What are the basic laws on gun ownership in Belize? How are weapons classified(shotgun, rifle, handgun)? Is ammunition registered?
Belizean laws are very restrictive and even harder to imoprt your own weapons. Certain calibers are totally illegal. There are a couple of shooting ranges in the country. The cost is $500 per permit per weapon. A single shot 20 gauge sells for over 500 BZE. 9 mil only allowed pistol caliber. 16 and 20 gauge shotgun and forget rifles altogether.
You have two kinds of licenses. Personal protection and farm use(mostly shotguns.) Anything bigger than a 9mm is classified as prohibited except shotguns of course, unless they are sawed off then they are definitely prohibited. Ammunition is not licensed but to buy ammunition one must produce a license. Personal firearm license is $75 per annum while farm license is $5 per annum. Recently they began offering licenses for up to three years. Before, one had to license every year on your birthday.
It is illegal to take firearms or ammunition into or out of Belize.
Click here for the Belize Firearms Act
The first poster has SEVERAL innaccuracies in his response.As to the Firearms Act of Belize. It actually provides four types of licenses, each with different yearly fees. They are as follows: Special Protection License- $75 for citizens/ $500 for non-citizens Gun Repair License- $200 for citizens/ $500 for non-citizens Sport Hunters License- $150 for citizens/ $250 for non-citizens Farmers Gun License- $5 for citizens/ $250 for non-citizens *For thosemy who are gun dealers....the fee for a dealer‘s license is $650 for citizens and $7000 for non-citizens. As you can see by the fees alone, farmers are allowed to protect their animals with a gun. When a puma comes out of the jungle, for the small yearly sum of $5...you can eliminate him before he kills off your profit. Some of the provisions in the law state that no one under 16 can own a gun. They also state that if the police think you‘re not well suited for gun ownership, they can squash you right. If you‘ve ever had a gun lost or stolen, you no longer have the right to gun ownership. (That one is kind of cock eyed to me...Wouldn‘t it cause people to NOT report the theft of a gun?!?) The following are the provisions (as far as I can tell from reading the Firearms Act) as to what type of guns are COMPLETELY PROHIBITED throughout Belize: (a) rifle of 7.62 or higher calibre; (b) revolver of .44 or higher calibre; (c) magnum revolver of .357 caliber; (d) sawed-off shotgun of any calibre; (e) machine gun of any
There are some inaccuracies in the info. I.e. 9mm is not the only allowed handgun calibre and you can bring in firearms and ammunition if you have received proper authorization.