TEAM CSSA E-NEWS | September 30, 2018

The Bill C-71 Book,

How It Hurts You, and 3 Easy Steps You Can Take Right Now to Block It

This book is the most comprehensive and easy-to-read overview of the government’s first proposed firearms legislation in a generation, and it is a joint project of The Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), Canada’s leading gun-rights advocacy group, and TheGunBlog.ca, the country’s leading source of news on gun politics and the firearm industry.

The book is available as a FREE PDF DOWNLOAD from StopC71.com.

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Keeping quiet makes sense for a lot of people in a lot of cases.



“My guns are nobody’s business.”

“I don’t want to attract thieves.”

“My [girlfriend, spouse, boss, …] hates guns and I don’t want them to dump me.”

“I don’t want a potential attacker to know how I might respond.”

Secrecy has consequences. If we don’t share, our family, friends and colleagues won’t ask us to take them shooting. If they don’t experience the reality of firearms and firearm culture, they’ll believe what they see in movies or on the news.

This is how we will lose our guns.

Clubs, Stores, Ranges, Trainers

Gun clubs, stores, ranges and instructors have told me why they lie low.

They won’t invite elected officials for a visit, a range day or a fundraiser. They refuse to answer questions from the media, or to invite the media to try shooting. They don’t hold open houses for the community. They won’t even inform their members or clients that the government plans new restrictions or prohibitions.

“We don’t want to get political.”

“We don’t want to get burned.”

“We don’t want to get shut down.”

“If we keep quiet, maybe they’ll leave us alone.”

This is how we will lose our guns.

See the story HERE

The data was collected by the University of Saskatchewan’s Social Sciences Research Laboratories (SSRL) as part of the Taking the Pulse initiative, which involves SSRL researchers calling a representative sample of Saskatchewan residents four times a year and asking for their views on hot-button topics in the province. The results are published by Postmedia News.

Researchers randomly called 401 Saskatchewan residents this month and asked for their views on laws regulating the sale of guns. Nearly half — 47 per cent — said laws should stay the way they are; nine per cent said laws should become considerably or somewhat more lenient. Forty per cent of respondents said legislation should become considerably or somewhat more strict. The remaining respondents were unsure or refused to answer.

“The province is quite divided over this issue, but certainly there are more people who think that the status quo is fine,” said Daniel Beland, a professor of public policy at the University of Saskatchewan.

There was no difference in responses between rural and urban residents.

Men were more likely to support more lenient laws than women (16 per cent of men supported relaxed laws versus three per cent of women).

Survey participants aged 55 and older were more likely to support stricter laws than those younger than 55 (56 per cent of older participants supported stricter laws, compared to 29 per cent of younger respondents).

Beland said he was interested to see that Saskatchewan’s urban and rural residents had similar views on gun control.

“In other jurisdictions — anywhere in Canada — in general there’s a lot of talk about the urban-rural divide; that people in rural areas are much less in favour of gun control than people in the cities,” Beland said. “But it seems in Saskatchewan there is not this strong urban-rural divide.”

Greg Illerbrun, firearms chair for the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, said he expects Saskatchewan is an outlier in Canada in that regard.

“Even us urban guys are usually only one or two generations from the farm,” he noted.

Illerbrun said he wasn’t surprised by the public opinion results, but he believes more people would be in favour of relaxed gun laws if they understood what the existing legislative framework is.

“A lot of people that don’t own guns don’t really know what the laws are today, how restricted things are,” he said. “There’s a lot of hoops we have to jump through just to own a firearm.”

The federal government is in the process of passing tougher firearms legislation, which it has touted as a series of “common sense” measures to improve public safety. When passed, Bill C-71 will subject gun owners to more rigorous background checks, create more restrictions around transporting restricted and prohibited firearms and require more documentation around the gifting and selling of firearms.

Public Safety Minister and Regina MP Ralph Goodale said the SSRL data are “quite encouraging from the government’s point of view.”

Despite the high support the survey found for status quo gun laws, Goodale said the most “striking number” he saw in the results was that just nine per cent of surveyed Saskatchewanians said they wanted gun laws relaxed.

He said it shows politicians arguing for more relaxed gun laws “are way offside.”

“That is clearly contrary to the views of 90 per cent of Saskatchewan people. That’s the startling thing that comes out of these statistics,” he said.

Meanwhile, Conservative MP Glen Motz, who sits on the public safety committee, said the survey suggests to him that people are not in favour of legislation that will make it tougher to purchase firearms.

Like Illerbrun, he said he wonders if the 40 per cent of people who said they wanted stricter laws understand existing firearms legislation. He said most Canadians have a limited knowledge of existing gun control legislation and that this hasn’t been helped by the months of debate around Bill C-71; Motz argues the government has portrayed existing gun laws as weaker than they are in order to garner support for the bill.

“(The results) demonstrate to me that, really, the public isn’t as fully informed as they could be,” he said.

Motz’s biggest beef with C-71 is that it makes things more inconvenient for law-abiding gun owners while not doing enough to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals.

Goodale describes the bill as “practical” and says it enhances public safety and assists law enforcement while “not imposing any unreasonable burden on law-abiding firearm owners.”

Bill C-71 is now before the Senate.

Each iteration of Taking the Pulse has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 per cent, 19 times out of 20, which means researchers expect their results to reflect the opinions of Saskatchewan adults to within 4.9 per cent 95 times out of 100.

