The sharp decline in Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC) applications in 1994 to less than one-third the normal rate, provides the most positive indicator yet of future trends in the ongoing firearms confrontation in Canada. The interpretation, however, is equivocal since this information does not clearly differentiate between ambiguous conclusions, both of which can be drawn from the statistics. This uncertainty also extends to other key indicators, such as the near-complete collapse of legal sales of registered firearms in this country in relation to the C-68 regime.
One conclusion is that Canadians are indeed being deterred from the pursuit of arms in accordance with government plans and expectations.
The alternative is that the population is distancing itself from the registration system, having voted with their feet to escape it, guns in hand. Which trend is dominant?
The only definite fact is that Canadians are not thronging to embrace the registration system, but reacting to avoid it. On that basis, the moderate expectation - that Canadians might complain, but try to live within the system as best they can - is the only trend that can be eliminated for certain. After all, no one has witnessed a rush for FACs by Canadians trying to slip under the wire before the procedural wrangle gets even tougher. To the contrary, the popular reaction has been completely inconsistent with the behaviour expected of a population that had resigned itself, in the end, to abide under the new law.
It must be concluded, therefore, that Canadians for the most part are not reconciled to the law. Furthermore, the relative imbalance in numbers reveals that the extent of this rejection is truly massive. The only question is, are people giving up on guns as the government believes? Or giving up on government as we believe?
Either way, the essential fact remains that Canadians in 1994 and 1995 opted in an overwhelming and decisive manner to pass up the attraction and convenience of last-minute opportunities to acquire FACs. What does this say about the numbers intending to take out registration later on? What could they be waiting for? The joys of dealing with an even more treacherous bureaucracy?
This development and other related statistics should be taken as an early warning sign by the government, and a measure of encouragement to ourselves. In fact, the government's early registration scheme of graduated fees and mail-in registration is based entirely on the expectation that government would be able to whip up some sort of stampede effect and keep it going. What happens if there is no stampede? What happens if all the government gets are a few stragglers, as millions of guns and gun owners continue to find their way to the sanctuary and safe haven that we are offering?
To some greater or lesser degree, attitudes are already set and beginning to harden. For two years, Canadians have had time enough to ponder these developments. At this late stage, there is no reason to believe that all factors including the threat of government retribution, have not been weighed carefully in the balance. Whichever trend predominates today will be extremely difficult for either side to turn around later on. As a consequence, the first quantitative signs (such as the prolonged and pronounced crash in FAC applications), should be interpreted as significant and leading indicators of the eventual outcome.
It is significant to note that FAC applicants comprise a substantial and representative sampling of the general firearms-using population in Canada. Whether or not these citizens understand the full ramifications of their behaviour, what they have done is to speak out clearly and convincingly on behalf of the greater community. What they have revealed is a profound motivation by the firearms-using people of Canada to back up the choices they make in this matter with decisive personal action. In this case, it was an act of omission not to renew or to apply for a FAC. In other cases, other actions can be expected. It would be extremely unwise for anyone to dismiss the collective and representative actions of so many, knowing that under the present unfavourable and widely known circumstances, shooters have been making these choices with a clear sense that their personal call in this matter represents a cardinal and possibly irrevocable life-changing decision.
By acting with such resolve to escape from the system one way or another, what these people are also revealing is the incredible degree of fear and loathing engendered by the underlying government vision that upholds this hateful law. A vision of privilege to entrench the power of the elites in Canada. A vision of tyrants to quash the rights and equality of citizens. A vision of deceivers to govern with the appearance and form and shell of democracy, while undermining what little is left.
This much we can conclude. The great majority of firearms-using Canadians have already rejected the C-68 regime. They do not themselves intend to live under it, and even less will they stand for their loved ones to be collaterally or directly threatened by its provisions and penalties.
The only question is, are Canadians giving up or are they getting out? At this point in time, the answer still lies to some extent within the realm of one's own beliefs and anecdotal observations.
Nevertheless, it is safe to conclude that Canadians are half-way to having our ancient and traditional right to arms restored and recognized in the statutes of Canada, and under the Constitution of Canada. You might find this statement astounding or even presumptuous to have it injected at this time. Some will say it is reading a great deal into a simple statistic to make such a preposterous claim.
