I'm Travis Bader, and this is the Silvercore Podcast.
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Dan, thank you for coming back on the Silvercore Podcast.
I know we've been talking about this for a while.
It's unfortunate.
We're going to be talking about a bit of a bleak matter, but you always tend
to be able to shed a little bit of Ray of logic and reason on these things.
So I'm really, really excited to hear your opinion and hear your take on what's been
going on in Canada's firearms industry.
Always have your Travis.
So a lot's happened a lot's happened recently with the, the
handguns with the, um, the freeze.
I like how they call it a freeze.
It's a, it's very Canadian, very, uh, very Canadian.
Yeah.
We'll just get all chili up here.
We'll just put a bit of a freeze on the handguns.
A freeze implies.
It could thought at some point, but somehow I don't
think that's the intention.
Uh, and then, you know, Silvercore Club, we've been inundated with
calls from people and emails, people saying they're getting.
Information from some very reliable sources about a, uh, a possible
stopping of transferring of firearms prior to the freeze coming into effect.
And you've got some thoughts on that as well.
I'm hoping these are just rumors and I'd love to hear your two
bits on, on everything here.
Well, I guess to dive right into the thing, think isn't it got swept.
People are probably the most, um, interested or curious about, uh,
go back to the original groundwork.
Uh, we have bill C 21 and some conjoined regulations that have
been tabled in proposal format.
Um, what that means is there's the actual bill, which stipulates in very
clear language that when that bill passes, which means three readings
in the house, three readings in the Senate, Royal assent that no
individual will be issued a registration certificate for a restricted firearm
effectively, meaning you cannot get.
Another handgun.
Um, the regulations attached to it are a much shorter document and to
be very clear, cause a lot of calm confusion about regulations and OICs
and people discussing this stuff.
Regulations are passed by OIC.
Um, they are not law, they are laws, but again, a bill and a
regulation are two different things.
That's why we have the firearms act.
And then we have the firearms act regulations.
Um, regulations are just passed by OAC, which means there
are privy council document.
So it's, it's literally the, the little council around the prime minister's
office that author these, uh, we've seen a leaked copy of it from the parliamentary
library signed off by mark Amanda Tino.
That was tabled, um, on the Monday, I believe it was, uh,
interestingly that that document was actually authored on May 13th.
So you get an idea of the timeline here.
It's probably not as extended as people thought, the
regulations, the bills stipulate.
So you can't be issued a certificate.
The regulations stipulate that they will.
Approved transfers.
Now there's been a lot of confusion about the coming into force, these regulations.
Um, I've heard the rumors, a lot of them are pertaining to the notion that
the government will try and pass an emergency order of some sort I've heard it
referred to as an emergency order of her referred to as an emergency injunction.
Um, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't really understand either of those terms, but
I do understand regulations and bills.
I'm not really sure.
Um, what they're exactly planning.
They could obviously within government, per year, they can do whatever
they want with this sort of stuff.
They could OIC immediately a transfer and they could just call
CFOs and say, just stop doing it.
You know, um, they are either a federal employee or they work under
a federal mandate in every case.
So they do have the tools to do this.
Um, as a news guy, I got to refer back to just the plain old public
safety documents as fall of 2022.
And to explain why that was happening.
Um, parliamentary tabling requirements is what the public safety document refers to.
Preventing these regulations from coming into place immediately.
That's a reference to the standard process for regulations to pass, which
means a 30 day consultation period.
They tabled them.
There's actually a website where you can actually go and comment on them.
Um, It's it's great.
Probably travels to put a link to that there.
And when the regulations are posted you at 30 days to comment on them, usually, and
then after the 30 days they pass into law, but it just kind of automatically, there's
no sitting in the house, there's no readings or committees, nothing like that.
Um, why it was going to be falls cause there's only 20 days left
in the parliamentary calendar.
So we have 20 days, parliament would pro road for the summer
break and then 10 days in the fall.
And then those regulations be expected to pass into law sometime in October.
Um, unfortunately most of these are rumors are hinges around the notion that the
government is pretty displeased with the.
Um, pretty large increase in firearm sales to civilians
throughout these last few days.
Um, and maybe looking to quash that pretty much immediately, I will admit as
someone who works in the industry, I don't frankly understand why so many people
that work alongside me in this industry had the need to kind of poke their finger
right in the government's eye and say how we're selling a ton of handguns,
all of a sudden, uh, didn't seem wise.
Um, it's one of those situations where, you know, if the government shows
you their hand and they say, this is what we're doing, No work around it.
