In the final run-down to the passage of Bill C-68 through the Senate, the government of Canada has shown some signs of backing off the extreme rhetoric to which we have become accustomed. At the same time, a number of newsworthy and even historical events, pronouncements and political decisions have gone under-reported, unnoticed or entirely omitted by the national media. In this campaign of silence and innuendo, the stifled twang of strings pulled in the background has not gone unnoticed.
Perhaps the media and power elites believe that if they rest, we will rest. Perhaps they think the end is near, the worst is over, the deed is done.
No one should be misled. The floodgates are open to a relentless and prodigious struggle. Since there does not appear to be anything new or substantial from the government that would merit sidetracking any plans or actions, everything will proceed.
The fundamental problem for the federal government is that somehow it has managed in an almost irretractable manner to polarize the way in which Canadians view the role of firearms in our society. As a consequence, it is doubtful if anyone could simply turn back the clock to the way things were before 1991.
What is happening is that Canadians are scrambling towards two opposing ideologies - the Doctrine of Rights on the one hand, and the Doctrine of Privilege on the other. Traditionally, Canadians stood firmly in the middle, never daring to disturb the bridge. Now the bridge has collapsed. Canadians of all suasions are leaping to the cliff edge.
At this juncture, let us define "Rightist" not in terms of the old order (Left vs Right), since clearly this seems to be giving way to the new dialectic in whatever form it is taking shape. Instead, as a practical if not permanent device, let the term denote those who adhere to the Doctrine of Rights.
With the advent of C-68, Rightists see clearly that there is no place for them any more under the laws of Canada. Accordingly, they are learning to live outside the law as a means of protection from the law, while working to overturn it.
At the other end of this emerging spectrum, that portion of the firearms community choosing to pitch their tent in the camp of the Priviligists, will have to be content with whatever crumbs of privilege fall their way, and hope to elude the snares set in the law to dissuade them from the pursuit of arms. But they too will work to overturn the law. And they too will support the Rightists, for without the presence and protection of Rightists they know they will starve. Those who cannot stand the pickings, will cross to the other camp.
And what of Canadians caught in the middle? They will have to hang by a handhold on one cliff and a foothold on the other, grasping all the risks on one side while caught in all the snares of the other. They have the least chance of all, and the longest to fall. Their plaintive cries of "but we are moderates", are lost in the ridiculousness and helplessness of their overextended posture. The only real prospect for them is to scale the cliff of rights, or to let go and dangle by the snares of privilege.
The essential problem then, is that the government has blown the bridge. Their aim: to bring about circumstances that would compel Canadians to choose between two immiscible ideologies, and between the divergent courses of action that each entails. The expectation was that all Canadians would leap to one side, their side. It did not happen.
Now the bridge is gone. We need a new bridge. Whoever builds it can save us all.
Consider, though, a bridge cannot be built from the middle, there being nothing to suspend it but mindless moderation. Nor can it be anchored on ignorance in the Land of Rights or the Land of Privilege. Our engineer will need a firm grasp of fundamentals on all sides, and to begin his work from one bank or the other. One of which is solid. The other badly slumped.
The right to have and to use firearms is an ancient right, born and sustained of necessity and practicality. It is also a controversial right. Most rulers in most countries have always tended to limit or to extinguish the citizen's right to arms, and to reserve it only to themselves and the institutions of state power. It has always been the difficult and sorry lot of the common folk to defend their own right to arms, sometimes, it should be noted, at great cost. After all, who else will do it for them if the state which they mistakenly believed was the repository and protector of their rights, instead turns to destroy them?
Based on some simple observations, it seems that the modern state of Canada has never shown any sign of having departed from this well-travelled but very troubled road. For whatever reason, the government of Canada has chosen this particular moment in 1995 to shatter the social compact with the firearms community, once and for all. Having weakened the abutments with C-17 and demolished the bridge with C-68, this behaviour is no different than the other tyrannical powers in history; better than some, but worse than others.
