The Firearms Freedom Foundation has been created on behalf of all Canadians. From desperation and despair, out of fear in the pit of our bellies, we commit ourselves firmly and implacably to defend the natural and traditional life in this country.
We declare our culture to be the original, authentic and defining culture of Canada. This culture has existed through generations, centuries, millennia. It has survived repression, conquest, war. It will be here long after others have come and gone. Our way of life is the true reflection of this vast and natural territory with its bounteous game and harsh climate. It springs from the land, it is rooted in the land and can no more be torn from us than our own hearts.
It is plain for all to see that our way of life is the most common, most unifying and most powerful force in all Canada. It is shared and understood by traditional Canadians from coast to coast to coast, across all barriers of language and race. For us, it defines this country and what we are. It is the first image of Canada that comes to mind in the eyes of the world. Shamefully this goes unrecognized by the Canadian government and urban elites. Foolishly they spend their time wondering what is a Canadian? But we know. We have always known.
Now we are threatened by foreign and unnatural ideologies borne by the cosmopolitan urbanites who hold sway in Parliament. It is clear that Canadian government policy is to register and confiscate all firearms as rapidly as they can get away with it. They intend to accomplish this under a registration regime which will permit them to harass every legal gun owner in Canada with fees, restrictions, red tape, confiscation and criminal prosecution. They will do so under a burgeoning code of concocted, unjustified and confusing laws and regulations. They seek to destroy the shooting sports in Canada and they are prepared to sacrifice our reputation as a powerhouse in Olympic and international shooting competition. Truly this government should be ashamed. We are ashamed of them.
First, they will have to destroy the firearms community. Sadly, their foolish pronouncements and unjustified actions betray an alarming preparedness to do so, by whatever means, at whatever cost to the social fabric of Canada.
The Canadian government's relentless assault on firearms as a mainstay of our culture, is no less an attack on the way we live itself. Our firearms are icons of this greater struggle. What will be next? Our canoes and fishing gear? Perhaps not. But we know our right of access to waters and waterways and fishery resources is being challenged. The end will be the same.
If we allow ourselves to be deprived of the means to hunt and to shoot, no longer will we be able to exercise our right to do so. It follows that our freedom to roam and to live out on the land and draw sustenance from the land will become shattered and taken away.
Once again, native Canadians are being forced to choose between loyalty to the state and loyalty to our way of life. Why should we be forced to choose? We were born here. This is our country. There is no other. We have no place to run or hide.
Circumstances have changed. Now we are too numerous to be ruled by cultural imperialists and social engineers in Ottawa. In particular, Western Canada no longer is the sparsely populated and undeveloped territory of 1885. And things are much the same in every corner of Canada. We have had enough.
The government of Canada has set the stage for a wasteful, pointless, and needless confrontation. To their amazement, this clash is developing on a scale which even they are beginning to find unimaginable and unmanageable. But they should not be amazed.
In the end this conflict will unite or divide Canada as never before. It strikes to the very core of what we are as a country, and what we will become. We are going to be victors or victims in one of the defining moments of Canadian nationhood.
Some day, all Canada will come to regret government policy to harass, repress and disarm the people. But that is not our concern. Our problem is to create conditions so that all Canadians who share in our wonderful and traditional life, will be able to survive and prosper during this new era of repression.
The mission of the Firearms Freedom Foundation is to restore and to defend the traditional firearms rights of Canadians. We are going to achieve this by providing the leadership, the means and the information Canadians need to live the life they have always lived and the kind of life they choose to live, free of meddlesome and repressive actions and the unjust laws of government.
The Foundation is operating according to a long-term strategic concept. Our commitment is to safe, peaceful and non-violent action. But we are committed to action. If you are action-oriented, we invite your participation.
Fighting the government is not much good unless you intend to win. We accept this challenge and the attendant risks in the belief that native Canadians properly led, equipped and trained, will defend their way of life with a courage and commitment that is total and resolute. In the words of Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing".
