It is sobering to realize that between now and 1 January 2001, every single gun owner in Canada who might still be law-abiding, will, by definition, have subjected himself or herself to a harsh and discriminatory regime of unregulated surveillance, arbitrary searches, treacherous regulations and draconian punishments.
They will be trapped. Trapped and treated in the national police registry worse than any convict on parole. Convicts, after all, know the hour and the day their parole will end. But who's parole will have no end?
The fundamental question that all of us face and which no one can avoid, is whether or not we will choose to join the unfortunates who become tangled in the C-68 regime.
The ability to carry on your life as a free citizen, even in the face of such daunting adversity, is within the grasp of every gun owner in Canada. The objective for any personal plan must be to work towards an eventual position of total avoidance of the system, and to learn new ways to access and use your guns in freedom and safety outside of it.
Individual action provides a powerful and indispensable means to achieve this. However, individuals operating in isolation will always be at least partly limited in what they can achieve. Individual action by itself will not necessarily bring back the peace, freedom and long-term stability from which our communities have been robbed by the federal government. Not until somehow, some day, some form of democracy, responsive and responsible to the people, can be restored in this country.
Until that day arrives, Canadians can no longer claim to live in a country that is truly free.
In the 1990's, the rights and freedoms of Canadians have come under the most persistent and determined attack ever seen in the history of Confederation. Now the situation has developed to such a burdensome level that millions of citizens feel threatened in the everyday conduct of their lives simply from fear of government oppression.
The most pressing of these concerns at this time is the outright loss of the legal right of Canadians to freehold possession of arms and other things. Under the same "gun" law that Canadians so fiercely and resolutely oppose, any and all of the other possessions of Canadians have also become subject to registration, restriction, prohibition or confiscation. According to the whim of government, and without reference to any elected body.
Which if any of the personal possessions of Canadians still enjoys the full protection of law? Who is left among us who does not yearn for the peace and security Canadians used to enjoy under a body of stable and meaningful rights? Rights which no one could alter, except through the slow and deliberate incrementalism of the common law, or through the free and collective will of the people expressed in the votes of our democratically elected representatives in Parliament? Votes which Canadians must now act with absolute determination to emancipate from the dictatorship of ministerial, prime ministerial, and other forms of systemic coercion that stifle our democracy.
The deplorable state to which the Canadian system of government has devolved over the past quarter century is the consequence of a political doctrine forever captured in the words of the leading proponent of the 1970s; "...MPs are nobodies."
However true that statement might have been in those days, the solution embraced by Canadians of the time did not in any way seek to redress the underlying circumstances that gave rise to such an alarming observation. Complacently, Canadians opted for a political system that not only tolerated but shamelessly embraced the pitiful spectre of hapless parliamentarians lorded over by the likes of him whose vision it was. And who can deny that is how he ruled? Or that Canadians and their parliamentarians have been ruled over in the same way ever since?
In hindsight, the historical audit trail is falling into place with sufficient clarity to reveal the unsettling record of cause and effect: the vision, the words, the constitution, and now the appalling results.
The major result being that, through our own complacency and negligence, the people's democratic power which we freely choose to invest in the House of Commons, has been allowed to diminish and dissipate almost day by day for a quarter century. Parliament, to which we freely entrust the guardianship of our rights as well as our democratic power, has been grossly negligent to defend either one. At the same time, the gravitation of real power in this country to the privileged and appointed cabinet, and to the unelected courts, commissions and boards of the judiciary and the bureaucracy, proceeds unabated, unbalanced and unchecked.
Who is at fault? Was it not the complacency of citizens that enabled the Constitution of 1982 to be imposed? Was it not our own spitefulness and contrariness that permitted the further humiliation and disempowerment of MPs, knowing as we did even in those days that their powers were already greatly weakened?
To be fair, the 1982 Constitution must be judged in the overall context of the defective and vulnerable form of democracy that has evolved in Canada over the past 150 years. Nonetheless, as the most recent manifestation of the dissembling constitutional puzzle, that Act is beginning to stand out more and more as the democratic sham and mockery that it has always been.