The difficult thing to accept is that the history of both the ancient and modern world has many examples of the satisfactory alternatives to what we have now. Even within Canada, the former condition that existed prior to 1991 will soon be remembered with fondness and nostalgia on all sides.
Each one of the happy alternatives hinges on a single premise: from time to time, enlightened rulers have come to recognize or at least not to challenge or disturb the citizen's right to arms. The consequence of this kind of trusting accord has led to those great stretches of history most noted for their enduring social harmony and progress. Without necessarily recognizing our right to arms, and so long as the Canadian state saw fit to leave this right unchallenged or undisturbed (more or less), Canadian society was able to progress in this harmonious state. Now all that has changed.
Unfortunately there will always be those who see that they can benefit from attacking the rights of citizens in general and the right to arms in particular, and who, if successful, drive their nation to misery and decline, and if not, to rebellion and revolution. Free men enslaved do not good servants make; free men oppressed, a mighty foe.
History tells us that the right to arms is indeed a right, and a fundamental one at that. Those who do not see the lesson, pay the price. Even so, the pivotal question arises: when is a right a right, and when is it not so, but a privilege? The answer can be evaluated according to four criteria: 1. The historical and sociological exercise of a right 2. The value placed on a right by those claiming it 3. The articulation, proclamation or declaration of a right 4. The recognition of a right in law
By proclaiming that Canadians do not have the right to use or to own firearms, but only the privilege of doing so according to the whim or pleasure of government, Ottawa has brought into clear and burning focus the opposite and widely held view that Canadians are indeed the inheritors of a uniquely Canadian set of traditional firearms rights.
This view holds that the right to arms enjoyed by Canadians is firmly and undeniably established by our history, culture and the common law. This is especially apparent when one considers the unbroken record of everyday usage of firearms and other ballistic and bladed implements in this country, stretching back from time immemorial. Starting with the unfettered right to arms of the aboriginal tradition, and followed by the introduction of firearms in the 16th century, the resulting widespread and continuous possession and use of arms by the people of Canada since the beginning of human occupation, is obvious and undeniable.
The Canadian experience with firearms is sufficiently deep and broad that no other in the world can stand above it. This is especially true as it applies to hunting and for the defensive use of firearms against animals and animal predation, even and perhaps especially, in these modern times. Canada is a well armed nation of well armed citizens by any measure of world standards, there being an estimated 21 million firearms in this country, approximately one for every Canadian old enough to shoot. That is a fact, a fact the government is trying desperately and unconvincingly to distort, since even the estimate of 21 million may significantly understate the actual number.
All things considered, Canadian arms and the modern day use of arms in Canada exemplify to the highest degree the first criterion of rights, namely that a right must have been exercised to such an extent that its manifestations are accepted as a common and normal fixture in society, as may be determined from the historical and sociological record.
The second criterion is that a right must be deemed of sufficient value to a society that it is worth the price of even extraordinary sacrifice as might be necessary to defend it. To assert anything of lesser value as a right may not be sustainable if the assertion is seriously challenged.
It is not necessary to articulate or to proclaim a right in order to exercise or defend it, nor does it have to be recognized in law. Rights which are truly fundamental to the human condition are those which naturally tend to arouse an instinctual response in some way or other. This is one way of expressing the concept of natural law, rooted as it is in a firm appreciation of the fundamental nature of mankind.
According to the hierarchy of the psychologist Maslow, and as plainly evident in the conduct of human affairs generally, self-defence is the most basic and instinctual of all human reactions. No degree of social engineering nor any system of sanctions or compulsive controls has any hope to overcome the primal defensive reaction when circumstances or nature call it into play. If there is to be any consistency between the laws of Canada and human nature as we understand it through the science of psychology, self-defence must continue to be upheld not only as a right, but as the most basic and fundamental of all human rights.