However, it seems clear enough at least within the firearms community, that the dark and nebulous qualities of the government's own ruinous vision have not in any way stood up to the light of our own. Their vision is collapsing. Ours is catching fire. That is the judgement of Canadians and their actions bespeak it. We are half-ways there; the government is half- ways driven back.
So that now, there is the great need to occupy the void once filled by the federal government. The time has come for every citizen and every gun organization in Canada individually and collectively to stand and be counted for what they believe. To declare, on your own behalf, openly and publicly, the rights of citizens and specifically the right to arms as you understand it to be.
Perhaps you are afraid. Do you think others are not? Just the same, they declared. And they are still here. In the same way you will still be here after you declare. We still have some degree of freedom of speech in Canada. Use it or lose it. All the more reason not to delay this vital action.
This point is so important to the course of these events that it bears some elaboration. If your rights are not declared, how can anyone even know that they exist?
Furthermore, only citizens are able to legitimately declare the rights of citizens. Witness that only citizens have ever willingly and wholeheartedly done so. The state will not willingly do it. Governments will not willingly do it. Politicians will not willingly do it. Not to the satisfaction of citizens they won't. How could any Canadian deny it? Who could ignore the political elites clamoring so loudly and for so long to take our rights away?
The medium of rights is the message of rights. The process shapes the product. You yourself have to declare your rights. If for some reason you feel the need to ask for a right, or to submit it for approval by the ruler, the very act of your submission betrays that you do not really believe it is a right, but a privilege to be granted or denied. The fundamental question is one that concerns the legitimacy and authenticity of a right. Unquestionably, the rights of citizens declared by citizens belong to the citizens. How so the rights of citizens declared by rulers or governments or the state? Assuming, of course, that they would even condescend to declare them at all.
A ruler is free to accept and proclaim the self-declared rights of citizens or not to proclaim them, and he is free to give his advice to the citizens, and he bears the consequence either way. But nowhere in this intercourse with the ruler is there anything to absolve the citizen from his first duty, which is to honestly, responsibly, considerately and forthrightly declare the rights of citizens in the first instance.
For those who cannot see it or who care not to believe it or who fail to act upon it, they will not long keep their rights. Nor will they have rights that do them any good, but serve instead the purpose of rulers and governments and the state.
To see these simple truths in action, just look around. Look at the legions of gun-owners who went forward to ask, some boldly for rights, others for mere scraps of privilege. What did they receive? Nothing.
But those who have simply declared for themselves, the very act of their declaration has given them their rights. And which of our opponents, beyond the command of useless words and sheaves of paper, has done anything or can do anything to take away those rights? So that, not only do those who declare have their rights, but they are keeping them too.
Moreover, these actions of the declarators are shifting the burden of proof to the government, which must now accommodate their rights, ignore the ongoing practice and free exercise of their rights, or take action to repress them.
This last option being one which the government is free to pursue when the numbers of declarators are few, but foolish to contemplate when they are many. So that the Government of Canada, in failing to act now when it has a chance, has already revealed its greatest and most glaring weakness, which is the inability of immoral and repressive regimes to overcome the fierce determination and stubborn resistance of even small bands of patriots, let alone a nation of patriots.
If the current situation continues to develop as strongly as it has and if the motivation of Canadians continues to hold in our favour (ie. Canadians are getting out, not giving up), this country will soon witness the circus in Ottawa reacting to the complete and early failure of their national firearms policy. A dramatic, abortive campaign which, if the current federal inability to sway the gun-using public continues, the government and its media allies will not in any way be able to conceal from the public eye.
Under these circumstances, the government will be left with two political options.
One will be to avert the prospect of official embarrassment by negotiating terms that will have to be made more and more favourable to the firearms community as time progresses, and ultimately, to recognize the citizens' right to arms.
The second option will be to try and make their faltering policy work better by simply working harder at it.
Unfortunately, there are few who believe that the ideologues now ensconced in Ottawa have become such a spent political force, that they could be persuaded to consider the first option at this time. In any case, their idea of a compromise is to flog us all the harder for every lash they decide to spare.
Thus we will have the ongoing spectacle of the self-declared "Prime Minister of all Canadians" and his so-called Minister of Justice staying the course, veering neither to starboard nor to port, entranced by the destination, deaf to the groaning keel, blind to the shoals of resistance. Once again, we see the consequence of the flawed and dangerously kindred personalities. Once again, the seething anti-gun, anti-hunting mentality behind them and their unscrupulous allies.