Perhaps it is only with the passage of time that Canadians can look back to see what really happened. To see that from the very beginning, each and every one of the unelected and appointed offices and institutions engendered by the Constitution have been quickly captured and continuously occupied by members of the chosen elites. Or, as happens from time to time and for appearance' sake, by some common though compliant appointee naturally beholden to the privileged person or body who appointed him.
The great and enduring fraudulence of this corruptible system, is that by and large these appointed and unelected institutions were created with a mandate to safeguard the interests and rights of citizens. Whereas in reality they have served to desecrate our rights or at best to pay lip service or ignore them.
Why should we be surprised that such a cynical and defective vision of democracy would give birth to an oppressive and contemptible form of governance? A system not at all configured or empowered to deal with its most basic weakness, but to perpetuate it.
Let it be stated then, that the core lesson of Canada's faltering experiment in democracy is this: the rights of citizens cannot be entrusted to the guardianship of unelected persons, commissions and bodies appointed in privilege by the ruling and chosen elites; since uniformly it is the natural and human inclination of appointees to act in favour of the privileged office that appoints them to comfortable circumstances, contrary to the interests and rights of citizens. Nor has the people's democratic power been seen to survive the misguided attempts to transfer or transplant it from the elected chambre to the unelected bodies; an impossibility and contradiction of such enormous tension that the democratic quality is stripped away, leaving only raw and unbridled power to accumulate in the hands of the appointed and unelected.
Rather, as free citizens, it is to a free and emancipated Parliament only that we are willing to consent the safekeeping of our rights and democratic powers. And, for as long as our parliamentarians are not free, but act to diminish and destroy the rights and power of Parliament and of the people (these being one and the same thing in a democracy), out of necessity and prudence our consent to be governed in these matters by a Parliament that subordinates itself to anything other than the people, is withdrawn and withheld.
Nor do we consent to be governed by any proxy or surrogate to Parliament, or by any other pretentious and appointed or unelected authority. And when Parliament is at last restored to its rightful place of pre-eminence in this country, we will press forward with renewed vigour the demands of free citizens to be governed by legislation not regulation.
So that now it falls on the shoulders of citizens to band together in our own communities as protectors and guardians of our own democratic rights and freedoms in accordance with fundamental principles of democracy and natural justice; until such time as general and satisfactory reforms are implemented to restore democracy in Canada and to safeguard the rights of citizens.
Still, it may be fairly remarked that many Canadians want no part, but only pragmatic relief from the interference of government concerning the ownership and use of firearms and other possessions. Sadly for these people, there can be no hope. Their own inaction, complacency and fear consign them to suffer the very circumstances they wish to avoid.
Anyone who believes that the firearms issue can be resolved separately from the greater question of citizen's rights will not find any resolution in the place they are looking. That was the great mistake of the federal government. They believed that the question of firearms was not also a question of rights, and that they could deal with one and not the other. It did not work for them. It will not work for you.
Without the assurance of democracy, there can be no assurance of lawful rights. and without the assurance of lawful rights, there can be no assurance of lawful arms. Any proposal which does not satisfactorily address all three of these failures in our society cannot and will not provide a lasting or stable accord, but sooner or later plunge Canada back in the cauldron worse than before. Who in 1991 in respect of C-17 could have foreseen that the firearms community would be fighting for its life just three year later? Only the perpetrators could have known.
Clearly, C-17 has been unmasked as an insincere and worthless Act. One that gives no assurance of peace or stability or anything else, insofar as Canadians would not or could not be caught up in these present troubles if C-17 had been of any value to prevent them. Rather, it was the appeasement of C-17 that laid the groundwork and provided the general encouragement for the subsequent attack under C-68.
Regardless of how C-68 is disposed, the dangers that we are experiencing at this time will be the pattern of our lives over and over again, until that hollow and hazardous springboard called C-17 is finally dismantled.
However, the immediate challenge is to break the most crucial link in the chain of these miserable events. Right now, that centers squarely on those who might still be backing C-68. Overcoming their plans, their power and their support requires the concerted efforts of us all.