See the story HERE

In the last election, the Liberal Party vowed to reverse a decade’s worth of Conservative changes to gun rules they claim bolstered firearm-related crime. Bill C-71, introduced by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, fulfils that commitment through an overhaul of the background check system, new record-keeping requirements for retailers and further restrictions on transporting a firearm.

“The provisions in Bill C-71 are modest and reasonable, and they do not entail a significant new cost,” Goodale said of the legislation, which is at third reading in the House of Commons.

“Bill C-71 [is] an important piece of legislation in support of public safety and the ability of law enforcement to investigate gun crimes, while at the same time being reasonable and respectful toward law-abiding firearms owners and businesses.”

The Conservatives have railed against the bill, claiming it will impose onerous regulations on lawful gun owners while doing little to crack down on gang-related crime largely carried out with illegal firearms sourced from the U.S. And at least 86,000 Canadians agree the bill should be killed, having signed one of the largest e-petitions in Parliament’s history.

The Liberal government, meanwhile, says a troubling spike in gun crime demands some sort of legislative response.

Here’s a look at the changes C-71 would bring about:



The chief firearms officer in each province conducts a background check on anyone applying for a Possession and Acquisition License (PAL) — something all firearms owners must have before they can legally purchase a firearm in this country.

Under the proposed legislation, police would examine a person’s entire life history for potential red flags. Under the current standard, they only assess an applicant’s previous five years.

This review is designed to weed out people who shouldn’t have guns — those with a violent criminal past, for example, or a history of spousal abuse. Critics say the current five-year limitation is too arbitrary, allowing people who might be considered undesirable for a PAL to simply run out the clock.

Gun rights advocates, however, worry the background checks could become too invasive and extensive, resulting in many more prospective gun owners being disqualified.

“By making the required background check basically limitless, a new applicant with a 10-year old prescription to antidepressants may be put under additional scrutiny, or simply turned away,” Calibre, a firearm magazine, recently lamented in an article titled, ‘Bill C-71: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.’

Following an amendment at the public safety committee, the chief firearms officer also would be able under the new legislation to review a person’s online history before granting a licence.

While the opposition Conservatives have said they can accept some changes to the background check system, they are very much opposed to the Liberal government’s plan to force retailers keep a record of all firearms sales and inventories.

Gun rights advocates maintain these log books — which retailers would have to maintain for 20 years — are akin to a revived long-gun registry, which the former Conservative government dismantled.

Gun owners complained about registering their non-restricted firearms, like shotguns, claiming the process was too onerous and the registry was ineffective in stopping gun crime. Many of the country’s police services thought otherwise. (Restricted and prohibited firearms, like handguns, must be still be registered.)

Under Bill C-71, a business must record dates, references and licence numbers and the firearm’s make, model, type and serial number — information Ottawa said it believes will help police trace guns used in crimes.

The Liberal government says it is disingenuous to call these new record-keeping practices a “back door gun registry” because they will be maintained by retailers — not government — and will only be available to police with a warrant.

Most major sports retailers, like Cabela’s and Canadian Tire, already record all sales as a matter of good business practice.

“It’s simply not a federal long gun registry, full stop, period,” Goodale said in a recent interview with CBC News. “The requirement for retailers to maintain their own private record is just that â€” they’re private records of the retailers, and they will not be accessible to government.

“They would be accessible to police when they are investigating gun crimes, with the proper basis of reasonable cause and judicial authorization through a warrant.”

Gun rights activists are skeptical and fearful those records, in the hands of the wrong people, could put lawful firearms owners at risk of being targeted for theft.

Many gun control advocates, meanwhile, say the Liberals haven’t gone far enough and that they should have restored the so-called “1977 provisions.”

That’s a reference to a firearms law that once forced gun retailers to record all firearms sales and to make those records easily available to police looking to trace non-restricted firearms — without a warrant.

The Liberals say C-71 brings Canada in line with the U.S., where federal law requires that records be kept on every gun sale through federally licensed firearms dealers.

The legislation also makes it an offence to sell a firearm to a person without first checking their licence and verifying that it is still valid. Again, most reputable retailers already follow this practice.

It is already illegal to sell a firearm to anyone who doesn’t possess the appropriate licence, but the Liberals say too many retailers are not actually checking the licence before completing a sale.

The Liberals are reversing another Harper-era change to the country’s firearms laws by tightening the rules on carrying firearms away from home.

A licensed gun owner must possess an authorization to transport (ATT) document if they want to travel with a restricted firearm like a handgun.

The Harper government tweaked the regime so that the ATT was attached to a person’s licence — some called it an “automatic ATT” — thus eliminating a layer of paperwork.

After the change, gun owners did not have to seek approvals from police each time they transported their firearm for certain routine activities, like target shooting, taking a firearm home after a transfer, or going to a gunsmith or a gun show.

While that change was praised by gun owners as a major time-saver that pared down some of the firearm bureaucracy, gun control advocates said it made the rules far too lax. The Canadian Association of Chiefs Police said the Harper ATT rules amounted to a licence to take a firearm anywhere.

“Because the ATT was automatic and applied to numerous different destinations, it became virtually impossible for police to detect the transportation of restricted or prohibited weapons for illegal purposes,” Goodale said in a recent speech in the Commons defending C-71.

“Bill C-71 seeks to narrow and clarify the scope of the ATT rules.”