Realistically then, it is virtually certain Canadians are going to be subject to the second option, that of a renewed and redoubled government campaign against us. Already the first stirrings of this political second wind have ruffled the morning calm. What will happen next? From where will it come? Who is in control?
The next phase of this struggle begins the day C-68 is proclaimed into law. It is virtually certain things are not going to get any easier for anyone once that happens. During this next phase, which presumably will continue until 1 January 1998, it will be very important to keep in mind that the government's situation is going to be at least as grim as any of ours. It was their own policy that gave us the option to submit to the new regime, or to turn ourselves out in the cold. First they did not expect us to leave. Now they expect us to come back.
What they do not understand is that the firearms-using minorities of Canada have learned to put up with the cold, and that many have grown used to it and that others are even thriving in it. So that, there is no longer any good or compelling reason for us to come in from outside, until some day the self-declared rights and freedoms of Canadian citizens have been duly recognized by the Canadian state.
After all the recent fulmination and fury by politicians on behalf of the people, what did the firearms-using minorities get from any of it in the end?
To judge our politicians by the standard of their actions rather than words, the answer would have to be nothing at all or very close to it. To judge the politicians by the standard of their promises, the only substantive promises we have seen are the implied undertaking by the western provinces to challenge the law in the courts, and the commitment of the Reform Party to repeal C-68 should they be elected. What value or degree of reliance can be attached to these promises?
Now we have seen the backtracking by Reform to amend the Act only. As a consequence, their policy, for a time, fell to somewhere in the same category as the failed gambit by the Conservative Senators. You can expect the Reformers to argue differently, and to plead their case according to varying shades of meaning and the scope of their own proposed amendments to C-68 which they had in mind. Although it seems now that they have backtracked again the other way, promising once again to repeal the law.
The salient point to be gleaned from all this is that the original Reform principle to repeal a bad law appears momentarily to have been quietly discarded, or at least it was very nearly discarded.
If gold rot, what doth iron do?
But the Reformers are not gold. They too have become members of the established political elites in Canada, and, like it or not, they face the same kinds of pressures that are working away to make them just like everybody else.
And what has been the classical and instinctual behaviour of those political elites, here in Canada the same as in any state? Many words have been spoken by them. But what have they actually done? What actions have been completed, what positive measures implemented, what steps taken, what plans have been set in place on our behalf?
Now we see the gathering signs of political fatigue and the retreat of the political elites into self-interest. The instinctive backing away, the converging of ideas, the closing of collegial ranks, the rehearsing of lines, the floating of trial balloons.
What we are seeing is a coalescing of the prevailing corporate political cultural in Canada, with the aim to put an end to the firearms debate by dropping our side from the political agenda and by choking us off in the public forum, with of course, the willing cooperation of their media allies.
So much for the political process. Especially in the form in which it will evolve from now on under the dictatorship of Canada. Regardless of political stripe, whether federal, provincial, government, opposition, it doesn't seem to make much difference. The most basic of political herd instincts has kicked in, which is to close ranks to preserve the system that sustains all of them and their privileged position within it.
And what can be said of the recreational firearms community, and their organizations and political leadership? As recreationalists, it is quite evident that many of them still think everything is just a game and conduct themselves accordingly. So that, despite the depressing and unbroken record of their own failed politics-only methods, many of them are still blindly playing games that no one can win under the rules of the dictator. This also is the path to ruin.
So that you should know this: the firearms-using minorities of Canada are not recreationalists. To us this is not a game. It is not a sport. To us this is one of the great questions of our lives. It is our life.. Our freedom. Our right. Ours to define. Ours to enjoy. Ours to defend. So that, the recreationalists do not speak for the firearms-using minorities of Canada, but only their own numbers. Never again will we will allow them, without challenge, for the mere sake of unity, to mislead so many to such a crushing political defeat.
So that, those who pin their hopes only on the outcome of the next federal election, once again are misleading you to put all of your eggs in one basket. In doing so, they reveal themselves not to be any kind of strategists, but the most wishful and dangerous brand of thinkers, poised once again to mislead you with the same false hope and defective planning as before.