It has long been known that the Canadian state could take your land and your house. Increasingly, it is also developing its power to reach in and take your money, your children, your spouse, or any other person or thing that you might hold dear to you in this life. As if that were not enough, government is also acquiring the authority to banish you to live apart from your own family, and in that sense, to establish the power of government to remove even you yourself from the midst of your own life. What else is left? What else could there be for government to go after? What greater signs are necessary to realize that we are at the edge of freedom in Canada as we have known it?
It is well worth the time to consider the broad and expanding front on which the state is advancing into all areas of the working, financial, recreational and family life of Canadians in the 1990s.
The destruction of liberty invariably starts out as an accumulation of reasonable proposals. Just like gun control started out as a "reasonable proposal" 25 year ago. The complicating factor in Canada is that there is no effective democratic mechanism to stop the infringement of liberty once the rot sets in. If that were so, it would have been so, and we would have seen it happen in these present circumstances. Instead there is nothing. Quite simply, there is too little left of our democracy to do any good any more.
We are in serious trouble. Most Canadians do not believe it can happen here because they have never seen the face of tyranny and have no idea what it looks like. What it looks like is what we have seen in Canada since at least 1991: a bureaucratic and ruling elite that has amassed sufficient hidden power to pursue long-standing ideological objectives uninterrupted and undisturbed by even the intervening electoral process. Now begins a hard and bitter lesson in the land of the North.
Equally disturbing is the lack of clearly delineated limits that could contain the expanding federal power. This absence of boundaries can be ascribed to two factors. First there is the Canadian political framework from which the normal democratic checks and balances have been stripped away, or which never properly existed in the first place. Secondly, the current weakness of political opposition at the national level is having an impact. Canadians in 1993 managed to elect a powerful and despotic government at the same time as a weak and chronically divided opposition. As a result, not only have the fissures in our democracy been greatly exposed, but those cracks have been irreparably split and cruelly exploited by a rapacious federal power.
None of this explains why the government is pursuing such heavy-handed policies, but only how it is they are able to get away with it. One might speculate that the federal government, faced with the inevitability of its own declining financial influence, is attempting to make up for it by substituting brute political force for diminishing monetary clout; little realizing that in the process they are punching a gaping hole in the federal money bucket to administer and enforce a range of unpopular and oppressive laws.
Can a power that will stop at nothing to advance a divisive and dangerous cause be a benevolent power? Can a force capable of tossing aside the political opposition with such apparent ease, be justified in its demands for even more power? Can the government in Ottawa or any government, be trusted with the kind of authority which they insist they need to control, restrict or remove any thing or any person from the midst of our lives as they see fit to regulate?
Let us be clear about the long term policy objectives of the Canadian government. Policies that have been operative for many years now. Under the popular image of peaceful, compromising, and eternally complacent Canadians which the government has been so fond of promoting (nothing wrong with that), what they have actually been doing is to accumulate the terrible power they need to enforce these virtues regardless of the circumstances. Circumstances which now include new and criminally repressive laws designed to break the back of popular resistance that sprang to life in the wake of C-17.
In reality, our leaders have shown little respect for the concerns of peaceful Canadians; but they do want us to be docile. They demand compromise but deliver unilateralism, and exploit the willing complacency of citizens to attain the reflexive apathy of slaves.
What we are witnessing is the implementation of a long-standing federal policy to create a society that will incubate a submissive and helpless population. A population stripped of the legal right to self defence and legally deprived of the physical means to effect any defence.
And who might be the beneficiaries of this policy? If not the government to rule with greater control and muted opposition? If not the legal- industrial complex to extend its parasitic tentacles in our society? If not the intrusive agencies to justify or expand their establishments, and to enforce unpopular and repressive laws with less trouble? And, inadvertently (which the government knows and tacitly accepts as an unfortunate adjunct to policy), criminals. Yes, criminals who already operate brazenly against an increasingly disarmed and defenceless Canadian public. A population already shorn of the right to defend themselves, who are punished if they do, and who are already legally disarmed for all intents and purposes (lesson one: how to unlock you safe and load your gun while you are being robbed or attacked).
