As the final passage of C-68 hoves into view, the focus of priorities has to shift from politics to survival. If the firearms community does not learn to survive free and clear of the controls of government, there will be no one left to carry on except those who suit the purpose of government, which is to undermine our community, destroy our freedom, and eliminate the natural and traditional way of life in Canada.
The greatest weakness of this government or any government is the difficulty to enforce unpopular and oppressive laws against men who value freedom above all. It is our role to exploit that weakness. Whether or not you join in this enterprise will determine whether or not you and the members of your gun organization will outlast the oppressive C-68 regime.
There can be little doubt that many leaders and their organizations are going to fade and falter under the strain of C-68. It is easy to see that now. That is what the federal government wants, and intends. Their objective, through legislation and propaganda, is to establish a legal framework and a social climate in Canada that will openly expose your gun club and your members to the machinations of every petty tyrant and self- serving ideologue in the community, be it a provincial premier, his cabinet, the legislature, a mayor, city council, the police, a business or business association, community groups, or any number of federal, provincial, or local bureaucrats and regulatory agencies.
What is most unfortunate is that conventional gun organizations which are successfully targeted in this way and which are not adequately prepared, may well take down the majority of their members when they fall. Such a loss will have an impact far greater than the demise of the organizations themselves.
Take for example a handgun club shut down by the federal government, or which has had its range closed by some other authority. In this instance, members would no longer be able to engage in legitimate target practice without access to a legitimate range. This would force them to forfeit the only readily obtainable justification (target practice) still allowed under C-68 by which ordinary citizens can retain a permit. This would place the government in the position, not unintentional, to revoke or to refuse the renewal of permits to members. In this way, all of the registered handguns of all members could be confiscated within 5 years at the most, with few or no exceptions.
If you do not take precautions to develop a plan for your members to survive this eventuality, you could end up with a gunless and clubless gun club. If that happens, the majority of your members if not all of them, will have been successfully removed from the community of shooting Canadians.
The leadership in your gun organization can prevent this kind of outcome by living up to their responsibility to provide members with the information they need concerning the viable and safe alternatives to confiscation and capitulation.
Any gun group which has not by now begun to inform the general membership how to survive this sort of occurrence, should be considered in the category of organizations at high risk of failure. If you leave your organization weak and vulnerable, your group will be one of the first targets and easiest to destroy, since the government will be prompted to move quickly before you can properly prepare your organization and your members.
One way or another, on the day C-68 passes into law, your organization has got to be positioned to confront the government with a properly informed, properly trained, and well equipped membership. The vehicle to do this is the leadership of your organization. Most groups have everything necessary to pull it together. Where is your leadership on this issue? Who will follow them?
There is convincing evidence the leadership is there. But it might also be true that many Canadians have to lose a lot more than they already have, before they are fully prepared to accept the kind of leadership that is needed to survive and overcome C-17 and C-68. Perhaps the sound of the first to fall will awaken others. We are patient. But how many have to fall needlessly?
Just as your leaders need the wisdom and wherewithal to harden the shell around their leadership, your organization itself has to be hardened against the invasive power of government. This article is about some of the things that you can do to achieve this end.
As a member, you should consider approaching your organization and asking them to provide, or at least to describe, the strategic estimate or plan for your group.
In many cases, you should not be surprised to find there is no estimate. No estimate, and no plan. If that is true, this is a failure of leadership, and cannot be blamed on the members.
Whether or not you get to see such a plan or at least to ascertain that one exists, the following questions can and should be asked:
QUESTION 1. What is the strategic estimate or plan?
QUESTION 2. What is the strategic objective?
QUESTION 3. What is the political objective?
QUESTION 4. What is the legal objective?
QUESTION 5. What is the operational objective?
If the answer is "yes" to all of the above, your organization has a big problem with an incoherent or unfocused strategy. If the answer is "no" to all of the above, then your group doesn't have a plan at all.