Many pin their hopes on the outcome of the impending court challenges to C-68 by the western provinces, if such challenges should come to pass.
The courts might well, and should indeed, strike down the numerous ultra vires sections of C-68. However, that would still leave whatever was left as yet another ratcheting-down of the gun laws in this country. So that the outcome of the C-68 debacle, if left to the courts and to the courts alone, would still represent a defeat for the firearms community whether great or small.
In the aftermath to any court challenge, the firearms community in Canada will still be far more likely than not to be caught up all over again in the same old no-win ratchet regime. This would be true even in the case of the most favourable outcome in which the entire Act is struck down. Even that happy occurrence would still not provide this country with any kind of lasting or stable accord, but simply set us back to the injustice and instability of the C-17 regime.
Traditionally, there has been no more privileged or elitist society in Canada than that which can be found among members of the legal community. One of the unfortunate characteristics of that community of which all of us are now painfully aware, is that almost none of them seem to share or to have shared in our kind of lifestyle involving as it does a reliance on the use and ownership of firearms. And, of those who at one time or another might have done so, the corporate culture of the legal community has obviously worked all too well to expunge from them any vestigial interest, affection, care or concern for the enjoyment or pursuit of a shooting life.
The effect of having this enormously privileged and influential community to become so completely isolated from the large and powerful firearms community, has obviously had a devastating effect on the lives of millions of shooting Canadians. From professors of law who hate guns, it is obvious that we get students who also hate guns, who give us lawyers and eventually law firms that hate guns, Bar Associations that hate guns, lawyer- politicians who hate guns, and ultimately judges who also hate guns. Or, at least who seem to have little care or concern for firearms or for the people who use them.
As we have seen exemplified by the conduct of the political proxies of the legal industry who dominate our political system, it is also painfully obvious that there must be precious little knowledge about guns or the use of guns within the legal community. There is also some question as to the overall degree of social intercourse that might exist between the legal community and the millions of law-abiding members of society who happen to be gun owners (law-abiding in the sense of the former pre-dictatorship era).
So there is a clear suspicion that the traditionally responsible conduct of the law-abiding firearms community, so seldom or directly observed by lawyers for lack of any contextual social contact, has been erroneously and unfairly equated or confused by them to be the same or similar to the conduct of those other great users of guns, the criminals with whom they do make contact on a regular and intimate basis. So that it is not difficult to imagine what they probably imagine our own basic motivations to be. But who's fault is that?
Now we see the fatal fracturing of Canadian society as a direct result of the radically misinformed, prejudiced and misguided campaign by this privileged elite over many years, to attack our community and now finally to try and wipe us out.
The situation faced by the firearms community, is that we have a bunch of lawyer-politicians who don't use guns and who don't necessarily like guns, who, because of public outrage, are being forced to launch a court challenge that will be argued by lawyers who probably don't like guns, before judges who probably don't like guns, and in the face of lawyers for the federal government with an intense hatred for guns whose job it will be to mess it all up. The question is, who amongst this lot can be expected to legitimately represent the heart-felt interests of the firearms community? What assurance do we have that the "fix" will not be in from day one?
Consider first of all, that the Supreme Court of Canada as far as anyone knows, has never acted to affirm the existing right to arms in Canada.
Then consider which political party other than the Libertarian Party has specifically resolved to affirm the citizen's right to arms, as the basis for a stable and lasting accord in this country?
On that basis, it is safe to say that the politicians are not going to direct their lawyers to argue the citizen's right to arms. The lawyers of the politicians are not going to advise the politicians to argue the citizens right to arms. The Crown will oppose the argument of the citizens right to arms. And the judiciary is historically pre-disposed to reject the argument even if it is made.
If no argument is put forward on behalf of the citizen's right to arms, then obviously there will be no affirmation of it. If there is no affirmation of the citizen's right, it follows that the outcome by default can only be some form of delegated privilege of arms for the citizens. In which case also by default it will be the government which retains all of the right to arms (if only in law). The outcome therefore, of the courts failing to address the citizen's right or if they deny it, would be essentially the same outcome that has been imposed under C-68. Except this time, it would be imposed at the hands of the lawyer-judges of the Supreme Court instead of the lawyer-politicians in Parliament.