On top of these immediate concerns, no one can deny that an armed citizenry, wherever it exists, will certainly rise to challenge and block the path of any tyrant, whether that occurs sooner or later during the descent to tyranny. Nor can anyone deny that tyrants have a far easier and much longer run at power if the population is disarmed.
In Canada, many of the usual checks against the rise of tyranny simply do not exist or have been greatly weakened in recent years. Wherever the federal government is trying to drag this country, the general presence of armed citizens everywhere stands as a formidable obstacle to further political mischief and misadventure. The government knows it and we know it.
The frightening and as yet unanswered question is, what hidden prize could be of such high value to the federal government that it is willing to expend such enormous political capital and to commit such tremendous resources, all to remove the obstacle of a freely armed citizenry?
In addition to the many other rights of citizens that have come under attack (and the inventory is alarming), the government of Canada under C-17 and C-68 has recently acquired the power to confiscate even the least of your possessions. Right down to the last memento you might have been keeping to remind you of the life and freedoms we used to have in this country.
If deprived of the right to freehold possessions, no citizen can be free, but becomes a vassal to the government, bureaucrats and police who control him with constant fear of threats and reprisals to restrict or to confiscate some thing or some things in his possession.
The more the state controls our possessions, the more it controls us. As the list of controlled and prohibited things and the accompanying web of property regulations grows longer, authorities become more and more confident that any citizen can be found in violation of something at any time. In the extreme, it becomes possible to arrest any citizen at any time for no particular reason, knowing virtually for certain that even the least of searches will uncover a violation of at least some property regulation, restriction or prohibition.
In this way the destruction of property rights of and by itself, even if no other rights are infringed, can easily be used to give the police state all the power it needs. Since all citizens have at least some possessions however meagre, once the population is shorn of property rights, all citizens become more and more vulnerable to arbitrary and punitive searches as the list of controlled and prohibited things grows at the hands of the bureaucracy.
Ominously, this pattern of limitless regulatory growth is well established in Canada. Recently it was greatly enhanced by C-17 and cemented by C-68. Millions of your countrymen have already been brought under its cruel thumb. You are no exception, though you might still have been spared its painful sting. Any Canadian who thinks that only guns have been restricted and prohibited would be shocked to realize the many common items that have already been criminalized under various Orders-in-Council, without the consent of Parliament or the people.
Under such a regime, the significant exception will always be the free citizens, who with bravery, fortitude, and perseverence prepare themselves to undertake such reasonable and prudent actions as may be necessary to defend their property and their freedom from the criminal actions of government.
The first impact of C-68 on your life will not necessarily be that of registration. Long before most Canadians will have to confront the registration monster, hundreds of thousands are going to find that they have already been cheated. That particular day will come when they try to purchase their first C-68 gun after 1 January 1998, and slam hard against the unfair and uncertain regulations under which they will be allowed to rent that gun from the government, but never to truly own it.
When they bounce off that wall, that is when the great masses of our community will awaken to a terrible reality: that the trap has already been sprung and that they are already caught in it. One can already sense the state of panic when they find out there are only two ways out. One, the way of government, the way of capitulation. The other, the way of patriots.
At that point, increasing thousands of our countrymen will see that they have been left with no alternative but to get involved with breaking down the barriers that impede them. When that happens, people will be shouting for answers and begging for help. It is not for us to disappoint them. Rather, it is the duty of patriots everywhere to undertake whatever reasonable and practicable steps as may be necessary to position ourselves to provide that help as best we can. And, since the optimum time frame to initiate these activities can be sensed just over the horizon, it is time to start considering the options now.
In essence, the time has come for those who perceive the sorrowful disaster taking shape in our country, to start considering how we are going to plan and organize new groups and units within our communities. Groups and units with a mission to insure that the common people will not be deprived of a source of freely owned arms, or the freedom to use arms for traditional and peaceful purposes.
This requirement has nothing to do with registration; that can be neutralized by personal action alone.
Rather, it has everything to do with the other sections of C-68, the parts some politicians blithely refer to when they say, "I support the other measures in C-68, but not registration".
