OTTAWA -- As licensed firearms owners gird themselves for the Liberal government's impending gun grab, Canadian advocates are calling on officials to soften the blow with a tried-and-true concept.

This week, the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights (CCFR) released a white paper highlighting the benefits of adding a grandfathering clause to the government's impending "buy-back" program -- a move they say will fulfill the goals of the program while treating legal gun owners fairly.

"The very best thing the Carney government could do here is what he's done with other divisive policies, like the carbon tax and things like that," said CCFR spokesperson Tracey Wilson.

"The best solution would be to stop the assault on licensed gun owners and to focus instead on crime. And if he doesn't, the results are going to continue to be tragic headlines every day in the newspaper, and that's going to be bad for him."

The CCFR is calling for permissive grandfathering, which would allow legal owners to keep their firearms and let them gradually go out of circulation.

Licensed owners, firearms athletes, experts and even Canada's police chiefs have gone on record saying the root of Canada's gun crime problem lies in prohibited weapons being smuggled into Canada -- not with law-abiding hunters and shooters.

The gun grab, the CCFR maintains, is shaping up to be an expensive and politically-damaging boondoggle, costing over $100 million to buy back 10,000 firearms.

As well, many retailers forced to surrender their now-prohibited firearms are still waiting to be paid.

"Grandfathering is not new, it's something that's been done with pretty much every other gun ban, except for this one," Wilson said.

"Confiscation is a new idea -- it's a Trudeau idea, it's never happened before. It's not how they do things."