Don't this adversarial attitude is not always great.
And as far as the industry goes, I think it's also a little bit unprofessional.
Um, you know, if you were to consult, uh, any kind of professional public
relations firm or a consultant like that, they would tell, you know, don't,
don't go making a fight out of something that they're not trying to fight you on.
Just do what you can in the meantime, strategize, et cetera.
I mean, sun zoo would not say, yeah, just go stick your finger right in
the eye right away when you don't know what the hell is going on.
So I think for some people, it feels like a win.
Hey, look at we're winning screw.
You poke you in the eye, look at what we're doing, but maybe that's not the war.
It's the dumbest thing like that attitude.
It's just, it's so cost for industry.
And moreover it completely skips a very valid point, which is there, there has
been no increase in handguns in Canada, this, this massive surge in sales there
for two, all I hate to tell you this businesses, you bought these guns already.
Like these guns already.
When I do an interview with other media outlets and they say, has
there been a massive surge in gun sales, this stuff to the end users?
Yes.
And last week, but those guns already exist in Canada
and will be sold eventually.
Anyways, this is not, this is just stacking the sales
at a more rapid fashion.
It isn't, it doesn't represent an increase in firearms in Canada.
That should have been the messaging from day one that, you know, these are
not guns are being imported, et cetera.
And I think that would have probably been a smarter tactic to take,
uh, to really highlight, you know, kind of the play of the business.
And I mean, moreover, we have so little time with media to make our points.
Why waste a single minute saying things like Justin, Trudeau's the gun salesman of
the year that doesn't do anything for us.
It doesn't advance our argument.
It doesn't, it doesn't change a mind anywhere.
Um, maybe it makes people think poorly of Justin Trudeau if they really hate
guns, but it doesn't, it doesn't do us any favors to that kind of stuff.
It's again, just needlessly adversarial in an issue that's over
80 hyper-partisan, uh, we're much better off speaking to things like,
you know, this is a waste of resources.
Every customer is buying a gun has literally been checked that they are not
going to be a violent criminal every day.
Highlight those things.
Don't highlight.
Yeah.
I'm making a ton of money right now.
That just it's it seemed like it was in pretty poor taste in a lot of cases.
Yeah.
Pretty counterproductive.
Uh, so, uh, the rumor was 1400 Eastern time today, but from what I
understand, uh, I'm looking at the watch.
Now that's going to be in about 40 minutes and, but most likely not going to happen.
Uh, but the fact that that rumor is on the table.
I'm wondering where he gets his legs from.
And if there is some chatter in the back end, because I do know that the civil
servants will talk in the back end about things that they would like to see happen.
And they took call it a normative process.
I had to think like you and I talked about that one in the pack, smooth fires off.
So he says, politicians, they don't make the laws.
We make the laws and we do it through normative process and we'll
enact our policy in a certain way.
So that, uh, regulation follows.
Um, I guess if there is chatter going around, I wonder if people are feeling,
if it's just straight up rumors or people are feeling somewhat comfortable
in saying these things, because that's sort of on possibly on the docket.
No, I think this is.
So for me personally, just so people know from a news perspective, like my
typical process, either I need to speak to a source directly, so I can validate
that sources, uh, efficacy myself.
Um, and you know, that's, that's done me well in the last 10 years.
Uh, the other alternative is to try and find three sources.
Like if I can't get someone, that'll go on record.
Like if there's an RCP offices, I, you know, I've got this information,
that'll tell you, but I can't, I can't give you my name for
publication, then I'll say, great.
I need to hear from a couple of other people that you can direct
me to potentially, or I'll try and find them independently.
That's the best thing you can do is find the independent sources to confirm
that and say, look, this isn't for, I'm not going to publish your name.
You can be anonymous, but I need to know personally before I publish it.
So that's why we haven't reported on any of the rumors, because
I can't, no one's willing to substantiate this in any way to me.
But, um, on the other hand, when kind of judging the veracity
of these things, I do look for specifically, that's a really good.
Indicator I've found historically.
Uh, so a lot of times when, when, when an industry is trying to, like, for example,
let's just cut straight to the chase.
If this is the industry trying to push a room to sell a bunch of guns, they
would generally be pretty vague about it.
You'd hear all the others, probably something coming soon.
And you saw that initially there were people that were saying that like,
all this could happen immediate.
It could happen any day.
Well, governments don't do things on any day.
It is very planned out.
It is scheduled.
You name it.