Bear in mind those "other measures" can be used to attack our way of life just as surely as registration. Whether a registration regime exists or does not exist, if the government succeeds in denying access to sources of arms, over the long haul the firearms community in Canada stands to wither and fade.
Every gun owner must be made aware of the implications of the government's new C-68 anti-trafficking powers. Powers that will do little or nothing to stop trafficking, but rather to encourage it. This deficiency is not accidental, it is incidental. It is incidental because the purpose of these powers has almost nothing to do with trafficking and everything to do with denying the ordinary citizen access to arms.
Excising the entrails from C-68 by ripping out the registration sections, would leave a foul and rotting corpse not worth anyone's reputation to defend. In any event, the remnants of C-68 would still be vigorously opposed by the firearms community for fear of the contagion that an unburied carcass would still spread. Specifically, the contagion of access to arms denied.
Border and manufacturing controls have long been a point of contention, long before anyone's focus was diverted to the registration battle. Those problems at the border have not gone away. The record of border controls over the past quarter-century provides a litany of government abuse marked by the recurring, arbitrary and usually pointless ratcheting down of the selection of firearms available to law-abiding citizens (and, for all practical purposes, to law-abiding citizens only).
If these restrictions and the regulatory ratchet that drives them are not stopped or reversed, there can be only one logical outcome, and that is the eventual denial to the citizen of any access to legally-obtainable arms of any kind.
Confronted with this logic, the response of government has been to ratchet all the harder in the same direction, depriving the firearms community of any hope for a tranquil or stable future under the law.
In consideration of the government's refusal to provide access guarantees, and considering how the bureaucracy is geared to regularly exploit the absence of guarantees, there is only one logical conclusion as to the direction and ultimate objective of government policy on this cardinal issue. That objective, as a minimum, is to completely deprive the citizens of Canada of any and all access to legally-obtainable, unregistered (and therefore ownable) firearms in the context of point of origin controls that we know will be virtually 100% effective for this purpose.
In the same way that mounting resistance to registration was anticipated, it can be confidently predicted that people will come to resist the new point of origin controls with equal and fierce determination. Both point of origin controls and registration are crucial dangers to the future peace and stability of our communities. It makes no sense whatsoever to combat one and not the other, since each by itself would have devastating consequences if not circumvented.
The first and easiest undertaking of every gun owner in Canada must surely be to save as many guns as possible from the registration system. Not just your own guns, but the firearms of relatives, friends, neighbours, and work mates. To fulfill this obligation the underground trading network that we have now is going to have to be expanded and streamlined. Otherwise, unwanted guns will tend to go unsold to new owners who naturally would have taken take better care of them than the old owners, who may no longer care or who might not see that the ultimate trap of registration is the virtual assured destruction of all registered firearms.
In the succession of registered holders for any particular registered gun, it takes only one to decide that the expense and hassle of it all is no longer bearable. When that happens, that is when the holder will find out that the value of legally registered arms in Canada has already fallen to a near-zero value in most if not all cases.
When he tries to sell his registered gun, that is when he will also discover that he might not even be able to give his gun away for free. Not when you consider the registration transfer fee that would have to be paid, and not when you consider all the legal liabilities to which the new holder would have to subject himself.
Even now, potential new holders of legally registered guns are growing fewer and farther between with each passing day.
In the end, if a new holder cannot be found, it is a sure bet that people who basically have had enough will be left with no legal option but to surrender their guns - to assured destruction, the ultimate trap of registration.
In today's climate, it should be possible to convince more and more gun owners of the folly of registration, and to inform them of the alternatives. One of which is to give away or sell their guns for hard cash to someone who will look after or at least dispose of them properly in the market.
The other half of the equation is for gun owners to realize that unregistered guns in good condition represent one of the soundest investments that you could make at this time. Anyone out there right now with a bit of cash and a few clues about guns would be wise to buy and cache all the guns you can find before the C-68 boom is lowered.
Basically, if C-68 proceeds as expected, buyers stand to make good money as soon as the local supply of legally available unregistered guns is cut off by the legislation.