As a consequence, the moral authority of the courts in this case is, and can only be, to interpret the legality of the provisions in C-68, and to recognize the citizens' self-declared right to arms as it is expressed by the Canadians of this generation, or to re-affirm the citizens' ancient and traditional common law right to arms
Anything more or anything less than that would raise troubling questions concerning the legitimacy and ownership of the rights of citizens, since the court process not only depends exclusively on the appointed and unelected courts, but also makes no provision to obtain the democratic consent of the citizens themselves in regards to their rights, or to involve the citizens directly in any other substantive and democratic way.
Once a workable maintenance and salvage strategy is place to preserve the guns we have got, there still remains the problem of how to ensure that we maintain a reasonable degree of access to new guns of the kinds that Canadians want and are willing to pay for. In other words, guns that are the best available for the job at hand, that are reasonably priced, and which can be truly owned and freely used (instead of government-leased and locked to the wall).
The essential purpose of import controls as they apply to the arms trade is to ensure that government is able to levy import duties, to document imports for statistical and economic reasons, to ensure that imported goods conform to commonly accepted standards of manufacture and safety, and to restrict the supply of certain goods such as firearms from those who are not trained to use them properly and safely, who cannot be trusted to use them responsibly, or who may be at high risk to use them in the commission of crimes against citizens or property.
Overlooking, for the moment, that import controls do little or nothing to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals (it is the propaganda of government to expect this can be achieved in any way), for as long as import controls in Canada have been employed for legitimate purposes, they have generally sustained and enjoyed the necessary degree of public support and acceptability to make them work. In the modern history of Canada, there has never been any significant interest or intent by the general population to circumvent these controls. Now that is changing.
Especially since the passage of C-17 by Parliament in 1991, Canadian customs have been tasked to enforce new and greatly expanded government restrictions against many of the makes and models of firearms formerly available to ordinary citizens. Many of the criteria on which these restrictions are based are increasingly recognized as completely arbitrary and pointless, based principally on the cosmetics or appearance of a firearm rather than any technical analysis of functional characteristics.
What is more, Canadians have not been provided with any substantive or logical cause-and-effect relationship between these restrictive criteria and the public safety or the public good. How many Canadian lives have been saved by the law against high capacity magazines? Or the bias against bayonet lugs? Or pistol grips? We can safely say, none, and the government cannot disprove it. So that, we have a classification system intended to protect the public which no one can show to have saved any lives or that it will save any lives or that it even has the capability to save lives or to protect the public in any way. Furthermore, the government refuses to undertake the necessary research to validate the classification system, despite the fact that such a validation has been both formally and repeatedly requested.
So that logically and factually, there is no substantiation for the government criteria and they are afraid to look for it. Nor is there any substantiation for the underlying hypothesis on which the classification concept depends. which postulates the existence of classes of "good" and "bad" guns.
The injury to our community resulting from what is essentially an enormous intellectual fraud is being made all the more grievous by the bureaucrats who have been given responsibility to assign the classifications. These people depend for their jobs on a corporate culture in which all guns are essentially "bad". So that, we are stuck with a fox in the henhouse to size the chickens, but they all look like roasters to him. Moreover, he's broiling the layers so we will have no chicks.
For example, where is the evidence that the importation of fully automatic firearms by suitably qualified and responsible Canadian citizens has ever harmed the general public? Conversely, where is the evidence that firearms such as .22 calibre single-shot rifles DO NOT pose a threat in the hands of unqualified or irresponsible individuals? This is not rhetoric. We know there is no such evidence either way of any significance, and that the government is afraid to look for it or to admit that it isn't there.
Does a relationship exist or does it not exist between the class or type of firearms that we allow to be manufactured or imported and freely owned by Canadians, and the public security of Canadians? If such a relationship exists, is it strong, weak or insignificant?
The answer to these questions depends on the reference frame in which they are asked.
If the public safety problem is analyzed on the basis of firearms characteristics only, then a ban on full-bore full-automatics would appear to be justified. Alternatively, if the analysis is made on the basis of the relationship of functional firearms characteristics to the overall frequency and severity of firearms incidents that hazard the public, then it seems clear that .22s are a problem, and that full-bore automatics are not any kind of a problem. Which is the correct approach? Which is the proper reference frame?