An automatic ATT would be extended to those taking a firearm to a certified shooting range; in other circumstances, a separate ATT would be required. The government maintains that 95 per cent of all gun transportation is to and from a gun range, so the impact on most owners would be minimal.

Gun rights advocates say this is strictly a political move designed to punish legal owners because no criminal has ever applied for an ATT to carry out a gun crime. Gun control advocates, on the other hand, argue that strong controls over legal guns reduce the chance that they’ll fall into the wrong hands.

While definitions of the three classes of firearms — non-restricted, restricted and prohibited — will continue to be set by Parliament, the Liberal government is giving the RCMP the power to decide how individual firearms are classified.

“After the definitions have been set in law by Parliament, it should be firearms experts who make the technical determination as to which firearm fits into which category. That is a factual, technical function, and it should not be politicized. Bill C-71 makes that point very clear,” Goodale said.

The Liberals say that, under Harper, cabinet was able to “contradict the experts” and assign a lower category to a particular firearm. Those opposed to C-71 say the government is abdicating its legislative responsibilities by allowing police to make these choices without political approval.

C-71 also reclassifies two types of firearms — most models of the Ceska zbrojovka CZ-858 rifle and certain Swiss Arms firearms — as “prohibited”, which means owners will have to apply to have their rifles “grandfathered” or face dispossession.

See the story HERE

The MP for New Brunswick Southwest has been going to extreme measures to try to sell the Trudeau government’s new gun-control legislation to her consitutents.

Bill C-71 passed in the Commons this week and now heads to the Senate for further study.

The changes have been a hot topic in Ludwig’s mainly rural riding, which takes in all of Charlotte and parts of the counties of York, Sunbury, Queens, Kings and Saint John.

It has one of the largest gun dealers in Canada, about 30 gun clubs, and some Olympic-level sports shooters.

“I know that an issue such as this sometimes can be polarizing,” Ludwig said. “And I will confess I knew so little about guns.”

She brought in the parliamentary secretary for public safety to explain the changes directly to gun club presidents and hear their concerns, she took the Canadian Firearms Safety Course, and she earned her gun possession and acquisition licence.

“And that to me was a real eye-opener,” said Ludwig.

“It gave me confidence that the rules and regulations that we have now are good. The legislation is only to make it tighter and stronger.”

Background checks will span a person’s entire lifetime, instead of the previous five years, to flag anyone with a history of violence. For example, someone who has been abusive of their spouse, physically or otherwise, won’t be able to buy a gun.

And that will include someone who has made serious threats of violence on social media, said Ludwig.

Even a person who wants to sell a gun privately will have to make sure the buyer has a licence, she said.

Many stores are already doing this, said Ludwig, and some are upgrading their computer systems now.

At the Gun Dealer in McAdam, owner Ross Faulkner estimated it’s going to cost him $50,000 to $60,000 to meet the new regulations for record keeping.

“This is a tremendous cost on private business … I am absolutely, totally appalled,” Faulkner said.

He said background checks are already tough enough, and he is convinced Bill C-71 will accomplish nothing.

A ‘backdoor’ to registry

“There is no way this is going to address crime at all,” he said.

“They’re not changing anything. They’re just basically bringing in a backdoor registry on the backs of legal firearms owners. We’re easy targets.”

Faulkner said his sales have increased since the registry was abolished. He now has a staff of 18.

He’s worried sales will slow and he’ll have to lay people off once this legislation is enacted.

“And if I make a mistake, then they’ll put me in jail because my records weren’t accurate,” Faulkner said.

“They tried it for 15 years and couldn’t get it right.”

See the story HERE

In advance of formal public consultations, Toronto-area Liberal MPs Julie Dabrusin and Nathaniel Erskine-Smith hosted a public event Sunday to discuss gun violence, an issue the government has vowed to crack down on ahead of next year’s election. But despite support for a ban from some of Canada’s largest cities, the meeting, which saw repeated interjections from a small but determined number of pro-gun audience members, highlighted just how divisive the issue may still prove to be.

“I know there is a great diversity of opinion. There are some people with very strong feelings on this issue,” Bill Blair said afterward. Mr. Blair is the newly appointed Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction.

Mr. Blair, a former Toronto Police chief who spoke at Sunday’s event, has been tasked with stick-handling the handgun issue. He said that moving forward, “evidence” will help guide him. But at the town hall, even the evidence proved contentious.

As he sat onstage speaking, Mr. Blair cited Toronto Police figures indicating that an increasing proportion of guns used in crime are coming from domestic sources (as opposed to illegally through the border) – at least of those guns that police are able to track. That comment drew loud booing, with some shouting that the minister was misrepresenting the data.

Sunday’s town hall took place just minutes away from Danforth Avenue, the site of a mass shooting in late July that saw a lone gunman kill an 18-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl. That shooting and the outrage that followed touched off a national debate about gun crime in Canada, and sparked a flurry of activity in Ottawa surrounding the issue.

Immediately following the Danforth shooting, Toronto’s city council called on the federal government to ban handguns in the city. Soon after, Montreal’s city council followed suit. In response, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke publicly about the possibility of a handgun ban, and just last week the government said it would launch nation-wide consultations on the idea.

Mr. Blair was joined onstage Sunday by Scot Wortley, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Toronto; Louis March, founder of the group Zero Gun Violence; and emergency physician Atul Kapur.

Throughout the two-hour discussion, the presenters agreed on many issues, including the need to approach gun crime not simply as a criminal matter. The presenters spoke repeatedly of the need to address root causes of violence, including poverty, education, mental health, public housing and economic opportunity.