On the other hand, if somehow C-68 is not implemented, these same people will still get back more than their money's worth, having bought now while prices are depressed in this uncertain market. Later, they stand to benefit from the pent-up demand that would be unleashed the day C-68 is killed.
C-68 or no C-68, the government has successfully put in place market conditions that make gun trading a very lucrative venture for buyers now and sellers later on. No matter which way the wind blows.
Any holder of registered guns who is at or near the point of death has the option to pass on his guns to a friend or relative outside the system before he goes. Anyone who does this might incur the possibility of legal complications. But really, this has to be put in perspective. Even in the event that an irregularity is discovered before you check out, by the time your case gets anywhere near the courts, you are likely to be long gone. And what shooter would care anyway? Many people today are of such a mind that they would enjoy fighting the government on this all the way to the grave - and beyond, for all we know. It takes a special kind of zealot with thick skin and a good grasp of public relations to go after the terminally ill. Odds are that nothing at all will happen, though maybe they could dig you up in revenge.
Insofar as any person in receipt of firearms is concerned, no one else would or should know anything about any arrangements. Even in the unlikely event of a slip-up or admission by the soon-to-be-departed, that would make for a very weak case against you. So long as you are prepared to brass it out, even this unlikely eventuality should be entirely manageable on your part.
Of course, there is the possibility that the government might try to go after the survivors. However, this option is legally obtuse and even more fraught with public relations pitfalls, not to mention the senselessness of trying to close the barn door after the horse is gone.
In any case, it is instructive to consider the difficulty under any conceivable law for the state to prosecute, say, a surviving widow who knows nothing of any firearms transaction. Nor, in fact, should she know anything about it. Consider the pathetic circumstances. For all of her life, the state ostensibly has constrained this woman under pain of criminal liability from ever taking any of her husband's registered guns into her possession. Is the state now going to arbitrarily overturn her status, and, for the sake of their own convenience, deem her to be in possession of property which she has always been forbidden to possess? Just so they can charge her with some offence related to a claim of possession that they imposed on her, which in reality does not exist and never did?
In addition, any old or critically ill friends or relatives who happen to be in possession of a valid firearms licence most certainly have not outlived their usefulness. Not only are their own registered guns up for redistribution, but there is also the option for you to legally transfer your guns to them before they go, and then for you or someone else to take them back outside the system whenever it is convenient to do so.
Also, swift and appropriate action should be taken to save the guns of any recently deceased person, whether those guns are registered or not, and whether or not any prior arrangements have been concluded.
These procedures all fall under the general category of "grandfathering". They provide some of the safest and most effective means to remove registered guns from the system, or to prevent unregistered guns from ever getting trapped in it. There are, of course, other methods: where there's a will, there's a way.
Is the government now going to take great umbrage and devise new regulations to discriminate against the elderly and terminally ill? Perhaps.
In the final analysis, what it boils down to is this: before the government rounds up all of our firearms, first of all they will have to strip away all of the rights and all of the freedoms of all Canadians. That is the bargain. There is no other way to do it. The above section on grandfathering provides just one example of why this is so, and how it could all come about one step at a time as the government is drawn deeper and deeper in the quagmire it created.
The major limitation of the campaign to save this country's guns from the destructive registration system, is that such a campaign by itself can only take our community so far along the road to firearms self-sufficiency. If all we do is save guns, the total number of our guns will still dwindle over time.
Sooner or later, an effective way to provide for the competent repair of unregistered guns will have to be put in place. How do you repair, modify or adjust an unregistered firearm once it becomes contraband or illegal for you to possess?
The impact of C-68 on the legitimate arms trade in Canada has, in some respects, already been devastating to the firearms repair and servicing sector. The worst part is that what we have seen so far is just a foretaste of the rapid decline and eventual eradication of the legal firearms industry that we are going to see once this odious law takes full force and effect.
This development will impact on our community in two ways, apart from the fact that legitimate shops will no longer be around to supply the kinds of firearms that Canadians are willing to pay for.