You will note that a strategic objective has not been suggested. Selection of the overarching objective for your gun organization is too critical to be dealt with superficially. It has got to be the product of a very specific, very deliberate and analytical process.
It used to be that gun organizations could be run effectively by people with experience in civic politics or high school homecoming organizing committees. Not any more. Many leaders are out of their depth and face a situation for which their life's experience has left them poorly prepared. Because of this deficiency, you have suffered defeat after defeat. This was to be expected. One has only to look at the blanket exemption won by the defiant and strategically-minded leaders of our aboriginal peoples to realize it did not have to turn out this way for the others.
If your organization does not have a structured and detailed strategy, it is a sure sign that you do not have a strategic planning capability. If that is true, you had better get one. If you don't know how to conduct strategic planning, if you are not conversant with the strategic estimate procedure, then go out and bring into your leadership people who do. For example, most military and ex-military with command experience and staff college training can do this sort of thing standing on their head. Some may already be your members. Ask around, and you are sure to recruit some of this kind of talent from one source or another.
Hot or cold, the Canadian firearms community is engaged in an all-out war of survival. You can no more wage a strategic campaign without strategists or engage in tactics without tacticians, than to perform surgery without surgeons. It is now crucial to the continued existence of your organization and maybe to your personal survival as a shooter, for the leadership of your gun group to acquire the specialized planning and operational skills of soldiers and generals. If you don't have the talent, get the talent.
Once any group is made the scapegoat for society's ills, stripped of its rights by the highest authority in the land and thrown to the wolves, it will not be long before other governments, local authorities, local institutions, businesses and much of the public in general, will take their cue from this - and take aim at you.
Where will you turn if you personally become the bullseye? To what extent do you expect the leadership of your group will be inclined to help you? How well organized is your gun organization to help your members withstand the persecution and harassment that might come from unexpected quarters?
How well is your group organized? Do you have an elected Board of Directors under a Chairman, to provide long-term guidance to and control over the President? Without interfering in the day to day activities of the President and his executive? Do you have an executive with authority to act and react quickly and effectively on matters that are not policy- making, without reference to the Board? Is it clear that policy is the prerogative of the Board? Is it clear that the conduct of operations is the prerogative of the President within policy guidelines set by the Board?
Is the President elected? Are elections meaningful and democratic? Can he appoint his executive from the most competent leaders he can find and enlist?
Functional organizations have to be functionally organized. Is your gun group organized to support the strategic objective? Is it split into functional branches: political, legal, operational, administration? Is it a sleek organization with clearly established lines of authority? Have you ever seen an organizational chart depicting the relationship between the various positions in your group? Does every position have written terms of reference? Or, is your organization dominated by ineffective committee structures?
No template can fit all organizations. However, if you are not satisfied with the answers to the above questions as they concern your group, then the need for internal reform should be clear. The optimal organization for your group will fall out from the strategic estimate procedure. The longer you wait to initiate and complete such an appraisal, the more costly it will be for all concerned.
Democracy is our strength. How democratic is your organization? Are regular monthly meetings scheduled so that all members can attend, knowing there is a fixed date, time and place for meetings? Or is the time and place always changing, or poorly announced? How easy is it for ordinary members or groups of ordinary members to make representations to the executive at these meetings? Is there an effective and convenient means to get on the agenda? Are the minutes of meetings recorded, at least with respect to important decisions and spending authority?
How do ordinary members get to vote on policy issues? At monthly meetings? Or only at the election of officers? Or never? What is a quorum? How and when and how often are elections held? How far in advance are members informed of the election of officers so they can influence their candidate or prepare their own candidacy? How does one get on the ballot? Is there provision for an all-candidate open forum which all members are encouraged to attend?
Just how democratic is your organization? Is it democratic at all?