But much of the disagreement came instead from the crowd. While some audience members appeared supportive of a ban, the most vocal were those who opposed it.

Even before the meeting began, there were signs of a divide.

Ahead of the meeting, a pro-firearm group posted on social media urging supporters to “flood” the event.”

“We need our voice to be heard!” a group called On Target Canada wrote on Twitter.

Standing in the lobby before the meeting, Don Lindsay, speaking on behalf of the Canadian Firearms Network, told The Globe and Mail that he considered Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Blair “cowards” for targeting gun owners. He said that the majority of gun owners are law-abiding, and that those who use them to commit crimes aren’t likely to be swayed by a ban. Mr. Lindsay said he’d driven nearly two hours down from Wasaga Beach for the Toronto session.

Throughout the meeting, like-minded audience members made their views known. In one pointed exchange, Prof. Wortley remarked onstage that many of the young men he’s spoken with in his research have said they’d acquired their guns through legal owners.

The comment drew jeers from the crowd.

“I don’t know why they would have a reason to lie about it,” the professor responded, visibly frustrated.

And as Mr. Erskine-Smith wrapped up the town hall, another outburst.

“Stop using gun owners as a scapegoat!” shouted a man from the audience. The comment elicited a burst of applause.

Afterward, Mr. Blair said he welcomed all perspectives. “There are some who feel very very strongly about their personal ownership of firearms. There are some who feel equally strong about the safety of their communities,” he said.

“We’ll listen to both.”

See the story HERE

The Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that he will hold roundtables with experts around the country, seek input from the public through an online portal and get data from other jurisdictions before determining the best way to deal with handguns in Canada.

Mr. Blair said he wants the consultations to be completed by the end of the year, which means that any legislation to ban handguns could only be introduced next year. The issue could be a hot topic in next year’s fall election campaign, given the House of Commons would only have a few months to debate a ban before rising next June.

The proposed measure is being vigorously opposed by the Conservative Party of Canada, but a number of Liberal MPs, as well as the city councils of Toronto and Montreal, are calling for a ban in response to recent shootings in Canada. Pressure has been growing on the federal government to enact tougher gun laws after a mass shooting along Toronto’s Danforth Avenue on July 22 and a deadly attack against a mosque in Quebec City last year.

Mr. Blair said illegal handguns are either smuggled into Canada from other countries, especially the United States, or “diverted” from legal domestic sources by criminals.

“We have got to look responsibly at both [streams] and take all the measures that can be effective in reducing the movement of guns from both the United States and the domestic market into the hands of criminals,” the former chief of the Toronto Police Service told reporters. “There is a diversion from the domestic market that needs to be addressed.”

He added that any solution proposed by the government will be based on evidence from Canada and around the world. “We will go and get the best available data. I want to be informed by the best [information] we can find,” Mr. Blair said.

Conservative MP Glen Motz, a former police officer with the Medicine Hat Police Service, said the federal government is playing politics by contemplating a handgun ban. He said he is particularly concerned that the government will change firearms laws without a guarantee that the measure will reduce crime.

“A handgun ban is not going to stop those who already have access to illegal firearms,” he said. “Having a handgun ban consultation is in no way speaking to the issue.”

Appointed to cabinet in July, Mr. Blair is in charge of a series of complex files, including the legalization of recreational cannabis and the flow of asylum seekers entering the country from the United States. At the meeting of the public safety committee on Tuesday, Conservative MPs tried and failed to get Mr. Blair to state that he wants to put an end to all border crossings at unauthorized points of entry.

“My understanding now is that you do not have a mandate to stop people from illegally crossing the border from safe spaces like upstate New York and claiming asylum in Canada,” Tory MP Michelle Rempel said.

Mr. Blair responded that his goal is to get all asylum seekers to seek entry at authorized border crossings, but he needs to discuss the matter further with U.S. officials.

“My responsibility is to ensure that Canadian law is upheld and Canadian humanitarian principles are adhered to,” he said.

See the story HERE

The federal Liberals are set to launch on another showy but useless endeavour: a public consultation on a possible ban on handguns.

Handguns, and other “restricted” firearms (as defined by the Criminal Code), are already tightly regulated in Canada. And as noted in this space several weeks ago, the recent news reports suggesting that there has been a measurable surge in the number of so-called “crime guns” originating from lawful Canadian purchasers have been exposed as wrong. Not only is there no evidence to support that claim, there is at least some evidence showing that it is false.

There has been an apparent surge in the number of shootings in major Canadian cities, which police believe is linked to gang violence. That is indeed a problem. But is that evidence that a major overhaul of our gun laws is needed? Even the Liberals didn’t think so as recently as six months ago. That’s when the federal Liberal government introduced Bill C-71, which provided a series of relatively minor tweaks to Canadian gun-control laws. Some of their ideas were good, some were bad. None of them involved a handgun ban, because it was clear that none was needed.

Nothing has changed since then, except for the Liberals’ political calculus. After some high-profile shootings (none of which would have been prevented by the handgun bans now being proposed by advocates), they perceive a need to be seen doing something. So poor Bill Blair, the former cop and now federal minister in charge of organized crime reduction, will be sent across the country to talk to Canadians as part of yet another grand consultation process. It’s simply theatre, designed to buy the Liberals some time. Nothing more.

