Just listen to the spin being put on gun registration these days: a national firearms registry is nothing unusual or out of the ordinary, we are led to believe. After all, we register our pets, our cars, our marriages - why not our guns? The objective, we are told, is to enable police to return all of those stolen firearms which they are always trying so hard to put in our hands, to all of the nice gun owners about whom they care so much.
Not only that, registration will enable the police to break and enter our homes in greater safety and security, if only they know who has all the guns. And if they do take our guns, that is why police want registration: so they will know exactly where to return them after they steal them. Lose them? Lose the paperwork? Melt them down? Never! (We're sorry, your guns got melted - it was a typo). And if you dare to avoid all this BY NOT REGISTERING YOUR GUNS, then police definitely will want to melt them down, and maybe fry you too.
This is the perfect world of the police living in a police state. It is also the chilling world of any citizenry so foolish to permit the machinery of police-state controls to gain a foothold in their country.
These registration analogies are phony. If you choose not to register your dog, it might cost you a small fine if the dog runs away and ends up in the pound. At worst your dog could be destroyed. But at least you will not be liable to conviction and imprisonment for a registration offence under the Criminal Code of Canada (CCC). You have heard, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people". But have you ever heard, "Dogs don't bite people, people bite people"? Of course not. The situations are not analogous. Registration programs for cats, dogs, cars, married couples and guns each have their own distinctive purpose, objectives and justification. Each comes under the jurisdiction of differing levels of government under differing statutes or different sections of statutes. What then, provides the basis for analogy?
Registration of dogs, cars and marriages is regulated primarily under provincial statute or municipal by-laws. Firearms, under the Criminal Code of Canada. And the Prime Minister and his cabinet and the Chiefs of Police of Canada are not running about the country threatening to put down every dog and cat, to confiscate and melt down all the cars, or to break up every last living marriage they can get their hands on.
The analogies with which we have been served are misleading and superficial. They are designed to conceal fact and obscure the truth. Historically, the only practical, proven and forthright purpose for gun registration has been to support confiscation. The national and international record consistently upholds that registration is a prerequisite for the confiscation that invariably follows. History will show that the Canadian government some time ago adopted a policy to institutionalize a national program of firearms confiscation. The policy objective is to reduce to an absolute minimum the number of guns and gun owners in Canada, and to position the government to eliminate them altogether when the opportunity presents.
Absolutely everything we have seen and heard from the federal government is consistent with this policy. Already confiscations have taken place. They are happening now under C-17. And from now on they will continue to happen so long as the firearms community tolerates a gun registration regime in this country. Make no mistake. Confiscation is at the heart of everything the government is doing. What other practical or useful purpose could justify the enormous cost and all the attendant problems associated with a national gun registry, which we know will run into hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in start-up costs alone?
If people want to persist with these faulty analogies, they should be challenged to complete them. Are these people prepared to support demands to remove firearms legislation from the CCC and place it under provincial statutes? As we do for cars? Are they prepared to recognize the property rights of Canadians in the Constitution of Canada so that never again can the Prime Minister and his cabinet threaten the legally-owned property of law-abiding citizens? Or can we expect the Justice Minister any day now to start attacking our wives, our cars and our cats?
If these people were honestly prepared to work point-by-point towards the establishment of complete and meaningful equivalencies, then perhaps we could begin to talk in some truly analogous manner about the subject of gun registration.
Who is supposed to benefit from registration? The police? Who are the people who will be buried under mounds of paper or chained to computer desks? Who is going to be at risk from the false sense of security provided by an erroneous and chronically out-of-date registry? Who will be compelled by politicians to rely on a system which by definition and design is going to record only the diminishing percentage of legal guns in this country? While the illegal trade mushrooms under black market incentives created by the same politicians? Who is going to suffer as much as anyone the consequence of misguided government policy? Who more than anyone will be bound to enforce a body of perverted law under the direction of vindictive chiefs and fanatic politicians? Who will be duty-bound to act without provocation against friends and neighbours and whole new segments of their own community?
And what about the tax-paying public? Who government and the media are misleading, and from whom information is being suppressed, and who do not yet have any idea where this government is leading Canada and Canadians? Will registration make society more secure or less secure than it is now? Can it be true that "...registration may not work, but at least it won't do any harm"? Really? Or is it just possible that only criminals, grandstanding politicians, and the fanatic fringes have anything to gain from a gun-running registration regime? Did not Prohibition of the 1930's have any lessons for today? Has our government learned nothing from the tobacco wars?