For all practical purposes, to deny citizens the means to defend themselves, is to deny them the right to defend themselves. From this argument, the right to arms for defensive purposes might be deemed a subsidiary right, but it is an indispensable one and impossible to unravel or separate from the underlying fundamental. When tyrants set out to suppress the right to self-defence, invariably the right to arms is also suppressed as soon as the essentially inseparable nature of these two rights is encountered or recognized by the perpetrator.
Sadly but characteristically, Canadian government policy and the Canadian judicial system have become badly mired in these parallel and deeply rutted tracks. Virtually all of the victims or intended victims of assault and robbery in Canada today who see fit to physically defend themselves or others, are routinely subjected to the full weight of a crushing judicial machine. More often than not the victims themselves are charged with assault, endangerment or careless use (if not a more serious offence). These poor citizens are doubly victimized, first by criminals, then by the state. In this way the Canadian state willingly or perhaps unwittingly participates as a co-conspirator with criminals against the victims of crime.
C-68 merely raises this practice to a fine art, using the national firearms registry to track down victims who have had their guns stolen, in order to harass them or punish them with unsafe storage offences.
Face facts. Canadians are in defeat. We have lost a battle. A political battle to be sure, but one that, if we accept the outcome, is going to incur consequences for the people just as disastrous as any defeat on any battlefield in our country's history. We will be subjugated. The yoke of repression, thrown across our necks. Soon, for the sake of living your life in peace and freedom the way you have always done, you will be running the risk of offending the state, a state which we know will be inclined and empowered to hunt you down and punish you like any common criminal. And your children after you, and their children after them. Just like any subjugated people anywhere. So the outcome is the same, battle or no battle, war or no war.
Finding yourself in this situation, you will be standing in good company. Repression is nothing new in Canada. From time to time, various other groups in our history have had their right to arms infringed, and always, as the precursor to even greater repressions or dispossessions that soon followed.
On a positive note, each and every one of these historical events adds poignancy to the resilience of Canadian gun rights. Our ancestors consistently resisted disarmament, and quickly re-armed themselves following each episode. This is true of the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, the treatment of Quebec after 1760, the West after 1885, and various attempts at disarmament experienced by other groups in Canada during the 20th century. In each case, the inherent right of Canadians to possess and use firearms prevailed, in spite of the perturbations brought about by the imperial or central power.
Now, for the first time in history, all of the firearms-using minorities in Canada are at risk, and all at the same time. The sheer scale of this assault betrays the unbridled ambitions of our oppressors. How can they be stopped?
Consider the various historical groups in Canada. At one time or another each was capable to overcome the governing power on this question of arms, and all of them starting from the position of a minority in isolation or defeat.
What has been done before, can be done again. What reason is there to believe that all of the minorities acting together cannot accomplish a similar reversal of fortunes in these modern-day circumstances? In the memory of our ancestors, and for the sake of our children, we owe them nothing less.
History and tradition are trustworthy guides. A positive outcome for the firearms community in the 1990s is assured, so long as Canadians repay the trust shown by these worthy companions with equal trust and confidence in ourselves and the future. There is no fundamental reason to believe the chain of events set in motion by Bill C-17 in 1991 will have any different outcome over the long haul. In the end, the question will be decided by the sacrifice Canadians of our age are willing to make in defence of our right to arms.
Having once and for all stated that the articulation of a fundamental right is not a critical requirement to uphold it, there is still the question of rights which may not be considered fundamental to the nature of the human condition, but which through common usage, practice and custom are taken for granted by society as an assumed right.
In this case, some form of articulation such as a proclamation, declaration, charter or law, may well be critical to uphold the right. In the absence of articulation, even the most powerful of assumed rights may be vulnerable to extinction over time if it is subjected to a serious and prolonged challenge. If there is no natural or fundamental quality or connection that exists to spontaneously and continually rekindle a custom or practice, then it is indeed vulnerable to extinction, and any overlying assumed right along with it.
