Once C-68 takes effect, the market value of registered firearms in Canada is quickly going to head towards a near-zero value. Very few C-68 guns are going to be sold, the purchase price being so prohibitively high compared to the true market value. The only exception will be for those individuals who are prepared to accept the unequal and uncertain terms of the government's firearm leasing system, and those individuals and organizations that find some way to remove guns from the registration system, or to ensure they are never captured in it.
At the same time, the market value of unregistered guns is going to increase dramatically. The current value of unregistered restricted or unregistered prohibited arms has already in some cases doubled and in other cases tripled as a result of the impending implementation of C-68.
However, market economics being what they are, the supply eventually is going to increase as demand continues to escalate in this country. Of which today we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg.
Providing gunrunners with a healthy profit is one way to attract their business. Security is another. By providing them with reliable en-route, end-point, and post-transaction security, the buyer can put himself in a position to put forward a more appealing business proposal, and to negotiate a better price.
The other factor to consider is the volume and frequency of business. By working to enhance both of these, the buyer can also improve his negotiating position.
However, irrespective of market economics and the supply/demand situation, there will always be a floor-level premium that will have to be paid in order to make the Canadian trade sufficiently profitable and attractive to arms traders. After all, they are the ones who take on the greatest risks, and rightfully expect to be compensated for it. Or they will take their business elsewhere. It's a big world. Consequently, you can expect the street value of unregistered guns in Canada to fluctuate, but eventually to stabilize somewhere around twice the legal list price.
In all of this, the citizen will only end up paying more for what he can get now for less. For citizens, there will be no net gain under the C-68 regime, but only negatives.
By contrast, there will be considerable net gains for gunrunners and the government. For gunrunners, by increasing the value and volume of their trade overall. For government, by justifying its own role in combatting the illicit trade, and by justifying the bureaucracy and budget allocations that go along with it.
Which is interesting, since it is the federal government's own policy and their own legislation which are creating economic conditions that foster the artificially expanded illegal trade. It is also the federal government that controls the economic throttle that holds the illegal trade wide open or choked down, according to the political or institutional exigencies of the moment. That throttle being, the specific mix and match of price, quantities, and models of legal firearms that the government permits or does not permit into the country at any time, and the degree to which they choose to enforce the law at any particular time, thereby regulating or at least strongly influencing both the legal and illegal trade in arms.
In other words, when the firearms bureaucracy needs to profile their own budget requirements, you can expect to see an increase in the illegal trade accompanied by alarming reports in the media. Later, when it becomes politically necessary to be seen to get that trade under control, evidence will appear to indicate a degree of success against the trade - attributable, of course, to the effectiveness of customs and law enforcement operations, and glossing over the controlling influence of the underlying economic levers.
If anyone wants or needs an example of this kind of cynical manipulation of politicians by the bureaucrats, and of the people by politicians, all you have to do is look at the tobacco wars of the early 1990s. In that classic conflict can be seen exactly how all parties except citizens benefitted; government, bureaucracy, media and smugglers alike. To better understand the game and the rules of the game, all you have to do is to consider just how quickly the government was able to quell the flames of the tobacco wars once it became politically necessary to get things back under control. And then to consider that this was accomplished almost entirely by the government throttling down on the underlying economic levers by means of a drastic lowering of the tobacco tax rates.
The parallels between the tobacco wars and the impending prohibition of arms in this country, are compelling and virtually identical. Once again, the government and the federal bureaucracy have set out to toy with the public interest, to cast themselves as saviours and heroes in a never- ending war of prohibition which they started and which they also know they can stop or even prevent. And who will be the certain losers once again? If not the taxpayers and citizens of Canada? While gunrunners skim the profits of prohibition. And government scams taxes to feed the firearms bureaucracy.
The overarching tactical objective of free citizens in all of this must surely be to influence the situation so that the maximum number of freely- ownable firearms continues to flow into Canada, enabling us to obtain and own guns of the kinds we want in the quantities we need at a reasonable price. And that takes organization. If ever we fail to do that, the political imperatives will wither, the politicians will forget, the public will forget, there will not be a political resolution, and our community and way of life will fade away.