Um, so those sorts of rumors are usually an indicator of someone's
opinion being expressed as fact.
But when you start to hear very specific rumors like today at 11:00 AM Eastern
time, that makes me very nervous because people tend not to when people
fabricate things, they automatically default to a very vague thing because
it makes it harder to get caught.
No one wants to say 11:00 AM.
They're going to ban these things because at 1105, you know,
they're full of crap, right?
I mean, we'll know now 35 minutes, but, um, it's, it's impossible to really
say for now I'm stuck in that situation where like, I hear the rumors, I can't
confirm them, but they do scare me.
And I don't think this is just the industry.
And moreover, I would point out to any consumer that, like, it's almost a
moot point because if it happens today at 11:00 AM Eastern, or it happens
in October, it's happening, this is, we are in the fight for basically
the future of handguns in Canada.
You can't pass it down to your kids.
You can't compete.
And if sick, you can't compete in cowboy shooting anymore from now on
that's that's the world we live in and we need to confront that reality
and start wrapping our heads around.
Well, how do we, how are we going to combat this?
If we want to get the ability to transfer handguns back, we already need
to be thinking that this is the law.
Uh, you know, don't think, oh, in the fall, we'll start addressing this problem.
And again, this is more relating back to that professionalism within the
industry and even within our advocacy of.
See the bigger picture, stop seeing trees start seeing forests and start acting
like we're in that forest, trying to find a path through it because we just keep
walking into tree after tree, after tree.
Well, you know, there there's always been, well, it doesn't affect me.
I just, I'm a shotgun shooter.
I'm a rifle shooter.
This is just handguns.
And the big buzz around all of this is handguns, but we're also
talking about five round magazine restrictions to all five things.
Right.
So that's, uh, you know, th th there's your lever action, your
30, 30, your cowboy action, uh, person, there's your hunters.
Um, this affects everybody in the sporting and firearms industry.
Absolutely.
Um, and I think that's, it's interesting.
I mean, again, thinking about the forest for the trees argument,
like that argument, that it doesn't affect me as a gain.
One of those myopic, you know, I just see a tree in front of me that says
they're painting handguns, and I'm not seeing what they're doing, which is.
You know, uh, basically I would say probably what five years ago, a liberal
party firearm policy became divorced from crime prevention and became more issue of,
um, political gain to be well, not more of, it became an issue of political gain.
This law, every one of the gun license very has very salient ideas on the
fact of whether or not this law impacts any kind of criminal activity.
And it obviously doesn't cause I mean, it's worded.
So as to be limited to those of us that have licenses, um, So you have
to just go like again, see the forest for the trees and go in reality.
I know they're not going after criminals.
So what is their objective here?
Well, they're clearly going after gun ownership, so they obviously have
the opinion that gun ownership is something that they need to combat.
Why do they need to combat on our ship?
Well, Hmm.
Probably not because they hate us.
This attitude, that gun owners are the victims.
It's not because they hate us.
I don't think Justin Shirley even knows who the heck I am.
They certainly doesn't know.
They don't care.
We're a means to go one way or the other.
Exactly.
And we are just a means to an end for these politicians for political
gain and to be very clear, it's the same thing for the conservatives.
We are the means to an end for them.
They see the counter-argument is potentially helping.
We need to kind of accept that own it and make it work for us.
We can't just keep, there's no point in having debates about the
validity or veracity of a law and its ability to impact criminal behavior
when it was never created for that.
Um, and it's really important to drive that home because until people
kind of understand that it, it feels like a fundamental thing that people
can't get your head around that man.
You're, you're not really going to get a lot of traction or, or
get to any kind of goals that you want to get to in this debate.
Hm.
So accept it and make it work.
Yeah.
Some people would say, so what you eat, you just roll over
and you just let it happen.
And know, for example, I think that's what you're saying.
No, to be very blunt.
No.
Um, but I also think it's one of those, you know, you can't
solve a problem without first, uh, recognizing you've got one.
And I think gun owners have for a long time now thought
that we have the wrong problem.
They think, we think that in many cases, we're up against the government that
is trying to stop crime that is trying to, you know, save lives, et cetera.
Just stop.
Just stop thinking that is, has anything to do with anything with their gunfire.
It's about winning urban ridings and creating a massive
ledge for the conservatives.
Because to be very blunt, this entire law, it won't affect
any kind of criminals life.
But what it will do is the next federal election, hopefully in 2023, because it's
government doesn't seem super stable.
Um, uh, a journalist will eventually stand up and he will ask the conservative
candidate of record, probably peer polio based on membership sales.