A clear example of this is provided by the history of aboriginal rights in Canada. Since only scant record remains of the oral articulation of many of these rights, and since little of that record is or can be recognized by the courts, by and large the only assumed aboriginal rights to survive are those captured in the treaty instruments. However, there is still to be seen outside the treaties, a phenomenon of certain fundamental rights flashing back to life within the aboriginal community, and in much of their original form. So it is with all of humanity and all Canadians.
Concerning the citizen's right to arms, whether an assumed right or a fundamental right, it should be noted that even the apes take naturally to arming themselves for attack and defence. In that we see a reflection of the primordial association as regards our own species, just as surely as the youngest of children can be observed naturally to take up a stone with great pleasure and hurl it at some target as soon as they are able. So, whether or not the right to arms is considered by any person to be a fundamental right or a deeply ingrained right that has been assumed, or even no right at all, surely it is a fundamental manifestation of the deepest origins of our human nature. Although, the clear implication is that indeed it is a fundamental right. But in any case, the practical benefit of recognizing this phenomenon as a right and articulating it, is to enhance the stability and harmony of the society that takes care to do so, by permitting people to live their lives in peace and harmony according to their nature, rather than in some state of perpetual and enforced tension contrary to it.
There is, of course, a danger in articulating a right. If the articulation prompts a challenge, and if the challenge is successful, the result is invariably negative, since the right will have been revealed as inadequately defensible and lacking the underlying strength it was thought to have or should have had.
On the other hand, if a declaration overcomes the challenge, the right that it articulates will be enhanced, something any challenger would do well to consider prior to launching a potentially unsound or counterproductive initiative.
The articulation of a right in law serves much the same purpose as any other declarative device. However, an inclusion in law, if it is reflective of the natural state of society, lends increased stability and civility to the process of protecting and administering the right. From this, society benefits from being able to moderate abuses of the right and challenges to the right, and from the obviation of extreme measures as might otherwise have been employed by antagonists to attack it, and protagonists to defend it.
The converse might also be true, and relevant to the Canadian situation. If a right is not included in law or has been denied in law, it follows that the right cannot and will not be protected or administered, at least not under the law. For as long as there is no contention, there is likewise no problem. However, should a conflict arise, laws that deny a right can only be used to repress it, and laws that fail to address the right are simply irrelevant. Under such laws, contending parties can be expected to engage each other without moderation. The consequence of this is to increase the probability and severity of contentions, and overall to decrease the harmony and stability of society.
A right may be defined in statute law, constitutional law, or under the common law. In terms of the citizen's right to arms in Canada, the amount of relevant material contained in Canadian statutes appears to be virtually undetectable; a factor that may well be part of the problem, and where a potential remedy could also be part of the solution.
This contrasts with the wealth of material found in the common law, to the extent that it is not possible to seriously treat the Canadian common law right to arms except as a dissertation on its own, and deferring to those more qualified to provide it.
Suffice to say that the citizen's right to possess and use arms has been inherited in Canada from the English common law tradition, which is shared by all the former English-speaking colonies. This tradition is a formidable bulwark of the Doctrine of Rights, and provides some of the earliest and most eloquent articulations of it.
Choosing just one of these, but an important one, Sir William Blackstone in his "Commentaries on the Laws of England" (1765), identified three essential liberties contained in the England and the Commonwealth's 1689 Bill of Rights. Blackstone maintained that so long as these three liberties remain inviolate, then the citizen will be perfectly free. The three sentinels or guarantors of freedom contained in this law and expounded by Blackstone are: 1. the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law. 2. the right to petition the king and parliament for redress of grievances. 3. the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense.
Blackstone noted that "every species of compulsive tyranny and oppression must act in opposition to one or the other of these rights".