In the rush to get things going and to get organized quickly, much has been overlooked, including democracy. No wonder that some leaders are bouncing all over the place, wondering what their mandate might be, or not knowing if they even have one. This issue of democracy, of being able to visibly and assuredly represent the collective will of your membership, is one that cuts to the heart of the weakness or strength of any leader, dictators excepted.
Democracy is power. If you are not absolutely certain of your mandate, go out and get one. Make it a democratic mandate. Get the people involved in the planning, and put the plan to the people. If you do not, if you have no mechanism to do this in your organization, how do you expect people to trust that your methods and your answers are any better than those of the people we oppose?
Who can forget those untroubled times when all you had to worry about was the routine of administration and finance and the conduct of events, matches, and programs?
In case you haven't noticed, the world is upside-down. The foundational document for your organization may have taken you through many years. Can it go the distance under C-68? You should consider that what was once an adequate or acceptable document may now be a liability, or even the instrument of your downfall.
To reflect the new reality in Canada, the foundational document of every gun organization has to be amended in a process that is perhaps radical, perhaps revolutionary. Commendably, some groups have set in motion the process of foundational renewal. What does your constitution say? How well does it say it? What does it not say that maybe it should?
The first consideration is that your constitution probably reflects the normal document of its times. It probably begins with a preamble describing your organization, its purpose and role. Most likely, it goes on to define the major positions in the organization, their functions and perhaps the working relationships between them. Then a bit about how officers are elected or appointed, the definition of what constitutes a quorum, the rights and privileges of members, and their obligations with respect to attendance, duties and finances. Finally, a section on discipline and the means to ensure that the organization and its meetings are conducted in a civilized and business-like manner.
Of great concern to you should be the preamble. What was once window dressing now takes on dimensions of awesome importance. In the context of the new Canada, it is the preamble that will imbue your document with its moral and legal legitimacy. In considerable detail, the preamble should make reference to the founding beliefs and principles of your group. Or, it should make reference to some other foundational document, declaration or manifesto to which your group subscribes.
If you do not understand that the preamble must speak of the rights and obligations of citizens, if it does not re-ignite the founding principles of liberal democracy and the obligation of elected leaders in a democracy ultimately to cast aside their fears and to put their trust in the people, then it is clear you haven't the foggiest what this conflict is all about.
Our struggle is only partly about guns. Mostly, it is about freedom. It might be arguable whether or not we can lose our guns and keep our freedom. But if we lose our freedom then surely the guns are gone, and gone forever.
Check if your constitution has a provision that binds your organization to adhere to provincial and federal law. This may be a requirement for organizations to be accepted as a non-profit corporation or similar corporate entity. If your non-profit or similar status binds you to a set of destructive laws which the government intends to use against you, you have to get out of this trap before you trip it. It is suicidal to hold your organization under the heel of such laws for the sake of money or any other reason.
Consider the value to delete these references from your constitution. Or, consider amending the relevant clauses to qualify the measure of your support for the law, or for a particular law or set of laws. Be prepared to sacrifice your non-profit status, or to get rid of whatever else can be used to force your group to self-destruct.
If you fail to purge your constitution of provisions that bind you to absolute subservience to the law, you can be sure this will be thrown back in your face every time you might feel compelled to propose any action contrary to law, however reasonable or necessary it may be.
At some stage as the federal government flexes its muscles, they will probably require the insertion of a standard phrase binding your organization to the federal law as a condition of licensing for whatever regime they come up with. But at least, if you act to amend your constitution now, you can make the point beforehand that you do not recognize the legality of C-17 or C-68. Any subsequent inclusion of government phrasing that might be forced on you would be seen as a coercive imposition against the free and collective will of your members.
Lastly, any provisions that are forced on you can be contained and neutralized within an official constitution kept only for the sake of appearances, while in reality your organization continues to operate according to an entirely different document or set of documents, or if necessary, an unwritten or partially unwritten body of internal constitutional procedures.
It would be unfair to demand from the leadership of your organization that they make all of the necessary personal sacrifices and accept all of the responsibilities and risks, without the membership also doing their utmost to provide leaders with the best protection your organization can devise.