And it’s all too typical of this government. The reality is this: there’s no need for a major overhaul of our gun laws, and there are far less draconian and faster ways to tackle any concern over lawful guns being sold onto the black market. Pouring resources into anti-gang initiatives would be better still. Even so, if the government really wanted to ban handguns, it would consult experts, not town halls. Do the Liberals still bother even paying lip service to “evidence-based policy” anymore?

Because there are plenty of experts and evidence at hand. The government can access every scholar with expertise on the subject, international partners, allied police forces, industry leaders, our law enforcement agencies, and reams of data collected by police forces and StatCan, often going back decades.

All the information the government actually needs is there, ready to be acted on, or not. This consultation with the public is for show, a vanity exercise on a national scale. It’s worse than pointless.

So, naturally, it’s now the preferred course of a government hooked on hollow symbolism.

See the story HERE

See the story HERE

So, too, is the federal government’s pledge to examine a nation-wide handgun and assault rifle ban. In both instances, we need to deliver what has been promised on paper.

But we also need to do more.

Law-abiding gun owners often complain that they are disproportionately targeted by new gun-control measures. They are unlikely, however, to draw attention to regulatory blind spots from which they benefit.

But when such an oversight offers an opportunity to mitigate inherent risks associated with gun ownership, it behoves all of us to shine some light on the subject. Firearm liability insurance is one such oversight and I believe that should be mandatory – not optional – for gun owners and sellers.

A gun shop owners selling of a handgun and an individual’s decision to buy one creates social and economic risks. Legally-obtained guns used in a crime, deaths by suicide, and the increased rate of homicide associated with higher levels of gun availability are but a few examples of how those risks translate into costs on society. For those looking for a dollar figure, a 2012 study put the economic cost of gun crime in Canada at approximately $3.1-billion annually.

Guns have few social benefits, few users, and carry great risk to everyone. They are a necessary tool for some – police services, the military, rural workers and families who need to protect themselves from dangerous wildlife – and a recreational tool for hunters and sport shooters. Given that private gun ownership creates risks to society with little social utility, it is only fair that gun sellers and owners bear the costs.

If the idea of mandatory gun liability insurance sounds radical, that’s because it’s new to us. It is a common sense measure with demonstrable results elsewhere on the globe. Germany requires liability insurance for gun owners, and has significantly lower per capita gun deaths than Canada, while maintaining very similar levels of firearms ownership.

Such an insurance regime would also end the paradox that responsible gun owners find themselves in where they are often painted with the same brush as their irresponsible counterparts. By empowering the insurance industry to assess the risk and assign a premium to each individual gun owner, good behaviour and practices will be incentivized while those deemed unfit to insure at a reasonable cost will be priced out of the market.

Canadians often look down on our American neighbours and the seemingly endless cycle of gun violence that plagues the country and its major cities. But outside the U.S., we have some of the highest levels of homicide deaths caused by firearms in the developed world.

Gun control advocates south of our border have been calling for similar insurance reform for years as a practical, market-based solution. It’s unfair to criticize our neighbours for not solving their firearms problem if we aren’t prepared to consider the full range of solutions at home.

It’s been two months since a mass shooting in the east end and #DanforthStrong that followed. I’m proud of how my neighbours responded to the tragedy. Ours is a resilient city. It must also be resolute in dealing with the causes of crime and gun violence.

Insurance isn’t going to solve the problem of crime in our city. As part of the response, however, it’ll mitigate a significant risk factor.

It’s an option that deserves serious consideration.

— Josh Makuch is a candidate for Toronto City Council in Beaches-East York, a former Infantry Officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, and a combat veteran of the war in Afghanistan.  @joshuamakuch

See the story HERE

He is unapologetic about his passion for shooting sports, and for his opinions that Canada should consider relaxing some of its gun laws, instead of contemplating bans on handguns and assault-style rifles.

Jones was that little boy who turned every banana and stick into a gun. He became a cadet in North Delta, where he grew up, and looked forward to his time on the shooting range, firing military rifles.

He wasn’t a crack shot.

“I was okay. But every time I was on the range, I had a good time.”

Later, he went into the army reserves, an infantryman with the Seaforth Highlanders in the late 1980s, and the lifestyle fed into this love of camping and the outdoors. Hunting was a natural progression.

“I also like to eat,” he smiles. “It’s camping, and you’re bringing something home. Hopefully.”

He has always enjoyed buying, selling and trading guns as a hobbyist.

Jones began a career working at Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam, but the mental health facility had its services scaled back and then ultimately closed.



Losing his career in health care, Jones started to look for opportunities, and that led him to Wanstalls. Tony Wanstall had taken over a sporting good store known as E&D Sports in 1973. There was lots of fishing and camping gear, and it was a Boy Scouts depot, with sashes, badges and other paraphernalia of the Scouting movement.

Sadly lacking, from Jones’ perspective, were the guns, and he purchased the store in 2007.

“I think we had 17 firearms in inventory,” he recalled.

And now?

He had a licence to pursue his hobbies as a business. The trick was to make enough to support a wife and two young children. He was 39 when he bought it.

“It was scary, it was exciting and it was awesome,” he remembered. “You’re leaving a government job, and security, and a pension, and taking a leap of faith into the unknown.”

Buying and selling guns – new, used or on consignment – became a huge part of the business. People would approach him to buy a rusty rifle they found in a grandpa’s basement, or to use his networks to sell collectables, such as a pair of mirror image Cabot Colt 1911.

