I think the law was changed a while back (now they need to be registered)...but it refereed to only machine guns and not sub-machine guns. They were considerably longer and un-concealable (this why they were legal) unlike handguns and sub-machine guns. There are plenty of legally registered machine guns and fully automatic rifles registered to Canadians. Fully automatic weapons are legal in the US as well (only stipulation is that they have to registered with the BATF). Like the US, Canada has their gun laws not in order. I do believe that just like the US, CA has differentiated between a assault weapon and a fully automatic weapon...both fall into to different sets of laws... even though the libs would like to put them all into one category. Most US citizens think machine guns are illegal, I would imagine Canadians are the same way. According to my attached link, there are over 7000 machine guns registered to citizens of Canada. Perception and law are two different things.