Your constitution should state that, in the event an officer of your organization is arrested, detained or imprisoned due to the commission or alleged commission of an offence in relation to firearms law or in relation to his duties or responsibilities as an officer of the organization, that officer shall retain his position in the organization for an indefinite period of time until the next date following his release from custody on which elections are held, or until he is elected to higher office within the organization whilst in detention.
Providing your leadership with this kind of protection is important for two reasons.
Firstly, there are many historical examples of leaders running very effective operations from prison cells, so long as the support and loyalty of their organization is assured and their lieutenants realize and cultivate the powerful symbolism associated with such circumstances.
Secondly, this kind of provision in your constitution can have a powerful deterrent effect which may well keep your leaders out of prison in the first place, even as they continue to take action and speak out.
In times of oppression and tyranny, truth abides with prisoners, freedom with outlaws, and misery with slaves. Bitter choices all, but all must choose. Make the government know the head cannot be cut off, but would grow larger and more powerful if they try.
In collusion with the anti-gun media such as some newspapers, some journals and the national TV networks, the federal government is engaged in a campaign to deny ordinary Canadians access to the text of C-68, and to conceal the truth about their policy and policy objectives. You can expect government propaganda under the guise of "public education funding" to become much more intense in the months and years ahead.
Not only is this being done to pave the way for legislation, but also there is a growing government campaign to vilify the Canadian resistance movement, however peaceful and rational it may be, and to fool people into trapping themselves and their guns in the registration system. You will be amazed at the time, expense, and effort that will be devoted to this activity.
There is, however, no need to stand by watching it all happen. There is much that you can do to counteract and overcome the government's propaganda campaign. A good place to start is by constructing a neighbourhood and community buffer around your organization and clubhouse.
It is no longer enough to recruit by waiting for interested people to come to your club, or to be introduced haphazardly by individual members. Resource limitations dictate that recruiting efforts have to be focused. You should consider concentrating on the following objectives as part of an overall program that reaches out to the non-shooting public in your area:
Recruiting Objective 2: To organize and encourage your members, on an individual and personal basis, to concentrate on bringing in their non-shooting friends, neighbours and work mates to special hosted introductory shoots.
The underlying philosophy to this approach is politically motivated to influence the greatest number of voters. Recruiting or exposing someone from outside the shooting world is more effective than roping in someone who already shoots. This is a straightforward bang-for-bucks approach to influence the outcome of elections. What better way than a program of familiarization shoots where complete strangers and newcomers are made to feel welcome as the center of attention at your club on those special days?
A related aspect is that your public recruiting and advertising should reach out to the whole community and include everyone. A good way to do this is to aim your program at that segment of the population which would have the greatest difficulty making that first and daunting connection to the shooting world. Instead, make it easy for them. Try starting with a flyer blitz in the town or residential area nearest to your range. That is where your community buffer begins.
The objective of your communications plan should be to target those segments of your community most badly affected by government propaganda. No one has the communications resources to do everything, hence the need to concentrate your efforts where they can be most effective.
For purposes of your counter-propaganda campaign, you should consider the community in three groups, allocating resources as best you can:
Your outreach will have to take account of community sensitivities. It will not always be possible to combine outreach programs with recruiting. In some cases, you might not be able to get your foot in the door if people feel that you are there primarily for recruiting purposes.
The form of outreach normally should be informational visits and talks to community associations, service clubs, schools, youth groups, church groups, briefs to municipal government, etc. Videos submitted to local TV stations are often given free air time as a community service - in particular if they are informative, accurate, honest, and entertaining. Your communications program can be large or small. Very definitely you should have one. This is survival.
The scatter-gun propaganda organs available to the government give them the ability to reach that very large audience of shooters who are not associated in any way with any gun organization. These millions of shooters receive a constant stream of government propaganda that is bound to affect their thinking and their actions, to their disadvantage and yours.