They went for $36,000, and were the most expensive guns in the store.

His own firearms interests have been cyclical. He will go from using ultra-precise rifles that make shots at extreme ranges, to shooting indoors with a tactical rifle, to antique muzzleloaders and then to handguns.

Since he took over the business, he has seen an evolution in the interest of shooters.

“There has definitely been a change,” he said. “People are spending more on their hobby than they used to, and there’s a trend to handguns and the black guns [tactical rifles].

He does not call them assault rifles, even though that’s what many of them appear to be, because those sold in Canada cannot fire on full automatic, and can only have a magazine limit of five cartridges.

He hears people say “we don’t want to become ‘The States,’” but Jones said Canada has far more restrictions.

“Our laws are universal, coast to coast, where they have 50 different sets of laws [for each state].”

In the U.S., there are laws that allow concealed carry, fully automatic weapons and high capacity magazines, depending on the state. There are also varying laws about background checks, and most states do not require them for purchase at gun shows from private individuals.

In Canada, purchasers must pass the Canadian Firearms Safety Course and mail away for a Possession and Acquisition Licence. To buy a handgun or restricted firearm, there is an additional safety course. Licencing involves background checks, and the RCMP requires a minimum of 45 days to process the application.

So everyone must pass a safety exam, and everyone is vetted, he said.

“In a free society, the onus is on you to say why it should be restricted.”

In fact, he said, there are good reasons for Canadians to look at relaxing some gun laws. For example, a wilderness carry law would allow approved gun owners working in the backcountry to protect themselves from predators.

Silencers should be considered for recreational shooters, so he wouldn’t have to yell around some customers.

“A lot of people come in here with hearing loss.”

He knows there are a lot of people in Maple Ridge who share his viewpoints. This is a good community to own a gun store in.

“There’s still a rural, close-knit feel to the town, and a lot of people are still enjoying the things they did when they were young – hunting and shooting.”

See the story HERE

That’s all true, in theory. The system works fairly well when you are dealing with guns bought and sold at licensed businesses. It breaks down, however, when it comes to private deals.

When a private owner buys, sells or trades a non-restricted firearm to another private citizen, there is no legal requirement for a seller to verify a buyer’s gun licence. Things get especially murky when it comes to online sales: guns can be transferred between buyers and sellers on opposite sides of the country, and a seller simply has the option to verify a buyer’s licence if he or she suspects wrongdoing.

This is the case even when it comes to non-restricted firearms that are considered by some to be functionally equivalent to the AR-15 â€” the semi-automatic rifle used in several mass shootings stateside that is classified as restricted in Canada. Some examples include the Swiss Arms 556, the H&K SL8 and the Robinson XCR.

While authorities have not specified the type of gun used by Matthew Vincent Raymond to allegedly kill two civilians and two officers in Fredericton on Aug. 10, they have confirmed that it was classified as non-restricted.

Private sellers take great pains to verify every buyer for fear of legal repercussions, according to one lifelong gun enthusiast.

“The gun community in Canada is extremely self-policing,” Andre Perreault of Lethbridge, Alta. told HuffPost Canada by phone. “We’re extra careful about following the rules because when a PAL holder commits a crime, politicians use that to implement even tighter restrictions on law-abiding gun owners. So, by and large, we’re a self-regulating community.”

Perreault is the founder and owner of GunPost.ca, an online forum for private citizens to buy, sell and trade firearms. He started the website four years ago as a way to conveniently sell guns from the comfort of his home.

While popular online marketplaces like Facebook, Craigslist and Kijiji have banned the advertisement and sale of firearms, privately owned websites can still facilitate transactions between individuals.

Restricted firearms, like non-prohibited handguns and some semi-automatic rifles, are registered to each individual owner. Ownership transfers can take days, sometimes weeks, to approve. But the majority of firearms available to buy on GunPost.ca are non-restricted, according to Perreault.

Here’s what the RCMP website says about those types of guns:

“Transfers of non-restricted firearms can be conducted without contacting the CFP [Canadian Firearms Program], as registration is no longer required for this class of firearm. The transferor may verify that the transferee has a valid PAL by calling the CFP toll-free number (1-800-731-4000) before making a sale.”

“May” is the operative word: a seller may call the RCMP to verify that a PAL card is authentic, not flagged for any suspicious activity or reported as stolen. That means that while you must have a licence, you are not required to show it.

Now, I just said Faisal Hussain walked down the street shooting everyone he met. That’s not accurate. He ran into a man named Jaspal Singh, a Sikh. And he told that Sikh man, who obviously has brown skin, and could appear to be Muslim, I suppose, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to shoot you.”

But Hussain “stood on top of a woman and shot her four times.”

How does that make sense?

The quotes I just showed you were from a legal document called an “information to obtain the warrant to search,” or ITO. In other words, it’s the facts that police put to a judge, on July 24, the day after the shooting, to get a search warrant for the murderer’s house and belongings. It has just been made public.

It proves that the official alibis served up the family, the media and the federal government were all lies. They were lying about the shooter, and they knew it, but they lied anyway.

Faisal Hussain lived with his parents. He was 29 years old. Let me tell you about his bedroom at his parents home:

“The [police] dog then hit on a sleigh bed that had two drawers under it. The dog indicated on the left drawer. When the drawer was opened the following was located…”

And then the copy was blacked out.