To understand even better why you are going to need an organization, you have to appreciate the professional gunrunner's problem. For the most part, these people are businessmen like any others. They look at proposals and opportunities in terms of the margin of profit and the degree of risk. Some risks are financial, others legal, and some physical. For professionals, the penalty for smuggling guns into Canada is essentially the same whether they bring in one gun, ten, a hundred or a thousand. It is their great business to assess the risks and to decide which method and what volume of traffic provides the maximum ratio of profit-to-risk.
These professionals expect to be well paid for making this critical assessment and for undertaking the operation, and they deserve it. In many instances and for a number of reasons, arms dealers can decrease the overall level of risk for everyone by opting for larger operations as compared to a series of smaller ones. Accordingly, if you are not able to deal in large quantities, you can expect to pay a premium to make a smaller operation worthwhile, if indeed it is possible to conclude a low-volume deal at all. Below that, you are left to deal with the uncertain supply, limited selection and questionable quality available through personal or street-corner sales.
What this is touching on is the most basic of all reasons why anyone in the firearms community should contemplate the founding of a covert organization. Some citizens are capable and competent gunrunners. The majority are not. Nor is the majority in a position to run the blockade without incurring the undue risks associated with learning by trial and error on their own. If that is your situation, the only reasonable way for you to overcome it to learn from someone who already knows. Or to let the professionals do the job for you.
There are no easy answers. Just some that are better and safer than others. Dealing with professionals does not in any way absolve you of your responsibilities as a buyer. Buyers have serious obligations to their own people and to the seller. Obligations that you will be expected to fulfill with assurance. And that takes organization.
More than anything, your underground organization will serve to establish and enhance the developing arms distribution network that is sprouting up in this country. The advantage of doing so in an organized manner at the earliest opportunity is that this will enable you and your group to tie in to the network early on. This will position you at a more favourable level in the net, which in turn will enable you to make the most direct deals possible and to avoid the premiums that might otherwise have to be paid to extraneous middlemen.
By creating a local distribution network, and tapping in to regional or international sources, you are going to ensure that your group's access to firearms will be reliable, secure and economical.
In addition, you will be playing your part to encourage the world's biggest traders to do business in Canada as a safe destination with a well developed and reliable distribution system. A system that provides a dependable volume of business with an established and regular clientele in whom they can trust, and on whom they can depend to provide end-point security, rapid turnaround, quick pay-off, effective commodity dispersal and concealment, and other forms of assistance and protection should it be required.
The importance to provide your community with a source of arms and a means to effectively distribute arms of the type that can be freely owned by Canadians, without having to pay too high a premium or to accept too high a risk, cannot be overstated. The old image of gunrunners as petty criminals supplying guns to local thieves and dope dealers is fast fading in Canada. In fact, the fractional volume of traffic in illegal arms flowing to those who use or intend to use guns to threaten, rob, injure or kill (ie. criminals, since some seem to have forgotten what a criminal is and does) has always been minuscule compared to the flow of illegal arms into this country that go to legitimate and peaceful purposes.
The discrepancy between the mythical image of the gunrunner and the reality of blockade running in Canada is becoming more apparent every day. The time is fast approaching, and may already be here, when it will be outright hypocrisy for any Canadian shooter to condemn gunrunners as we commonly used to hear. For growing numbers of Canadians, gunrunners are no longer the distant, nameless, imaginary gang members of the popular imagination, but our own relatives, friends, neighbours and business associates. They are the Robin Hoods. We the merry band.
These public attitudes are changing as a natural consequence of the government re-shaping the laws of Canada as a dagger at our throats. What we have to do now is to expose the remaining misconceptions that surround this situation and to encourage public attitudes to shift as quickly as possible in our favour.
Breaking the government blockade and assisting the blockade runners in every possible way must now become the first duty and obligation of each and every patriot in Canada. To focus the main effort on anything else is to lose sight of the single most damaging weapon the government has to bring harm to our communities and to finish us off in the end, should we fail to overcome it.