The most recent government twist is to deceive the unconnected and unorganized shooting public into believing that the home-grown Canadian resistance movement is a United States-inspired phenomenon, that underground firearms storage techniques are not secure, that the government is not engaged in a massive confiscation program, and that there is no harm in registration. That pretty much sums up the government propaganda strategy: invert the truth 180 degrees, regurgitate it often, and the gullible public is bound to believe it.
The government has accelerated its timetable. You should know why. The police, rightfully sensitive to the prospect of casualties with which they will have to deal, are beginning to realize the enormity of the problem they will face to conduct a search and inspection program once draconian registration penalties become an unavoidable reality in 5 years time. They have realized, belatedly, that the bitterness and high stakes raised by the activation of these punishments is going to hurt, not help. Now they realize they do not have 5 years to begin the enforcement of registration, they have 5 years in which to complete it, during which time they will have some assurance of operating in relative safety.
As a result, you can expect to see in the days, weeks and months following the passage of this Bill, at least in jurisdictions where all the ducks and politicians and police are lined up, an extensive and continuing program of residential searches in the name of safe storage inspection. The real aim of these searches will be to inspect the homes of Canadians, especially those who may be suspected of resisting these new laws, in order to record the particulars of guns they find and to link those guns to owners.
Once police have the serial numbers and other information gathered in this way, you and your guns will be trapped in the system. On the face of it, your guns may not be "registered" and don't have to be for another 5 years. But they might as well be, and you will have to register them eventually anyway, or the authorities will follow up on you, charges pending.
In this way, the police hope to capture as many guns in the system as they can while there are still no mandatory penalties to inflame to crisis proportions what used to be non-criminal non-events, and to catch people unawares of the significance of these "friendly and informative" visits.
Now, you are aware. Now you know there may be as little as a few weeks remaining before gun owners who had good intentions to protect themselves and their firearms, end up paying a heavy price for procrastination.
Exactly what does this ad hoc adjustment to the government's timetable say about the advisability of these punishments in the first place, if the sponsors of new gun laws now fear the consequence of their own handiwork?
On 19 May 1995, the government put forward amendments to C-68 that would restrict the proposed police powers to conduct searches, and to modify the proposed schedule of punishments. These amendments should be viewed from the perspective of emerging government fears. The government hopes to convince gun owners that the amended punishments are not so bad, and certainly not worth the contemplation of any stand-off or shoot-out scenario. But no one is fooled.
The fact of the matter is that the schedule of punishments in C-68 has not been reduced one iota. The effect of these latest amendments to punishments has been to increase the range of arbitrariness in the way police are permitted to exercise their power, without diminishing or restricting the potency of their power in any way. All the Minister has done is to increase the arbitrariness of the police state. In this respect he has rendered the situation worse, not better.
Insofar as the new proposals to restrict police powers of search are concerned, the existing Bill C-68 is sufficiently complex and weasel-worded on this point, it will be interesting to see whether or not there is any greater assurance the new restrictions could not be overridden by authorities with the same degree of impunity as before.
Right now, millions of gun owners in Canada are getting only the story permitted by the government side. For as long as we allow this to happen, these people are going to be unduly influenced to trap themselves and their firearms in the registration system.
The organized firearms community has to look beyond our own immediate members. The unorganized shooting public needs the same information we do, even though they may not be making much of an effort to obtain it. All of us are in this together. There is nothing to be gained from recriminating those who do not yet see the need to get involved. There is safety and strength in numbers. No organization can afford to let shooters of any stripe fall by the wayside, even if it is mostly their own fault. An active communications plan is essential if you are to have any hope of reaching the unorganized shooting public with counter-propaganda information.
Especially, we have to reach out to unorganized shooters who naturally have come to reject what the government is saying, but who may be unaware of the peaceful and safe alternatives to armed resistance.