First of all, we are going to lose the ready availability of unrestricted small parts and accessories, as the local shops that supply them are forced to shut down. Secondly, Canadian gunsmiths will have little option but to pack up and head south of the border, or sadly to make an unplanned and unwanted change of occupation.
On the other hand, there is nothing saying Canadians have to stand still while the federal government destroys yet another valuable, viable, and respected sector of the national economy.
Our gunsmiths are essential to the survival of our culture and our way of life. Just as much as any or all of our guns. Perhaps the people who most truly appreciate this are those who shoot most often, knowing as they do that firearms may be some of the most reliable mechanical devices ever built, but they are subject to incredible shocks, stresses and strains. Parts wear out, tolerances lapse, guns break. What are the options? What are you going to do? Buy a new gun every time one breaks or doesn't work properly?
There are at least two approaches to solve this problem.
One approach is to repair guns yourself. Consider though, why you don't do this now. Is it just for convenience sake that you use the services of a gunsmith? Or is it the realization that the attention of a skilled and knowledgeable technician is required to do this kind of work safely, accurately and reliably?
Still, given the talent, the tools and the training, many shooters could do repairs for themselves and their friends, and do a good job of it.
The problem though, is how to get from here to there. And that would still require qualified smiths to conduct the training and show you how to run the business aspects that even a hobbyist must know, such as parts sourcing and so on.
You might be surprised at the general level of interest in gunsmithing that exists just naturally and always will. Accordingly, a lot of people can be expected to pay what it is worth for conveniently bundled training packages. Especially when and if it comes to pass that there are no viable alternatives left in their community.
The upshot of this being, as our smiths are driven out of business by C-68, the resulting situation is going to create a burgeoning demand for qualified instructors to put together and teach basic, advanced and refresher courses tailored to what can reasonably be accomplished by the skilled hobbyist. Hand in hand with this would be the expanding opportunities in retail to supply tools, tool sets, parts, components and manuals to the growing numbers of part-time smiths and gun manufacturers.
Under these circumstances, not only would it be possible to blunt the government's attack on the firearms trades and services sector of your community; but to turn the situation around to your advantage by recognizing and developing the new opportunities and markets that are going to pop up as a result. All it will take is the natural ingenuity, optimism and innovation that all gunsmiths seem to exude, and the organized support of the community. Let's get rolling.
But we may not even have to do all that.
A second alternative is to develop a system of collecting firearms in need of repair or modification, and to deliver them in bundles to safe, protected locations where our gunsmiths can be made to feel secure and comfortable to do the work. This, of course, depends on the capability of your organization to harbour and protect these valuable members of the community, and to develop policies and plans that will ensure none of our existing firearms specialists go without secure and rewarding employment in their trade.
At this point it is fair to comment that many if not most conventional organizations have demonstrated they are not capable to undertake these kinds of tactical operations. There is nothing wrong with that. By and large these organizations do well what they do and we need them to do it. In strategic terms, each fulfills a vital role, whether that is political or legal or both. There is absolutely no way that we can win through if people support only one kind of organization and not the others.
However, many shooters are beginning to understand that a critical deficiency exists in our tactical component which the government fully intends to exploit, and that someday there might not be any option but to correct it. If the courts fail us in the same way the political system has failed, this country will be in it. The question is one of capabilities. The problem is that capabilities take time to develop. The key is to develop your capabilities with sufficient lead time to have them ready for when you need them.
Now begins the process to identify and develop the critical capability components that our community will need in order to preserve and protect the citizen's access to arms. And, lest anyone should mischievously or mistakenly try to spread confusion regarding the issue of our capability versus our intentions, let that be scotched. Clearly the difference is understood and appreciated by responsible and peaceful Canadians.
The first necessity is to make our own people understand that this development is not the preserve of wild-eyed revolutionaries, nor should that be, nor will that be allowed that to happen. Although, if some power does not act to change the course of events regarding the great social and political issues that have been raised by the legislation, then the amelioration of tactical deficiencies within the firearms community will be left as the only viable, realistic and secure alternative to watching the slow and agonizing death of our native way of life under a destructive and foreign-inspired regime in Ottawa.