Are you going to give people back their hands?
Are you going to give people back their AR fifteens?
Are you going to put assault weapons in handguns, back in Canadian?
And he's going to have to answer that question because of this law.
That's what it's for.
This is, this is a setup is effectively what it is, and it wouldn't be surprised
to be honest, to see 21 is a law just completely fades away on the writ, um,
and is replaced by either a two-year or a less severe version thereof
based on what their internal polling shows them so that they can carry this
wage forward into the next election, just like they did with Erin O'Toole.
I mean, we all remember Aaronow tools, stammering from the . I don't know.
We, we won't let people have those, you know, they're, they're setting
that up again because it's a great wedge for the conservative party
to, uh, to have to deal with.
So if we don't accept that, if people don't see that as the problem, and
we continue to address it from this kind of moral, ethical perspectives,
and I like gun owners for you guys, I love you guys for that perspective.
Cause it's, it's what I'm like.
I, you know, justice, honesty, morals, integrity save lives, right?
Um, But unless you recognize that's not, we're up against, uh, it's a
bit like stepping into the ring and not knowing the rules of the game.
Um, you know, like if you walk into an MMA fight thinking that you're boxing
it, ain't going to go the way you plan.
Right?
So we need to have that attitude of, okay, we see what we're dealing with.
Let's deal with it.
And I think to be quite blunt, a lot of people dealing with this, they
think that there are solutions to be found in these judicial system.
This is not a judicial problem.
It's a political problem.
Um, there's been a ton of money poured into that, that an organization effort
that could have been put into the previous election, and maybe we wouldn't be faced
with this problem then, but recognize this is just a political problem.
Get politically active start engaging.
You don't even have to be a conservative.
I mean, this is the kind of thing where, what like 20 to 30% of the
NDP caucus resides in rural ridings.
They don't have a huge caucus right now.
So their rural caucus members have a pretty disproportionate level of
power over that particular party.
Now's the time to say, look, you, you support this.
You're out, we'll make it our mission, you know, turf Mark Hall and worked, take that
attitude basically to the streets and go, yeah, we're, we're going to make this a
political fight and we're going to win it.
Um, and I think that's what will actually happen.
I mean, until we do, the liberals will just keep doing this
because there's no punishment.
When you go risk versus reward, they pass a new gun law.
The reward is that they get a ton of headlines because as far as I'm
concerned, the media does seem to be sort of bought and paid for.
And this particular file, which we can talk about after.
Cause there's some interesting notes about that, but, um, they get the
rewards and there is no risk because we're not politically organized.
There's no, there's no like, Hey, gun owners are gonna take 23 seats from us.
If we pass this law, they don't worry.
Cause there there's been none of that.
So we're trying, like, I've been trying with gunboat for a few years.
We finally have some data that will be important.
I think in the next election, I'm trying to get it all sorted, but you
know, that takes money and time that as a small business, you know, I try
and get the strivers advertisers and I try and put that money out there,
but I've also got a mortgage to pay.
So, you know, we do what we can, but it's going to take something like that.
I think before, before we can get there, Canadians always
say, we want some kind of NRA.
I mean, very con controversial statement, but we definitely need to
have some kind of political action that we just aren't getting right now.
I agree.
And you know, just my personal opinion, watching what you're doing with
calorie, Meg, I know you have people helping, but I know you do the bulk.
You do a hell of a lot of lifting and a hell of a lot of work there.
The amount of change that you're able to affect individually, just
yourself, by being involved in the firearms industry and, uh,
setting up your own media platform.
Is amazing.
And I think if other people can kind of take a look at what one person can do, not
everyone has to be publishing a magazine.
They can get up on YouTube pretty quick and easy, or set up a podcast
or, you know, talk to their friends.
The, uh, I've got a podcast lined up with another individual.
I think you and I both know him.
Um, uh, Mr.
in, uh, Ontario one, man, and what he was able to do for that province.
I think if some of that messaging can come through, cause everyone looks and
says, well, where's our NRA, right?
What's the NFA CSSC uh, CCFR what are they doing for us?
I'll give them some money and we're done.
That's not how these things are one clearly.
No.
And I think, uh, I don't really understand that attitude of the, you
know, I'll give someone else about any and that'll solve my problems.
Um, cause it doesn't work yet.
Um, But I do think people do need to understand, like you have
a tremendous amount of power.
Like, for example, like if, if one person, if, if you just walked your MP's office,
make an appointment, say like, I'm going to sit down across the table from my
MP, when they've got their days back in that their constituency office make
an appointment, make them accountable.