But it was done using a black pen, but I can clearly make out the words that were covered up:

Two AK-47 magazines, fully loaded with ammunition; two 9 mm handgun magazines, fully loaded with ammunition; a variety of handgun and shotgun ammunition.

Look at what’s unreacted: “A white powdery substance.” “An Islamic head dress.”

Here are police interviewing his twin brother:

He advised that, in the past, Faisal has robbed a store with a gun, called the police to say he wanted to kill himself and has been on anti-depressants.

That’s armed robbery. That’s the stuff that ought to put you away for a decade

Let’s move down to the dad, who was interviewed by cops. His dad:

…took Faisal to Islamabad, Pakistan, about 2-3 years ago to visit family. Faisal was happy on the trip and did not want to return because people left him alone there.

But in this same IOC, the mom says Faisal “has never left Canada.”

Paragraph 35 refers to a PR statement, issued by the family, although it wasn’t signed. It was written in perfect English.

But of course we learned that the statement was not actually written by the family, but by a Muslim activist who knew he had a job to do — de-Islamify this. De-criminalize it. Say it was just “mental illness.”

And the Media Party ran with it — because it said what they all wanted to hear.

TONIGHT I’ll go into this ITO document in great detail, and raise more questions.

What I do know is that the official story we were told here is a pack of lies.

We know that Ralph Goodale and Bill Blair, Trudeau’s cabinet ministers, immediately swooped in to say there was no terrorist connection. How could they have said so, so quickly?

We also know is that our news media stops being reporters, and started being anti-reporters, spin-doctors.

And I can promise you that no matter what names the Media Party calls us, we’re going to continue to tell you the truth about the Danforth mass shootings — because that’s our job, even if the rest of the media has forgotten theirs…

See the full story HERE

Apparently for those who voice such concerns, it never occurred that guns have never committed violence of any sort. Perhaps with the advent of AI and robotics being developed to a sufficient level, guns will commit violence, adultery, theft, and even sexual predation by groping women with no guns.

They find no hypocrisy using their First Amendment rights to infringe on your Second Amendment rights.

For example: “Let’s have ‘reasonable gun control” – the argument meaning whatever they think is ‘reasonable’ is good enough for them to take your guns, your freedom, your physical safety, and your property…

To proposing that: “If we can save one life by prohibiting firearms” it’s worth it.

It never occurred to them that over 2 million lives each year are SAVED with the presence – if not even the use – of firearms.

In other words, one life saved because a gun was available is not quite as significant as one life saved where there was no threat of violence, and consequently, no need to use a firearm.

Logic is whatever the Left who want to take your guns so they can take your lives would like it to be.

Save a life: Your own or that of your families.

It’s better to have a firearm and not need it; than to need it and not have it.

See the story HERE

The strict, legal controls on these weapons that were so effective in earlier generations increasingly seem weak and ineffective.

Year after year, the toll of deaths and injuries caused by handguns continues to climb higher. Year after year, despite the pain, anguish and tears caused by handgun crimes, our politicians, police and courts seem powerless to turn back the rising tide of bloodshed.

That’s why the federal government has taken the wise, if controversial, step of launching nationwide consultations on whether Canada should ban the private ownership of handguns.

Regrettably, the political battle lines are already drawn. Federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer flat out rejects any notion of a ban, claiming it would be “completely ineffective.”

He’s certain to have support from at least some handgun owners who will understandably argue they’ve followed all the rules, obeyed all the laws and hurt no one.

Law-abiding citizens defending a freedom, even a qualified freedom, they have long enjoyed should not be thoughtlessly dismissed. Better that they be engaged.

At the very least, fair-minded people should be able to agree that handgun violence has become a crisis in some parts of Canada and that the nation should consider every tool, every remedy that might protect and save lives.

To be sure, Toronto is currently the epicentre of this handgun storm. Citizens there pleaded for help after a mass shooting along the city’s Danforth Avenue on July 22 left two people dead and 12 wounded. A month earlier two sisters, ages five and nine, were shot and seriously injured as they played in a park.

As much as Toronto authorities insist their community is safe, the criminal abuse of handguns now occurs almost daily in Canada’s biggest city, a stark change from just a few years ago. Nor is the handgun threat confined to Toronto.

A recent Statistics Canada report identified an increase in firearms violence that was part of a rising crime rate across the country for the third year in a row.

Tellingly, six out of 10 firearms-related crimes involved handguns.

Though the consultations on a ban have yet to begin, the old arguments against tougher gun controls are already being rolled out.

Critics insist that a ban would be useless, punishing responsible handgun owners while doing nothing to stop criminals from buying weapons illegally brought into Canada from the United States.

But if many handguns are imported illegally from the U.S., police say they are increasingly sourced in Canada, either purchased or stolen from Canadians who have a legal right to possess them.

Other jurisdictions, such as Japan and the United Kingdom, which have banned the private ownership of handguns, experience far less gun violence than Canada does.

And compromises are always possible. Even if Canada did proceed with a ban, the government is open to allowing target shooters to continue to use handguns at tightly regulated commercial facilities.

Perhaps we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. The public consultations haven’t begun. Any new law would come months, possibly longer, after those discussions.

We don’t need to reach any conclusions before we’ve started to talk. But we do need to open our eyes and see what’s happening around us.

When little children and innocent bystanders are being hit by stray bullets, something has gone badly wrong in Canada.

Can’t we put partisan politics aside for a while? Can’t we just talk about how to set things right?