Blackstone would be appalled at Bill C-68 as "a species of compulsive tyranny and oppression" since it grossly violates or destroys all three of the liberties he identified, and much more besides. This disturbing attack on the rights of Canadian citizens can best be understood by considering each one of Blackstone's three liberties, as follows.
There is no denying that C-68 imposes a harsh regime of mandatory minimum sentencing. One that binds the Canadian judiciary to apply inappropriate and inflexible punishments under an imposing body of passive, victimless, non-violent, non-enterprise firearms-related "crimes". Politico-cultural crimes which, not being generally recognized as crimes by the community on which they are binding, will give rise to the phenomenon of a new class of prisoner in Canada, comprised largely of prisoners of conscience, but also others who more properly could be classified as political prisoners.
Each one of these individuals, on examination of the facts of the case, will invariably prove to be a responsible and formerly productive citizen, typically incarcerated for the mandatory minimum four years for some sort of so-called crime or other.
On this point it will be argued that a new offence has been added under a third-reading amendment to C-68, giving police the option to lay a lesser charge with a punishment of $2000 and/or six months in jail. In which case, the four year minimum sentence will not be relevant. Or will it?
It should be pointed out that in order to qualify for the lighter sentence, the accused will be required to put forward the contrivance that he "forgot" to register his gun or guns. So what we have is a law for cynics, designed to degrade people who for the most part will be acting on principle, requiring of them to tell a lie if they want to save their skins.
Not only that, but it appears there will be little or no distinction made between the grounds or facts of a case to justify the laying of either the lesser or greater charge. The only real difference being, the lie itself. Whether or not the lie is contrived, in the end it must be acceded to by the police and the Crown, or else the greater offence can be invoked. This gives authorities considerable leeway to decide which charge to lay and therefore which punishment will apply, irrespective of the judiciary or the facts of the case. After all, regardless of the other circumstances, how does one prove that he did not intentionally neglect to register a gun, in a case, for example, where the only fact in law is that he did not register it?
But it does not end there. The other aspect to the lighter charge will be the ability of police, again quite arbitrarily, to coerce the full cooperation of an accused, to name names, to divulge the location of firearms, or any other information they might wish to extract. This of course, makes for a doubly cynical law based not only on lies, but also blackmail. This will do nothing to set a course away from the atmosphere of plea negotiation about which there has been so much sanctimony from the federal government. Rather, the practice will become more deeply ingrained.
Of those incarcerated, each prisoner will occupy the berth of some other parasitic or predatory criminal who most likely will not have been subject to minimum sentencing, and who therefore will be left or let free to indulge in his usual havoc on the streets of Canada. The alternative being, the development of a burgeoning and horrendously expensive prison industry in Canada to accommodate them all. What is the plan? More prisons? Or more criminals on the streets? The government must know. Which is the answer?
It does not end there. Under normal circumstances, taxpayers are willing to underwrite the cost of incarceration in an effort to cut society's losses, by minimizing the damage criminals would otherwise inflict on the streets. By contrast, under C-68, Canadian taxpayers will be paying to lock up honest and otherwise productive citizens who have done no damage anywhere nor inflicted any harm to anyone and doubtless never would.
In exchange for this spiteful privilege, taxpayers can expect to pay twice over, and then some. First, there is the direct cost of incarceration (minimum $200,000 for four years). Then, the lost economic output of formerly employed and productive citizens. To this must be added welfare costs for the family during the period of incarceration. Lastly, the long- term economic cost associated with damaged careers and any life-long or post-release productivity decrement. This speaks nothing of the social damage to families or any number of concerns that relate to the overall good of society.
One has to wonder, what great and noble purpose will be served to justify these enormous public expenditures and such wastage in human lives? How can policies that target the peaceful and productive members of society benefit the prosperity of the nation? Is this the true face of C-68? If so, it is the hideous visage of government gone mad.