Lastly, what if anything is left for law-abiding gun owners? Has anyone thought to ask them whether or not they want or need this expensive service? To what extent do you think gun owners will choose to abide by registration, if the mechanisms and controls to enforce it have been designed to be so intrusive and so vindictive and so punitive, that law-abiding citizens will be forced to live like registered criminals? Or is lawlessness the only honourable option Canada is going to leave open?
It has been said that a national registry of all firearms as planned by the Liberal government of Jean Chretien, will be the beginning of the end of legal gun ownership in Canada. But it is not the beginning of the end. It is the end. To see why requires an understanding of the peculiarities of Canadian law.
The first point you should note in Canada is that there is no specific constitutional protection of your right to ownership of the property in your possession. Not your guns; not your car; not your land; not even the house you live in. The only protection for your property rights stems from the Canadian inheritance of British common law, and the manner in which the common law has developed in Canada over the past century or so. But this has been a century punctuated with massive government confiscations against various groups in Canada. One of the common characteristics of all these group has been strict adherence to the laws of Canada. But that did not in any way save them from the vengeful and vicious actions of the Canadian government, taken for political but otherwise insubstantive reasons.
Canadians are still living with the accumulated problems created by these shameful confiscations. Now, the law is being subverted once again to give the Canadian government even greater powers over the property and lives of Canadians than it has ever had before. At the same time the government continues to strip Canadians of the rights and residual legal means which we might have had to protect ourselves against these powers.
Unseen and unnoticed by the majority of Canadians, the major portion of property protections which formerly we enjoyed under the common law, have been voided under new laws passed by the Parliament in Ottawa. Most damaging was the passage of Bill C-17 in 1991 under Justice Minister Kim Campbell and the now-defunct Progressive Conservatives.
C-17 ceded to the government of Canada without the need for any further submission to the will of Parliament, the power to prohibit, confiscate, seize and destroy without compensation, firearms or ANY OTHER ITEMS OR CLASS OF ITEMS IN THE POSSESSION OF PRIVATE CITIZENS, so long as the government of Canada can JUSTIFY TO ITSELF that the item or items in question relate in some way to some issue of public safety or security which the government might imagine to exist.
Although C-17 contains certain limitations to the powers it creates, the government has developed such an appetite and ability to bend the law to overcome these obstacles, that most of the limitations in C-17 have been revealed as no more than a minor nuisance to the growth and implementation of the government's confiscation agenda.
Confiscations and prohibitions under C-17 can take effect on 30 days notice after approval of an Order-in-Council (OIC) by the federal cabinet.
Parliamentary committees may review the OIC, but seldom is any public comment given.
There is no vote in Parliament on the OIC.
C-17 is a piece of dangerous enabling legislation which permits faceless government bureaucrats and regulators to create and modify Canadian criminal law on the fly, then to have it rubber-stamped by the federal cabinet using the OIC as a backdoor to bypass the democratic process.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Canadian firearms owners, as well as untold thousands of owners of other equipment and even common household objects and materials, unknowingly have been criminalized by these secretive procedures. Neither they nor the Canadian public have been advised by any general public government announcement or general public government information program to let them know the criminal law has been changed. Why? Because the federal government wants to deflect public attention from these undemocratic OIC procedures. They like them. They want them. They use them. And they want to conceal the ease and secrecy with which OICs have been abused with increasing regularity by successive Canadian governments.
With a bit of bending and pushing to the limits of the law, why did not the government squeeze C-17 for all it is worth? C-17 gives them the power to authorize themselves to restrict and register every single legally-owned gun in Canada, without any need to introduce new legislation. The Canadian government already has the power to register all guns. Why have they not used it? If registration is the solution to our problems as the government so emphatically claims, why are they so firmly insistent that we need new legislation?
The reason which we have not been told but which the government certainly knows, is that while they are steering a course for registration, confiscation is the destination they have set.
How so? Consider: C-17 already permits the banning and confiscation of all guns except those "commonly used for sporting or hunting purposes." This protection for sporting arms now is going to be revoked under the new law. But even if somehow it is re-instated, the ease and speed with which this kind of legal "guarantee" can be revoked, has been demonstrated with breathtaking clarity.
But this government is so arrogant that they are not even trying to conceal their agenda. They are leaving that job to us. We are the ones to delude ourselves. We look but do not see. What we should see is a government firmly held in the grasp of a radical ruling clique. What should be obvious to us is a government which has decided it is not enough to register all of our guns WHICH IT ALREADY HAS THE POWER TO DO. In clear and burning focus should stand the image of a federal government which is not in any way satisfied with the extensive powers it already has TO CONFISCATE THE MANY GUNS WHICH IT ALREADY CAN under existing laws.