See the story HERE

Use NoGunBanCanada.com to Send Form Letters to Ministers

September 6, 2018

TheGunBlog.ca — A new website went live last night to help Canadians oppose the firearm seizures being studied by the federal government: NoGunBanCanada.com.

You can use the letter-writing platform developed by Bulls Eye London to print and send pre-written letters to key ministers and officials.

The platform joins TheGunBlog.ca and OneClearVoice.ca in offering tools to challenge government plans to take away more guns from hunters and sport shooters with a federal firearm licence.

Scott Patience, the owner of Bulls Eye London, decided to create the website last week after the prime minister ordered an examination of a “full ban on handguns and assault weapons.”

“This is the critical moment, right now,” Patience told TheGunBlog.ca today by telephone. “Start sending the letters today.”

Hundreds of thousands of gun seizures are already underway because of laws passed by the prime minister’s political party in 1995.

More are in the works under Bill C-71, a law he proposed in March.

“You need to be part of the discussion, part of the input process,” Patience said. “Not only what is proposed, but what isn’t proposed.”

He developed the website with John Fitzgerald, the president of the Crumlin Sportsmen’s Association near London, after consulting with the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

“We want to propagate this as wide as possible,” Patience said. “It’s completely non-partisan. It doesn’t even mention us.”

How it worked when I tried today:

The website says the letters will change in a few weeks. For now they are addressed to the prime minister, the leader of the opposition, and four ministers with responsibilities related to hunting, heritage and sport, and firearm licensing, registration and confiscation.

“When politicians are talking about something, they start to give it momentum within their own party and within government caucus,” said Patience. “It’s hard to walk things back. We want them to have a physical manifestation of our displeasure over any potential legislation so that it will affect their thought process as they think about it.”

See the story HERE

According to the publication, the amendments will be submit for consideration next month. The changes are related to a new EU directive on obtaining the right to own weapons, which was proposed after the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015.

Proponents of the bill in the Netherlands believe that information is necessary to understand “risk factors” when issuing licenses. However, some parties, in particular, the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and the Democrats 66 (D66), have declared that stricter requirements violate the right to privacy and are not necessary.

“According to the minimum requirements of the European Directive, this is not necessary. We do not promote discrimination and ethnic profiling,” MP Monique den Bur said.

According to the newspaper, the Dutch police provides about 70,000 weapon licenses per year.

See the story HERE

Among the media outlets that reported on this study were Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Think Progress, Mother Jones, and Salon. The gist of the study was that the United States of America accounted for 31 percent of the mass shootings that take place around the world. Naturally, many who support gun bans, gun rationing schemes, and “universal background checks” touted the study.

No surprise there. The rare times that major semi-auto bans get rammed through occur when there is a very strong anti-gun majority and even then, they only can get the bill through when there has been a mass shooting, usually when people are overwhelmed with grief and shock in the immediate aftermath. When people have the time to rationally consider facts, they tend to reject gun control schemes.

As you might imagine, supporters of semi-auto bans (and other restrictions) have been trying to get some factual/scientific basis behind their agenda. It’s hard – in 2016, rifles of all types, not just the AR-15 that Bloomberg’s stooges want to ban, killed 374 people according to Justice Department statistics. That total is lower than those for knives, fists and feet (what the DOJ calls “personal weapons”), and clubs.

Recently, though, the First of all, Lankford’s study has been questioned by John Lott. But when the Washington Post took a look at Lott’s study, something else emerged: There was no clear definition of what constitutes a “mass shooting.” The Post’s fact-check on Lott and Lankford this year mentioned that some federal agencies defined an “active shooter” incident as one in which three or more people were shot.

But even those definitions may not be complete. The Washington Post noted the 1998 school shooting at a high school near Springfield, Oregon (stopped by a NRA member’s sons, incidentally) had only two dead, but 25 wounded, but still felt like a mass shooting. And this now leads to something else that should be kept in mind when anti-Second Amendment types cite the Lankford study – something the Washington Post touched on.

The Post, while praising Lott’s transparency with his data set, did ask him to remove terrorist incidents from his list of 1,491 mass shootings. He did, and the results changed. The Post also noted that a third critic, who disputed Lott’s total of 43 incidents in the United States, claiming there were actually 188, used a different definition than Lott. Lankford, though, has never released his data, so we don’t know what shootings he has picked.

If we can’t agree on a definition of mass shooting, then we can’t really accurately say for sure how many take place. The best we can ask for, until we get a single standard to define these tragic occasions, is for researchers to be transparent. If you want to read Professor Lott’s study, go here. A total of 451 pages of backup data are here if you want to see the data for yourself.

The recreational shooting community here in Canada is simply not comparable to the gun culture in the USA which is bolstered by their constitutional right to bear arms. It’s a completely different outlook and philosophy on guns and their purpose. In Canada they are a hobby and owned for sport, not for protection from a individual or a tyrannical government.

Here in Canada, handguns are already banned from civilian ownership, with the exception of those who are vetted by the RCMP. Those who do own them are only allowed to take them from secure storage at home to a licenced range to shoot.

Unfortunately, the politicians have successfully diverted the public’s attention from the real issues of gangs with illegal guns and holes in our mental health system, both of which require a substantial increase in funding and resources to battle. Taking legal guns out of their locked safes will do nothing to keep illegal guns from getting across the unlocked border.

Marc Leduc

Saanich

See the story HERE

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