Perhaps these gun owners should be our greatest concern. There may be no statistical evidence, but already there have been a number of anecdotal incidents to indicate that the level of outrage against gun control might already have flashed to violence in some cases, or at least it may have veered perilously close to it.
For whatever gratification there may be in having been proven right (and we do not believe there can be any) about the government steering Canada away from tolerance and stability towards confrontation and violence, the firearms community would do well to remember that the actions of gunmen under any circumstances have been consistently and successfully used in the past to smear us, however justified or (as is usually the case) unjustified the actions of gunmen may be, and regardless of whether or not they are connected with our community in any way.
The truth is that Canada is still as peaceful as it is today only because of the highly disciplined nature of the firearms community in this country and the long-suffering way in which that community has reacted to an unbending and carefully orchestrated crescendo of government provocation.
Can anyone say how long this situation will last? What are the limits of goodwill? Can tensions be contained? How can they be released to our advantage?
The organized firearms community is a small fraction of the total body of gun owners in Canada. Only the government and media are reaching out effectively to the millions who are not organized. What these people are hearing is driving many to rage. Of these, it will take only a small percentage to cause a newsworthy number of incidents of exactly the sort that can be used to reflect negatively on our community. In these circumstances, the smug satisfaction of having been proven right will not in any way be worth the very high and very public price that our community will pay for this indulgence. Fairness will not be a consideration.
It is no longer adequate, and perhaps has never been adequate, for any one of us to hoard or to conceal information on the safe and peaceful alternatives to registration, and to disseminate this information only amongst our own small firearms organizations. It is not enough any longer to be the only ones with access to all the options.
Let us not through our own negligence, timidity or fear continue any longer in silent complicity with the government and national media to offer only the stark choices of capitulation or combat to Canadians. These are not the only options. We can do better. We will be the ones to suffer if we do not.
Our responsibility to ourselves and to this country is to reach out to every citizen who may need it, with the full weight of our knowledge on the safe and peaceful means of registration avoidance. In particular, we have to contact those who may be out there right now, hopeless and alone, perhaps frightened, perhaps seething with rage.
If they explode, who is at fault?
The government, for oppression? Ourselves, for negligence? The public, for indifference? Or the media, for fear that truth and knowledge and debate of the real issues that confront us could undermine a simplistic and sensationalist agenda?
Or shall we simply blame some poor fellow, frightened and alone who didn't want or deserve any of this, cornered in his home by police who more and more are beginning to realize they don't need any of this either?
Let us bring to light, and also challenge the media, to debate openly, factually and honestly all aspects of the technical, tactical, legal and political merits concerning the full range of the known alternatives to violence. Every single Canadian deserves to have this factual information presented to all those who cannot otherwise be contacted, to defuse public tensions and diminish the natural proclivity of these kinds of events towards societal conflict.
One way or the other, we are going to survive this crucible and emerge all the stronger for having been fired within it.
As long as we have our conventional organizations and they continue to meet our needs, they are worth fighting for.
On the other hand, there is no point struggling to maintain these bodies if they are no longer capable to serve our interests, but only the interests of government.
C-68 will enable Ottawa to extend its tentacles deep into your gun group with the intention to find some reason or excuse to shut it down, or to make your existence so difficult or so vulnerable under the law that your organization will be driven to self-extinction.
In these circumstances, it would be better to confront the government and to have them shut you down outright, than to let them make you dig your own grave and starve you into it.
If it comes to it, do not think that the termination of your gun group would be the end of anything, but the beginning of another advance on the road to victory. The consequence for the government to drive our community deeper underground will be turned to our advantage if they try. Let them bury us alive, not knowing we are badgers.
Resolve yourself to contest every square inch in this battle for the independance of our responsible and safe organizations, whose training and activities benefit the safety and security of all Canadians. Rightfully, these organizations belong to the people who created them and who lovingly nurture them. Expressly they do not belong to this or any future government hell-bent on implementing the mindless and intentionally destructive controls of C-68.