What we should see are zealots and vandals driving hard against all argument and reason to acquire the absolute power to ban and confiscate every single gun in the country. It is not enough for them to register all of our guns. They can do that now. It is not enough to confiscate even more of our guns. They can do that now, too. They want them all. And if they get a chance, they will take them. And they are not going to wait for a chance, they are going to make it happen. And that is why we are going to have a new law. And that is why these dangerous men are bulling ahead without care or concern for the cost or misery they are going to dump on the heads of Canadians along the way.
To avoid this kind of difficulty, the last government under the Conservatives intended to follow a policy of quiet, creeping registration under C-17. The idea was to use OICs frequently and incrementally to tighten the screws on gun owners without causing public alarm.
The plan failed. The public was alarmed. As the full extent and future impact of C-17 became clear to the grassroots firearms community, the reaction was swift and unexpected. Early in 1994, new firearms advocacy groups sprang to life all across Canada. At the same time, the new Liberal government, in the grips of the latest clutch of anti-gun ideologues, gave vent to its most fanatical inclinations and raised the spectre of total prohibition of firearms in Canada. From these rash and revealing statements by the most senior politicians in Canada, the battle lines were drawn. For the first time in Canadian history, the entire firearms community was joined in common cause to halt and reverse the disturbing long-term trends in Canadian firearms policy.
Much of the credit for this achievement goes to the troika of Prime Minster Jean Chretien, Justice Minister Allan Rock and Chairman of the Justice Committee of the House of Commons, Warren Allmand. This is the select team of anti-gun politicians Chretien has put in place specifically to ramrod his personal and deeply held anti-gun agenda.
Ominously, the first priority in the legislation that will come into effect in 1996 with a deadline of 1 January 2001, will be the universal police registration of all firearms owners. Guns come later (deadline 1 January 2003). What is the priority against which this legislation is directed? Guns? Or law-abiding citizens? What does the priority to register first the people, then the guns, say about the mentality of those who frame the law? In what light do they view the citizens of this country? Are we are peasants? Or serfs? Or maybe we are just slaves.
Even without new legislation, criminal records keeping on law- abiding citizens has become deeply ingrained in Canada. The administrative precedence for police to create and keep track of criminal records-like information on the law-abiding was greatly advanced when the government and police introduced the new magnetic strip Firearms Acquisition Certificate in 1992. There is no question this new type of FAC was introduced without any clear foundation in law. Now it is being used to press the limits of the law and even to overstep the law, in clear violation of the Privacy Act and other statutes which Canadians might have supposed were there to protect us.
But not even all of this bending and breaking of the law is enough to slake the government's thirst for power and control. The FAC is not required by all gun owners. Now the government is driving to close the net. Quite openly they propose to introduce a new Firearms Possession Certificate to legitimize the practice of keeping criminal records-like files on the law-abiding. By means of the FPC, police files are going to be opened on every single one of the millions of legal gun owners in Canada. What was deplored in East Germany is praised in Ottawa.
Why is the government of Canada making such an all-out effort to put in place the machinery for a system of police-state controls over the lives of millions of law-abiding citizens? The most logical explanation is that the government has known all along that its own anti-gun agenda is so vindictive and so repressive, that gun owners would not willingly comply and therefore cannot be left as free citizens of a free country. Our government must know that it is not possible to destroy the guns of all Canadians, without destroying the rights and freedoms of all Canadians. But that is the blueprint we have seen. What we have is a national government which believes the only justification they need is the firm conviction of their own utopian dream. And they truly expect Canadians to submit trustingly, even though our pathetic Constitution resembles more and more the sham of the Soviet Union.
It is clear the Canadian government sees all gun owners as criminals and intends to treat them as such. It is also clear this government is blind to any of the moral or social obstacles that might be in its path. It is also clear the Canadian public is in for a big surprise. What other millions are going to suffer the next time this or some future government acts to impose its burning social vision? Against a population soon to be stripped of its legal and physical defences?
What the government has not faced is the possibility that in any case, large numbers of gun owners may not comply. And the more repressive they make their regime, the greater will be the numbers who choose to operate outside the law. Especially as more and more citizens conclude that resistance and non-compliance represent the best and perhaps the only way to protect themselves and their families from government scrutiny, harassment, restrictions, fees, confiscation, home invasion, arrest and prosecution.
After all, if you are the one who is not a registered gun owner, and if you are the one who has not registered any of your guns, and if the police have records for only the law-abiding who did register and who are registered, who are the police going to go after? Answer: They can only go after the people they know about. And since you are the one they don't know about, and since the focus of the existing and proposed legislation clearly and unmistakably is directed to reduce or to eliminate the numbers of legal gun owners (who are all registered), it's not hard to figure out who that will be.
