It has been quite an interesting couple of months since my last column. Toronto Mayor David Miller launched a broad attack on not just legal handgun owners, but all legal firearms owners, shooting sports, gun shops, gun clubs and any industry that promotes the lawful use of firearms in any way.
Miller and his gang are in this fight to win and if that means playing fast and loose with the truth, then they’re willing to make that "sacrifice."
He has succeeded in convincing the city council of Toronto to support this ban, despite all evidence to the contrary that shows gun bans simply don’t work. (see excerpt from the report Prohibitions later in this issue.)
Like so many gun grabbers before him, Mayor Miller seems far more concerned about "appearing" to do something about the criminal drug and gang problem his city now contends with, rather than actually taking measures to address the root cause of so-called "gun" crime.
Mayor Miller deliberately fails to recognize the impact that limited economic and educational opportunities for inner city youth, along with the break-down of the nuclear family, has had on his city. Tragically, such conditions have served to create a generation of disaffected youth and when coupled with the growing drug trade, the easy money it offers, and the attendant violence it brings with it we are left with a community in crisis.
Obviously these are but a few of the extremely complex socio-economic variables that play a part in Toronto’s highly publicized gun-related shootings.
When you factor in the criminal activities of organized crime, outlaw biker gangs and your basic unsocialized miscreants, you get a city with a criminal problem, not a "gun" problem. While it is not politically correct to broach such subjects, they are still real problems that require real solutions - not sound bites and platitudes from another slick politician whose primary interest is his own re-election.
David Miller, instead of offering the youth and indeed all citizens of Toronto some real hope that he had the solution to his city’s crime-related gun violence, has chosen to target law-abiding gun owners instead! It is certainly the politically correct choice!
Canada’s legal gun owners are, de facto, the most law-abiding of citizens. We must pass detailed police background checks and investigations in order to legally obtain a firearms license. As such, the logic involved in stripping such individuals of their rights in order to eliminate the criminal use of illegally smuggled handguns by gangs and drug dealers on Jane & Finch Streets escapes me.
It boggles my mind that average Canadians are so willing to sacrifice the rights of fellow citizens without so much as an honest thought, let alone an honest debate on the subject.
However, what is most distressing are the comments made by a number of Canadian gun owners and hunters who were all supportive of Mayor Miller’s gun ban…or at least until they found out that the gun grabbers weren’t limiting themselves to "just handguns" this time! It is "fair-weather" friends like this who do a disservice to all responsible firearms owners, no matter the type of firearm they own, collect, or shoot.
The many thousands of Canadian shooters and hunters who continue to propagate the fallacy of "good" and "bad" guns remain disengaged from this debate in the mistaken belief that their guns and their rights aren’t threatened. Amazingly, some go so far as to even accept the gun-grabber’s "facts’ as truth and willingly buy into the complete fiction that banning "bad" guns will solve all problems and keep their "good" guns safe!
Sorry folks, it doesn’t work like that. Mayor Miller’s most recent attack on ALL GUNS should serve as a wake-up call for all gun owners from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Vancouver, British Columbia and all points in between!
Speaking to many hunting and outdoors groups on this topic, I’ve always warned my audience that Canadian shooters and hunters must stand united against this constant attack on our rights.
Some will argue that Canadians do not enjoy the same constitutional right to keep and bear arms as our American cousins, as set-out in their 2nd Amendment. (An individual right recently reaffirmed in a landmark 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.)
That argument may be technically correct, however, until the Liberal Governments of Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chrétien & Paul Martin, Canadian gun owners enjoyed protections that were even broader and more comprehensive; rights, in fact, that were actually established and codified almost a millennium ago.
At the time, individual rights to firearms ownership were guaranteed to every Canadian under our system of English Common Law. Eighteenth Century English scholar, William Blackstone traced the right to own arms as far back as the 11th Century and the reign of King Canute.
By 1181 and the Assize of Arms, the right to own arms had been established and recognized as an "ancient" right and would later be the basis of the English Bill of Rights.
It is these same "ancient" rights that would later be used as the basis of both the Canadian and American legal systems and interestingly enough, helped form the basis of the American 2nd Amendment!
As such, Canadians enjoy the civic right to "armes for their defence" – a fact repugnant to the Liberal ethos, and so we saw the introduction of 1995’s Bill C-68, which is now enshrined as part of our Criminal Code.
Liberal Senator Sharon Carstairs, commenting on the implementation of the Firearms Act, described the Liberal Government’s "gun control" scheme as the lynchpin in their plan to "socially re-engineer Canada."
Canadian gun owners became their target of choice. Radical leftist gun grabbers like Wendy Cukier and Heidi Rathjen quickly found accommodating champions in the form of Allan Rock and Anne McLellan, and direct financial backing from the Liberal government in the form of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer’s money!
Noted journalist Lorne Gunter, writing for the Edmonton Journal, picked up on Senator Carstairs off-the-cuff comments and noted that not only would Bill C-68 serve to re-engineer Canada, the Liberal’s seemed to believe it would, more importantly, target male gun owners, and make them more docile!
Gunter’s most important warning came later when he wrote, "…when lawmakers trample centuries-old liberties without an overwhelming social good, in return then respect for the law dies and the rule of law along with it."
Mayor Miller has decided to trample the rights of law-abiding gun owners in the City of Toronto. The National Firearms Association, along with other stakeholders, is actively fighting this miscarriage of justice.
All Canadian gun owners must stand united with our fellow hunters and shooters who are now bearing the brunt of this outrageous attack on fundamental civil liberties.
Despite broadly held perceptions to the contrary, guns have never safeguarded liberty, it has always been the person wielding those arms, men and women of courage who were willing to stand against injustice and oppression.
Canadian gun owners will ultimately be the architects of their own destiny in just a few short months.
Pundits and political commentators expect another federal election before the end of the year. That election will present all Canadian gun owners with the opportunity to reclaim what Blackstone called an "absolute right."
Our choice is simple.
We can return to Ottawa a friendly, MAJORITY Conservative Government; or a hostile, left-wing Liberal Government intent on finishing the job started by Allan Rock and Jean Chrétien.
It is up to each of us to put aside petty differences and prejudices and accept individual responsibility for safeguarding our liberties and rights as gun owners… absolutely!