In particular, let us challenge that loud cheering section of shooters who instinctively echo each and every call for more anti-smuggling laws, stricter customs enforcement, and harsher penalties for arms trafficking. Admittedly, these people were once part of the solution. But now the problem is a different one, and they are part of it. Even now, they themselves are beginning to suffer the consequence of their own knee-jerk boosterism just as much as anybody else.
The louder the cheers from gun owners for more border controls, the more convincing becomes the government's claim to have wide support in the firearms community for their plan to choke down the supply of arms until none but the most useless and worthless remain.
The time has come to stop the cheering. We are being had. Once the local supply of unregistered arms of the kind you want dries up, just where and how and from whom do you expect to get your next gun? Reversing gears only works before you go in the ditch. You can't do business with people like arms traders if you go around disparaging their profession or stabbing them in the back in public or in private. The professional gunrunner's problem has become your problem too. And you will be expected to help, not hurt.
Calls for tighter border controls will not hurt criminals. Not now. Not ever. The volume of trade necessary to supply the criminal element is minuscule, the supply reliable and secure.
On the other hand, criminals can and should be made to suffer additional consequences for making the fateful choice to carry a weapon during the commission of crimes like robbery or break and enter, and even greater sanctions should be applied if they go on from there to actually use that weapon in any way during these crimes.
This approach embodies the principle of inhibitive incrementalism, a principle poorly understood by the framers of C-68 and which, for the most part, is becoming more and more neglected and inconsistently applied in the body of Canadian law generally.
Certainly it should have been possible to re-structure the pre C-68 laws, or to have made better use of those laws, to temper and restrain the choices made by criminals in respect of weapons during the commission of crimes. On top of any punishment awarded for the underlying indictable offence, there should certainly be some degree of consideration for an incremental penalty if a weapon is carried during the commission of a crime; and a greater penalty if a weapon is taken and brandished in hand, and an even greater penalty if a weapon is discharged in any way, however safely, during the commission of such a crime.
And that should have been where to cap any new law, since if anyone ever points a weapon, whether during the commission of an indictable offence or at any other time (eg. while hunting or elsewhere), in all cases this is and should be treated more seriously than even a safe discharge at the scene of a crime. And, since pointing already was an offence in its own right under the pre C-68 laws, one should have expected an accused to be charged under those laws with the incremental charge of pointing a firearm, in addition to the indictable offence itself. So that, no new laws should have been required in respect of pointing a firearm in order to have applied the principle of inhibitive incrementalism with consistency under the pre C-68 Criminal Code.
The existing pre C-68 law could also have been used to apply the same principle to those who commit the even more serious act of discharging a pointed weapon, which is an act of criminal negligence or endangerment at the very least, and for which a range of the most serious punishments already existed in the pre C-68 Criminal Code. So that again, no new laws should have been necessary to address this kind of occurrence, while still maintaining a consistent application of the underlying principle as should have been possible under the old law.
But in the case of assault, rape or homicide, it makes no difference to victims how or with what they were assaulted, injured, raped or killed. In these situations, it is only the final extent of injury that is important to them, and whether or not the circumstances in some instances might have been more traumatically or cruelly inflicted than in others.
Canada already has serious laws to deal with these occurrences, laws that provide the most severe sanctions and penalties to be found in the Criminal Code. And we have a judicial system that one expects to account fairly for the extent of trauma and injury as the major factor in its deliberations for sentencing (noting, however, the prevailing public perception that the judiciary gives excessive weight to other factors such as the convict's disadvantaged background, etc.) To subject everyone whether thief or honest citizen to the same harsh minimum mandatory sentence just for carrying a gun as does C-68, while criminals generally are free to beat their victims to a pulp with their hands for maybe a slap on the wrist, will not in any way serve the cause of justice in Canada.
So what has happened to inhibitive incrementalism which formerly was a feature of the law? Basically, it seems to have been displaced by a new principle, a principle of the New Age, the principle of zero tolerance. And what can be said of zero tolerance? That it is the hope of zealots and radicals? That it is unworkable? That it flies in the face of the behavioral sciences?
Everything we know about zero tolerance tells us it is an idealistic impossibility, that it is counterproductive, that it takes no account of human nature, that it is the incubator of rebellion in human beings from the very youngest of children to even the very old. Any law that assigns the highest priority to everything ensures only that nothing has priority. Any law that punishes equally all the choices does not deter from any choice, but only encourages the most forbidden choices of all.