So the crux of the matter is registration. Registration is the linchpin holding together the entire government strategy. If registration fails, the goal to confiscate and prohibit firearms in Canada cannot be achieved. The government and police know this and we know it. It's time everyone stopped dancing around the issue.
The day you register your guns, who is going to own them? You? Or the government? Maybe you already have some registered guns. If so, you might want to give this Canadian proverb a bit of thought:
Fool me twice, shame on me.
If I sell you something, say a rifle, you own that rifle. You can do pretty much what you want with it. Resell it. Modify it. Improve it. Fix it up. Destroy it. Dispose of it. Give it away. And you can shoot with it, pretty much whenever and wherever you want. You are the owner.
But if I lend you that rifle, things are not the same. As lender, I am the one to set terms and conditions. Conditions by which you must abide or I terminate the lease. Conditions such as when and where you can shoot. How often you shoot. How many rounds you can shoot. Rental fees. Maintenance requirements. Safety inspections. Etc. And if you don't abide by my conditions, I take back my rifle. I might even assess damages for contract violations. I am the owner.
Right now, you own your unregistered guns. That is a fact. And because you own them and the government doesn't officially know you have them, the government cannot easily or legally assume the powers of a lender.
But what happens the day you register? Who owns your guns now?
In Canada today, for all intents and purposes, a gun becomes sole property of the Government of Canada the moment it is registered. The government might say you own it. And you can pretend you own it. But you won't own it any more.
Why?
Because in Canada, there is not one scrap of legislation anywhere that recognizes your firearm ownership rights. On the other hand, the law under C-17 and the proposed legislation allows the government at any time to enforce its own claim of ownership to any or all of the registered guns in your possession, and make it stick.
So, if the law does not say anything about you owning your registered guns, and if the law says that the government can impose virtually unlimited conditions on this property, and if the law says that they can declare and enforce their ownership of this property any time they want, who is the owner? You or them? Go figure.
In this light, C-17 and the new legislation represent an open-ended, one-sided rental contract applicable to all registered guns in Canada. A compulsory, monopolistic contract so totally arbitrary, unfair and one-sided no renter would ever accept it, given a choice.
The basic problem is the unlimited potential under Canadian law for the government to expand its power against gun owners. There is nothing to stop it. This defect has been exploited relentlessly and vindictively and without justification by successive governments in Ottawa for the past 25 years. Now we have reached the end. Public trust has been shattered. Now, it is hard to see how the government can ever hope to sell registration to the only people who could make it work.
The major weapon in the government's arsenal is one they inherited from their predecessors. They are shaping the law to subject registered gun owners to "the death of a thousand cuts". The government intends to impose more and more restrictions and more and more conditions on registered owners as time goes on. Until registered owners give up and turn in their guns to be destroyed.
Some of the conditions and restrictions registered owners will face under this policy of confiscation-by-harassment are:
How could this happen?
Because these guns were registered. Because in the new Canada, the presence of any registered firearm in your home, even a single one, or the issuance of a Firearms Possession Certificate in your name or in the name of any person in your household, can and will be used by the government and police to claim reasonable and probable cause to do a lot of things they can't do now. And because there is no effective or countervailing gun or property ownership legislation in Canada to stop them.
Sooner or later, this government or the next is going to impose yearly fees on each and every one of your registered guns. Just like any other lender. How's that for annual rental charges?
On the other hand, if you decide NOT to register your guns, you can continue to use them and store them safely underground, or covertly elsewhere. The information you need to do this is available. Face facts: every single one of us is going to have to learn to live with an empty gun rack at home.
Because if you register your guns, you are going to end up with an empty rack anyway. But not on your terms. At first, you may be able to gaze at a diminishing remnant of your former possessions; a dwindling collection of useless trophies locked and bolted to the wall. Maybe for a time, you will be able to stare at them and dream of old freedoms and old glories. Just like any gun collector in Canada today. Just ask one what it's like. Because that is where the registered owners are headed. Until the burden of it all is lifted by the government's hand if not their own.
Still think you are going to "own" your guns once they are registered? Then go register.
But consider. The government desperately wants you to believe the chances you need guns to protect your home are about 0%. At the same time the government's radical behaviour should convince you the chances are 100% you are going to lose your guns to the government, if you register.
So let's take the government at their word. Let's pretend you don't need guns in the home and let's believe our senior government leaders when they proclaim, "...only soldiers and police should have firearms in this country". And let's remember the shameful confiscations of the past and the massive prohibition program they have announced. Under these circumstances, no one should be surprised if you put your guns in the ground and refuse to register. By the government's own words and actions, you are better off taking your chances with criminals in the street than to face certain thievery by the criminals in Ottawa.