A willingness to act is not lacking. We are the people who built this country. We are the ones who make it work. No one is going to take it away from us.
The Foundation intends to show you personally how you can carry on with your life as normally as possible and in a way that you choose, even under the most repressive anti-gun regime imaginable. Because that is where Canada is headed. If you can just hang on, the tide will turn. It has to turn. We will make it turn. In the meantime you have got to learn how to survive and see your way safely through the impending times of troubles.
If you can learn to exercise your traditional freedoms and firearms rights in the face of government repression and in spite of government denials that these rights even exist, then already you will have won a great and personal victory.
This is the essence of the Foundation's initial approach. By helping yourself you will be helping us, just as we are reaching out to help you.
As events unfold you will begin to understand the Foundation's plan and see that it is going to be effective. The part that you have to play is key to success. Without your action, none of what we say or do is worth anything to us or to you. It is up to you to pitch in, to save yourself, save your firearms, and save your freedom and way of life for your children and grandchildren. No one outside the firearms community is going to do it for you. But we can help.
The most immediate requirement and the first step in our program is to declare the firearms rights of Canadians. The reasons for doing so are clear.
Firstly, Canadians have long enjoyed their firearms rights without serious challenge. Quite naturally we have tended to take them for granted. Now for the first time in our collective memory, our rights are at serious risk of being destroyed.
Secondly, never before have Canadian firearm rights been recorded or codified. Perhaps there has never been a compelling need. Now there is no question this must be done. We need to neutralize the government's legislation which they intend to use as a weapon to strip us of our rights.
The first step is for the firearms community to counter the government's legislative attack with a solid declaration of our own. The aim is to establish an historical reference point which in law will provide a clear and comprehensive affirmation of the unbroken connection of Canadian firearms and hunting rights from the past to the present and into the future.
You have heard that Canadians do not have firearms rights; that firearms ownership in Canada is a privilege. This is a convenient and outrageous fiction. One which must be totally discounted and discredited. It is not true and has never been true. Canadians have always had firearms rights. We continue to exercise these rights today, and will do so for all time to come.
Also, there is a naive impression that rights are something which can only be granted by higher authority. Nothing could be further from the truth. History shows that fundamental rights are seldom if ever dispensed, even by benevolent authority, without a struggle on the part of those whose rights have been denied or taken away.
The rights we enjoy today are residual rights hard-fought and hard-won in bloody battles of the past. The English and American Civil Wars provide good historical examples by which Canadian rights that we enjoy today, have been won by others who have gone before. Canadian rebellions in the 19th century had a profound effect on the development of rights in this country. In 1939 to 1945 with less than half the population it has now, Canada put a million men in uniform to fight a clutch of tyrants 6000 miles away.
Now we have a sackful of tyrants in our own national capital. And if the government believes for one minute that Canadians are not capable of responding to this kind of tyranny so close to home, they are foolish students of our own history.
When it comes to the rights of modern-day Canadians, for too long we have enjoyed a free ride. Now that ride has come to a crashing halt. And we are going to learn just how rights are won and lost out there in the real world. Like everyone else on planet earth.
If we as native Canadians want to preserve and protect our traditional rights, from now on we are going to have to fight for them like everybody else.
The first action in this struggle is that your rights must be declared.
You have to declare them. No one else is going to do it for you. Which brings us to the first step in the Foundation's program.
Everyone who can obtain a copy of the Canadian Declaration of Firearms and Hunting Rights is urged to present this document to your shooting club, firearms organization, wildlife association, and provincial legislature for their consideration and endorsement. If you do, someday you will see the Parliament of Canada face up to its responsibilities and follow suit.
This declaration is only the first step. But it is a vital prerequisite for everything to follow. Please act now to bring this item forward on the agenda of your organization and your province. Their endorsement will be most effective as an instrument to repudiate the federal legislation, if it is granted officially on the same day or shortly after the government's new gun control bill receives final approval in Parliament.
Then watch for our January 1995 release. This will show you how you can protect yourself and your firearms from the government's most recent plans and actions.