In one of the worst examples, C-68, which relies heavily on zero tolerance, associates the damage and injury inflicted by criminals with the type of instrument they choose to inflict it. This distorts the principle of equivalent punishment for equivalent injury and equivalent circumstances. It permits criminals to inflict the greater injury for lesser punishment by opting for a politically acceptable weapon with which to inflict it. Can it be true that a knife held to the throat is less terrifying and less dangerous than a gun tucked in a robber's belt? C-68 says this is so, and re-arranges the scale of punishments accordingly to favour the knife.
All of which flies in the face of statistical evidence which supports that a knife is the more deadly weapon. For which a number of mechanisms can be postulated, insofar as some victims, thinking they can better escape or defend against a knife than a gun, are all too often proven wrong, there being a heavy price to pay for misappreciating the true capabilities of a determined knifeman. Also, a gun enables the gunman to control the situation from a stand-off distance, and gives him a longer reaction time to assess any new or sudden situation before he reacts, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Whereas the knifeman is compelled to close the distance, often to the point of physical contact, in order to demonstrate that he is indeed prepared to use it, without which he has little or no credibility or control.
However, as a consequence of the patent nonsense in C-68, criminals are now being heavily influenced to select knives instead of guns. And, in virtually every case where this happens, the distance to the victim will almost certainly be closed, reaction times reduced, tensions raised. So that in equivalent circumstances, it is the victim facing a knife who has the lesser chance to survive the tense and panicky moments which tend to punctuate these situations, and this is what the statistics show.
As a consequence, it is not difficult to predict that the C-68 regime in Canada will almost certainly be marked by an increase in the incidence of criminal injury and homicide cases. This is not to argue that criminals should be issued guns, or encouraged to carry them, but quite the opposite. Since virtually any weapon can be used effectively to cause injury or death, the law should not be designed to give the use of any class or type of weapon any kind of preferential encouragement. In doing so, C-68 endangers us all, turns the principle of inhibitive incrementalism on its head, and in this instance even violates its own underlying principle of zero tolerance for whatever value it might have been.
The federal government had a range of options to consider before deciding to go ahead with C-68. The above option, to conduct a review of the law concerning the use of weapons during the commission of crimes, being just one of them. The government also had the option to redress the injustice in C-17, but did not. They also had the option to do nothing, since prior to C-68 there was no crisis of arms in Canada or any significant change in gun crime over the preceding 25 years, except a slight decline as all the statistics will attest. In fact, a healthy pause in the pace of legislation in this area would have enabled the government to assess the effectiveness of C-17 as well as all previous gun control laws, as called for by the Auditor General of Canada. But they did not choose to do even that.
Instead, they bulled ahead with C-68 and its stringent point of origin controls, that will not impede criminals in any way, but sets in place an improved climate for the illegal trade of arms in Canada and many other problems. This is insane. Why did they do it?
What the federal government knows and what we know is that these new control measures are not designed to deprive criminals in any way, and will not do so. But they will deprive the rest of the population from legal access to any and all firearms, except the worthless C-68 guns which no one will want to pay for anyway.
At this point in time, there should be nothing surprising about any of that. That is what the government wants. THAT IS THEIR POLICY. It is the policy of the federal government of Canada to disarm the Canadian people by steadily reducing the total number of privately owned guns and gun owners by whatever means possible and without limit. What we have in Ottawa is a regime for whom a general increase in crime appears to be an acceptable price that they are willing to pay in order to achieve this end. But they will not pay. The citizens will pay.
What this is all about is the realization of a lifelong dream of the confiscationist alliance, to implement a national program of eventual and total civil disarmament in Canada, according to a secret plan and under an official program that has been long in the making. A program whose instruments are intended to be so broadly and tightly woven into all levels of government, the bureaucracy and our society that it can never be unravelled. C-17 and C-68 are just two of the instruments of this pernicious and pervasive program that we have seen so far revealed.
(to be continued December 1995: Part 3 of 3)