The Mounted Police have had 5946s for quite a while. And for some ERT sections, they had the guns blackened with some kind of teflon type finish. So they wouldn't have had these as evaluation in 2008. It was done to death by then.
The pictures you posted have me asking a couple of questions and thinking they are actually 2 different guns. The bottom one looks like someone's gun personally owned in Canada with an aftermarket, ie. BarSto, barrel installed to meet the latest/greatest regulations requiring all new imports/registered guns to have a barrel more than 105mm in length.
I've seen a couple personally owned guns, that the owners had the same Mounted Police logo engraved that looked very similar to that one. The RCMP guns also had the serial numbers on all 3 components.
And just to echo, there is no Canadian Highway Patrol.
KOLDT is correct... the photos in the OP are of two different guns. I know this because the bottom pic is a picture I took a few years ago of
my gun. Not sure but I'm guessing the pic above was "borrowed" from a post I made years ago on the Canadian GunNutz website.
The gun was purchased by me from a US distributor who listed it as an "over-run" of a version that S&W submitted to RCMP for purchase/evaluation. My understanding was that several guns from the "run" had never shipped to RCMP and that S&W sold them off to the US dealer I purchased mine from. At the time I tried to buy more but was told this was all they had... not sure if/or how many more there had been.
At the time I confirmed their existence and validity with friends of mine who worked at the RCMP Armoury at DEPOT Division as well as a member posted at the Ottawa RCMP Firearms section.
The gun came from S&W as you see it, with the exception of the barrel. The picture I took showed the gun with an installed BarSto match grade barrel. That 106mm barrel had to be installed in order to legally import the gun into Canada as a private firearm (Canadian law makes pistols with a barrel length of 105mm or less Prohibited for individual/private importation, since @ 1995). The gun did originally come with a standard 4" 9mm barrel which I still have down in the US.
The box does not say anything about RCMP but the gun was engraved with the RCMP logo and I was told this was done from the factory by S&W, as was the Black Melonite finish. Product code was marked as 608270 and serial number series was BAY####.
The gun was received in the US in what appeared to be BNIB condition, though the box label had "used" typed on it. All paperwork was new and untouched (which I still have) and the gun was wrapped and appeared unfired and unmarked.
We installed the 106mm barrel and test fired the gun as part of the fitting process... other than that the gun still sits in my safe as a collector's piece. To my knowledge it is the only privately owned one of it's kind in Canada. There are quite a few regular S&W5946 Stainless models here in Canada but I've never seen or heard of another one of these "3rd Gen", Black, railed and logo'd guns privately owned and registered in this country.
RCMP own the rights to the logo, but S&W is licensed to apply it, making these logo'd guns rather unique... especially one in private hands. Years ago the RCMP used to sell off some of their used guns, allowing private citizens to sometimes acquire RCMP horse logo'd firearms for personal ownership. But a few years back the Federal Government passed legislation which stopped that process. It is no longer legal for any "Department/Agency" owned firearms to be sold/transferred to private ownership. They can trade or sell them to other police forces, they can destroy them, but they can no longer be sold for private ownership.