In addition to attacking the last vestige of Canadian property rights that remains under the common law (specifically the right of citizens to retain even personal belongings and personal effects without fear of government confiscation), C-68 also acts to destroy the right of citizens to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. It then goes on to make a criminal offence of not assisting the police in incriminating oneself, the implication being that the right to remain silent which Canadians formerly enjoyed has now been taken away. The new powers of search and seizure, though amended, are still far too broad and without justification, except in the context of a police state.
C-68 also confers wide and sweepingly corrupt powers which allow the government to exempt from the law all those whom it chooses to exempt. It also confers on the federal cabinet new powers to change the laws of Canada overnight - and change them back again if the cabinet so desires. Without reference to Parliament.
This raises the question, how can Canadian courts have any hope to keep up and administer laws that can be changed so quickly and in such an arbitrary, undemocratic and unconstrained manner? Where is the free course of justice in this? What doubt can there be that C-68 is going to devastate the first of the fundamental guarantors of the liberty of Canadians, namely, the regular administration and free course of justice?
C-68 goes on to render the making of police powers and the making of firearms law into an arbitrary process beyond the control of Parliament. Henceforth, Canadian firearms law will fall exclusively under the power and purview of the federal cabinet, and chiefly the Minister of Justice. C-68 appears not to require or even necessarily to permit Parliament to approve or disallow anything with respect to firearms law or the other areas of law that the Act alters. In this way, the Canadian Parliament has allowed itself to become so pathetically insipid that it cannot even maintain the facade of a rubber-stamp chamber. There is virtually nothing left concerning firearms law that they are permitted to rubber-stamp.
When he articulated his second liberty, it is doubtful that Blackstone could have had in mind such a toothless, gum-smacking Parliament as the one we have today. What point is there for the firearms community to petition a Parliament that has so willingly ceded all of its powers concerning the very subject of their grievance?
In truth then, the only option is to petition the king. And we know who that is. We are also aware of the disdain with which he and his minions has dismissed all previous petitions.
To whom then, shall you hand your petition?
Quite simply, there is no longer any person or office that is left in the structure of government in Canada who realistically could do anything with a petition of arms, since all of them are now undemocratic and institutionally hostile under law, or lacking in power and jurisdiction.
So it is that Blackstone's second sentinel of liberty has been extinguished by the articles of C-68.
The destruction of the third sentinel of liberty is the intent of C-68, and the demise of this liberty under the statutes of Canada goes without saying.
Those who might believe Canada is still a democracy, should be asked to explain how it could make any difference any more who is elected to Parliament or how often we hold elections to Parliament when that body has allowed itself to be stripped of virtually all powers relating to one of the most fundamental questions in any society, namely, who will have their fingers on the triggers of the nation?
To quote Mao Zedong, "Power grows from the barrel of a gun". This is well known, and true. From now on in Canada unless these things are stopped, the principle and pre-eminent source of raw power and brute force to be found in any modern state, will be concentrated almost exclusively in the hands of two men. The House of Commons, after all, has written itself out of the picture.
The question then, is what controls might still exist to limit the power of these dictators, or what checks and balances might still exist to oppose the abuse of this awesome power, which is now so concentrated that it is scarcely possible to imagine how it could be any more so.
The Senate. What will they do? What can they do?
Sadly, the initial and near total support of the Senate for C-68, the willingness of the Senate majority leader to rubber-stamp that Act, the former lack of interest demonstrated by the Senators, and now the sudden onslaught of interest, all indicate an agenda of political opportunism.
After all, the Senate is dominated by the same political party that gave us C-17, which all Senators unanimously approved. Almost all of today's Senators are the same ones now as then. Who will benefit from this Senate activity? If not the Conservatives, resurrected? To do what? Betray the firearms community once again? If not the Liberals, to split the opposition vote in the next election? And to the extent that happens, who will be most badly damaged if not the firearms community? (The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.)