The underlying problem is that neither one of these approaches provides a sound or relevant basis to ensure the public safety. Public safety in respect of firearms is a function of technical firearms characteristics in relation to the level of individual training and personal responsibility of the persons entitled to use that class of firearm by right of qualification.
This has long been known to government. Still, they refuse to acknowledge it or to act on it as the basis to create a just and effective firearms policy. Instead they focus on meaningless import and ownership restrictions against inanimate objects rendered mostly on the basis of cosmetic appearance. Knowing full well that almost all abuses of firearms in Canada would not have turned out any differently whether or not the perpetrator used the gun he did or some other type of gun.
Of course, the argument is often made that if even a single life is saved, then the cost and social burden imposed by any particular firearms law or gun control measure is worth the price. Let us overlook for the moment the denial of the statistical sciences implicit to such an argument, and accept the premise that the value of a single human life is worth any price to pay. And having accepted that premise, to gain agreement from those who base their own argument upon it, that if ever any particular gun control measure or statute in law can be shown to have caused the death of even a single person because that person was denied the right of access to a type of firearm appropriate to the circumstances (eg. a bear attack, starvation in the woods, self-defence etc.), then that control measure or law should be struck down since this action in these circumstances would save or would have saved a single human life.
In this we see the inanity of this kind of argument, based as it is on the absence of any factual premise, as well as revealing the blatant unfairness of those who would make or accept the argument only one way but not the other.
All classes of guns are safe in the hands of appropriately trained and responsible citizens. Any gun can be dangerous in the hands of the untrained or irresponsible. Laws based on make-and-model restrictions and prohibitions miss the point, rendering a great disservice to all Canadians, endangering us all and denying the rights of citizens.
However, it is not surprising the government does not acknowledge that the basis of their firearms policy fails to benefit the public safety, or that it is even harmful. Conveniently, each and every sensational failure of their own policy is spun around to justify the next round of restrictions and prohibitions. And so they advance from failure to failure towards the final objective of the confiscationist alliance.
The glaring question that the government has not addressed is whether or not the make and model of firearms manufactured or imported into Canada for the use of ordinary citizens bears any relationship to the incidence and severity of firearms abuses? Or is firearms abuse a function of the lack of government support for public firearms safety, training and education, and the lack of personal accountability and individual responsibility for one's actions that we see generally in the law and before the courts of Canada?
In C-68 we see the answer. This government trusts no one. All citizens are suspect. All citizens are dangerous. All citizens must be controlled.
The real danger of this errant mindset is that, for so treating the citizens, so the citizens over time will start to behave. When the history of the firearms debacle of the 1990's is finally written, one thing will stand out clearly above all else and it is this: there will be no need for chicken-and-egg equivocation as to who did what to whom first and when.
However, the laying of future blame will do nothing to deflect the unbelievable mentality that has gripped our government and which now infuses the laws of Canada, with repercussions rippling far beyond the question of mere firearms, beyond even the darkest imaginings of the perpetrators themselves.
The most challenging problem facing the firearms-using minorities in Canada today, is that the federal government has completely lost sight of the legitimate purpose for controls over the import, manufacture and private ownership of arms in this country. Controls which they claim to deny the criminal, but instead deny only the ordinary citizen. More than anything else, it is this perversion of the legitimate role of customs in a way that favours the criminal, and that pits customs officers against the legitimate and peaceful needs and pursuits of their fellow countrymen, which is fast turning the Great White North into a nation of gunrunners.
Before dashing off to start your own underground arms railway, the first question you might wish address is why you would want to form such an organization in the first place?
The simple answer is, for whatever reason you want. It's your organization. There are, however, a series of pitfalls and risks, and it behooves you to be very certain of exactly what it is you want to do, and to become as knowledgeable as you reasonably can before you set off to do it.
You might start by considering what will be the very first impact C-68 is going to have on your life? Will it be the need to register or to avoid registering your guns? Or will it be the requirement to register yourself and other members of your family with the police?
The correct answer is, neither one of these will cause the first impact of C-68 in your life. That infamous honour belongs to the imminent choking off of the legitimate supply of arms to Canadian citizens, as a consequence of the total prohibition of access to legally-obtainable, freely-ownable arms in Canada commencing 1 January 1998.
