroad.

Family isn’t left holding it. A spouse without a PAL can’t lawfully be the person in possession. Storage takes that off them.

Prohibited firearms have few other homes. Firearms prohibited by the 2020 Order in Council can’t be sold to individuals; licensed storage is one of the lawful places for them while their disposition is settled.

Keep your licence current

Your PAL stays valid to its expiry wherever you’re posted, and renewal can be done from abroad. It’s what makes you the lawful owner of firearms in storage and what you need to take them back — renew it before you leave if it’s close.

The one-line plan

Warning order → email Steller with counts and a date → sign the RCMP form we send you → ship the firearms → deploy. Everything after that is our job.

Steller Firearms Management & Storage · 604-305-4612 · info@stellermgmt.com · stellermgmt.com · Business Firearms Licence 13848590

This article is general information, not legal advice. Firearms law, RCMP procedures and military policies change and apply differently to individual circumstances. Confirm current requirements with the Canadian Firearms Program, your Chief Firearms Officer, and your chain of command before making arrangements for privately owned firearms.