It would be hypocrisy to profess the cause of democracy while at the same time requesting the unelected and privileged Senate elite, appointed for life by the Prime Minister, to thwart the will of the elected Lower House. On the other hand, it is reasonable and legitimate in the Canadian system to request the Senate to impose whatever delay they can, and to use the occasion to raise the profile of our opposition.
The supreme danger in this dalliance with the Senate is the peril of compromise. Unfortunately, a compromise of C-68 is the best that we can expect from that chambre. The traditional and moral authority of the Senate is limited to the power to delay the passage of legislation, and the right to propose amendments, which ultimately do not have to be accepted by the House of Commons.
An acceptable compromise, however, is nowhere to be found in C-68 from the first page to the last, in the Senate or elsewhere. There is not a firearms organization in Canada with a legitimate mandate to negotiate a C- 68 compromise. Any organization that tries would be roundly condemned by their own community.
Why?
Consider. The firearms community is on record as having opposed C-17. That odious legislation was utterly rejected and condemned by gun owners. Among other things, C-17 can be used to impose universal gun registration just as surely as C-68, if that is what the government wants (and they do). Therein lies the trap. If gun owners agree to an accord that accepts any part of C-68, implicitly they will be agreeing to all of C-17.
Do not forget C-17. Do not forget the injustice of C-17. C-17 with its undemocratic OIC powers and powers of universal registration, can be used very well to set up the firearms community for punitive restrictions, selective or universal confiscation, or whatever else the government has in mind. That includes the ease with which C-17 has paved the way for incrementally minor but devastating legislation at any time in our future.
Therefore, the message to government must continue to be that there can be no meaningful negotiation until our agenda is on the table. That agenda includes C-17. No negotiation? No compromise.
Will the courts provide a remedy? Perhaps. But until and unless that happens, it is fair to say as a summation of fact, that before 1995 passes, Canada will have become a dictatorship of arms under the Prime Minister of Canada, with total power over all the arms of Canada delegated into the hands of his lieutenant the Minister of Justice. The House of Commons has quit the game. The Senate, have they ever done anything that was not harmful to our community? The courts? They could be a long time coming, and must now contend with a new and powerful form of government that can move with lightening speed to stay ahead of any court.
Still, many Canadians seem to find this situation acceptable, in the belief that only the firearms community will be subject to the dictatorship. This is the train of thought which seems to be reflected by the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and some others. They could not be more wrong.
Soon the power of this dictatorship will have only to manoeuvre whatever opposition they encounter into a minority position of some sort or other (we are all members of at least one minority). As the police information they collect on us individually and collectively increases (for example, the FPC-generated information on millions of law-abiding citizens) they will be able to better analyze and categorize the opposition into ever more vulnerable minority groups, from which to pick the optimum target of the month.
The next logical stage will be to isolate and ostracize the target group individually and collectively via information-age media manipulation of the public, and through the intimidation of resistive individuals under harsh and repressive laws; new laws patterned after the ugly precedent established by C-68.
Once they have conditioned the public and manoeuvred the target into an inferior position, our info-age dictators will be free to apply whatever coercive or compulsive force, armed or otherwise, as may be necessary to quash the target. And then move on to the next target. The outcome, of course, being publicly justified on the basis of poll results accurate to 4 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
This evolving form of technology-based divide-and-conquer is just one of the many faces of neo-authoritarianism that is gaining ground in the information age. There is no doubt that information technology is intricately and intimately tied to the C-68 regime. In fact, this technology is one of the main reasons put forward by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police to justify the plans for a national firearms registry, which ten years ago they opposed. The rationale to do it being, that it can now be done. Technology versus humanity; who shall be master, who the slave?
Close on the heels of the current assault on gun rights, another attack is looming on our freedom of speech. First, there is the tightening of hate laws. Then there is the orchestrated campaign by police and authorities to turn public opinion in favour of government controls over the Internet. Even the least of incidents and the most tenuous of connections between crime and the Internet is being played up, exaggerated, or for all we know, fabricated. All of it so reminiscent of tactics employed in the early days of the gun debate. The feeling of deja vu is hard to dispel.