The first impact of C-68, well before any of the others, will be the closing of Canada's borders to the legitimate traffic in arms, except for arms that the manufacturer, shipper and seller must clearly understand will fall into possession of the Government of Canada from the moment they are legally manufactured in Canada or legally imported into Canada. After which point in time, these guns will remain forever liable to seizure and repossession by their new owner the government of Canada without any assurance of compensation. Too bad for whichever party is left holding the financial encumbrance when that happens.
As far as the end user is concerned, potential buyers of legal guns in Canada should be aware that ownership rights WILL NOT and WILL NOT EVER be legally transferred to them as part of the purchase price. C-68 extinguishes gun rights insofar as the statutes are concerned, including the legal right to gun ownership, and supplants these rights with a system of privilege totally controlled by the government. So that, whatever it is Canadian buyers of registered guns are paying for, it is not the right to "own" the gun they "buy".
That gun if it is registered, remains the legal property of the government of Canada. As proof of who owns it, all you have to do is consider who will have the power to restrict you from using that property however they might decide, whenever they might decide, and to whatever extent they might decide.
Consider also in respect of any registered gun, who will retain the right to reclaim that property from you at any time by cancelling or not renewing your license, by revoking your permit or by issuing a general or specific prohibition order against you or against that particular make or class of firearm? Or jacking up licence fees to prohibitive levels? Or slapping down restrictions as to when and where you can take it out of your house, if ever? Or by increasing registration fees so that no one will want to buy your gun, because it will cost them more to re-register it than the gun is worth?
Whether or not you are eventually faced with any or all of the above, at some point everyone who might still be left in the system is going to hit the limit of their own personal tolerance level, whether due to personal finances or some other limitation. At which point, the only legal option will be to turn their registered guns over to the authorities for destruction.
If you or anyone else is so daring as to "purchase" a C-68 gun after 1 January 1988, you are going to pay dearly for what little you get.
First of all, you will be required to pay up front the purchase price of the gun on behalf of the government for whom you are buying it. In exchange, you will be given the privilege of renting that gun from the government for however long they might decide to let you keep it.
On top of that you will have to pay the taxes (to the government!), plus the registration fee (also to the government), and a licence fee every five years (also to the government). And you will have to put up with any and all restrictions they might decide to impose on you concerning your use of that gun.
If the gun becomes prohibited and grandfathered, you might not even be able to take it off the wall or to make use of it in any way. In the end, you could easily pay hundreds or thousands of dollars over the years for a gun that you do not own, which someday you might not even be allowed to use any more, and which could just as easily be taken back outright by the real owner at any time after you register it.
All of these things taken together clearly define a lender-lessee arrangement that in no way resembles the free and clear title to private ownership of property that was the right of Canadians prior to C-17 and C-68.
Can there be any serious doubt as to who the real owner of all legally procured and legally registered firearms is going to be under the C-68 regime? Not just in law, but in practice and in fact? None of this is hypothetical. It has already happened to thousands of Canadians under the various C-17 and other Order-in-Council decrees that preceded C-68, as well as the hundreds of thousands who will be immediately affected by prohibitions when C-68 comes into effect.
If you are not prepared to live under this kind of cynical and oppressive system with its thinly transparent facade of private ownership where none really exists, there will not be any option open to you after 1 January 1998, except to acquire all of your guns illegally outside the registration system.
So that, if you want to buy guns for the government and then pay a lot of money just to borrow them back temporarily, then go ahead. But if you want to buy guns to own them and to use them and to keep them and to have them forever, then get ready to organize. Because you are going to need an organization, and a good one at that.
A paradox exists between the imposition of a registration regime in Canada on the one hand, and the imposition of a prohibition regime on the other. The nature of this incongruity is that while the registration system has the greatest potential to bring immediate harm to our community, at the same time it is the most easily neutralized by means of some fairly simple and straightforward individual actions.
In contrast, the prohibition of all legal sales of freely-owned firearms in Canada after 1 January 1998 has much less potential to do immediate harm. However, in the long run, prohibition is going to be the more difficult problem to deal with, and will require the organized collaboration of many to overcome it in a reasonably safe and secure manner. It is this paradox that determines where the preponderance of our priorities and efforts will have to be directed in the months and years ahead.
(to be continued November 1995: Part 2 of 3)