Not least, there is the push towards a national DNA registry. Where have we seen the model for this attack on the privacy of Canadians, if not the FPC-generated national police registry of millions of law-abiding gun owners? Once it is legal for police to keep files on the law-abiding, how do you stop the system from growing? A system already intended to cover one-third or more of all Canadians, young and old alike? How long do you think it will be until files on the remaining segments of the population start showing up? How hard (or rather, how easy) do you think that is going to be? Even without the DNA aspect, this technology-based national police registry of law-abiding citizens presents the most dangerous and abusive threat to the freedom of any nation in all of history.
It is in this context that we must view the pressure to reopen the debate on capital punishment. As if anyone should want the kind of power-hungry government that is developing in Canada to get its hands on the most absolute power of all. Against whom do you think state-sanctioned killing will be used, if not to terrorize the population in general and the resistance in particular, just like anywhere else it exits in this world? This is an expensive panacea. Like gun control, it will do nothing to relieve crime, nothing for the cause of rights, and everything to promote the rule of state terror. Given the circumstances in Canada today, you should put yourself in the shoes of Guillotine. Perhaps you might reconsider your position just as surely as did he at his grisly end.
Yes, our struggle is about guns. But mostly, it is about freedom and a whole lot of other things, too. Right now the new-age dictators have turned their talents and technology broadside against the firearms community. Fortunately for Canadians, that community has acquired technology of its own, and has been able to deny the government an easy victory. They are the first minority in this country to be technologically targeted that we know of, and the first that has been able to put up an effective resistance. The result has been to arouse the public and to turn this fight for freedom into a full-blown public issue. Ultimately, it is an issue that will touch the life of every Canadian for better or for worse, and in a very personal way.
It is not difficult to see that the new form of info-age government emerging in Ottawa abhors the Doctrine of Rights, especially but not exclusively as it applies to the free and private ownership of firearms. This new regime, still in its larval stage, has taken to feeding voraciously on the rights of citizens and to subsume all the power it can tear away. When will the feasting end? What manner of beast will emerge? Quite rightly, we should fear the worst if this thing is left to grow on its own unwatched and unchecked.
How Canadians in general and how the firearms community in particular learn to deal with these new forms of information and media-based government, and our success in finding ways to combat and contain the abuses and excesses, is going to decide what kind of country and what kind of government Canadians are going to end up with for a very long time to come.
Of course, there are those who still feel secure in our dwindling democracy, not grasping how anyone could seriously speak of tyranny and despotism in a country such as ours. After all, our leaders are democratically elected, are they not?
Yes they are. But that is only partly true, and barely so. It overlooks that no one in Canada elected the Prime Minister to his high office or the Minister of Justice, except the few Canadians in their own ridings. It also overlooks the fact that Il Duce, the Fuehrer, Ferdinand Marcos and many others in history all had more substantial democratic legitimacy than our own leaders prior to things going off the rails in their countries, and noting that things have started to go awry in our own.
If it walks like a tyrant, talks like a tyrant, and does the things tyrants are supposed to do, what else can it be, if not something with at least the mentality and the outlook of a tyrant? Look at what these men are saying, look at what they have already done and look at what they intend to do.
Through it all, one thing is clear. It is no accident that the threat to Canadian democracy is linked to an all-out assault on the right of Canadians to have and to use arms. There is an inseparable link between these phenomena, so clearly understood by Blackstone 200 years ago: tyranny cannot prevail against an armed and responsible citizenry. Before the tyrants come, the guns have got to go and they are the first to be taken.
Gun rights are the miner's canary to all others. In Canada, our canary just died. We need a new canary, and we need to understand what killed the old one before it starts killing us.
(to be continued July 1995: Part 2 of 3 - THE DOCTRINE OF PRIVILEGE)