They'll go back to their caucus meetings and they'll go, yeah, shit.
I've got angry people at my office.
And I don't like that, you know, um, they just don't deal with any of that though,
because the co-opting of our advocacy has gotten pretty severe at this point.
Um, and unfortunately it's also stuff like we used to have.
I mean, we still do, but it's not used to the same degree of the letter writing
machine that was used for a long time.
Um, unfortunately Dennis Young's passing and his ability to get a tips.
Uh, God, I wish I'd learned more about that, but like, you know, we've lost
some tools along the way that have not been replaced, uh, in terms of that
individual ability to empower people.
So, um, I think gun owners do need to recognize they have
individual power and use that.
Did Dennis really have any extra powers that any ordinary citizen doesn't already
have available to them other than.
Well, you got to pay five bucks and they've actually made it a lot easier.
Cause public safety aid tips used to be the sort of a tip that you had to
go through a whole separate process.
Now it's an online thing.
You just go online, select the department.
You want RCMP or public safety.
Those are the two that you'll always have for firearm stuff.
You pay your five bucks, you follow your thing.
Um, and lots of people should have dealt.
The problem is it does tie up the ATP process, what Dennis had.
And before anyone goes off to the ATO website and you just like,
give me all of the gun records.
Um, why did Justin Trudeau ban guns?
Um, they don't really answer responses like that positively.
No, they don't.
Um, they barely answer any responses positively, but Dennis, Dennis, his
expertise was knowing who to address them.
He had a very good idea of the organizational chart
for the relevant parties.
So one, one of the difficulties with getting any tips, it's just figuring
out how you're supposed to get the information from, for example,
I had a, I got an, a tip back.
This is a very long time ago where regarding the 10 22 magazine debacle,
uh, to go back that far, um, there was a PDF attached to an email that I received.
The file name was something about dual use magazine used, blah, blah, blah.
I tried to get that.
I sent that back to the RCMP and said, I'm looking for a copy of this PDF.
And I had that exact file name right there because the actual PDF was that included
in the ATO a tip they're responsible.
We don't own that document because that document was authored by the Ontario CFO.
So I had to then put an tips through the Ontario provincial group to get that who
then just didn't respond to me whatsoever.
But that's what Dennis was good at.
Is he understood.
He could see that and go right away.
Okay.
That's an Ontario CFO doc.
I need to ATIP them on the, to pursue it because the other thing is you also
have to be tenacious because I mean, I've been doing this 10 years now.
I have some credibility as a print media guy.
That's been doing this for a long time.
I've been in journalism since 2003.
Um, I still have to send, like, I can show you email chains where I
have demanded documents from the RCMP five times where I say, I know this
exists and they go, no, it doesn't.
I say, I know it does because I've seen the other versions of it.
Give it to me.
No, we don't have that.
And it literally five times going through five different ranks
of RCMP communications officer before I get a tersely word email.
Oh, here's that file you're looking for.
And it's attached and it's usually formatting.
It's usually either heavily redacted or it's given to me in the most
useless format possible where it's like, oh, here's a pilot data.
Enjoy the next three weeks of your life sorting it.
You're kind of like, cool.
Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
Yeah.
We talk about an adversarial city.
And as firearms owners, we definitely feel that.
I mean, it's, I, it is an adversarial system.
There are civil servants who I speak with in the firearms program.
There's some great people who work there.
There's also some who like world people.
If you get people complaining to you every single day, you're going
to start getting your backup.
They start getting their backup.
They start, uh, Forming opinions and those opinions will affect the disclosure
of work or how fast they'll do the work or how it's it's human nature.
Right.
He could an ice cream shop and treat them like garbage, and you're probably
not going to get a big scoop ice cream.
Right.
And I think so much of this is so politicized too.
There's there's serious concerns amongst the civil civil service
that, um, accidentally releasing information on as opposed to, um,
basically releasing anything around something that is so partisan.
Um, and again has been dealt with to be quite Frank.
So unprofessionally in many cases, uh, we'll come back to bite them in the ass.
Um, and that's not an unfair assumption for many of them to
make, to be very clear because you know, the gatekeepers at the top.
R R quasi political.
They're not political appointments, but they're they're right next to
politicians that if something, if a, if an information officer releases
a file to me and I publicize it as a normal news, article that somewhere
up there, someone's going to go, what the frig, you know, who sent this out?
How did that get out there?
That was never supposed to be released.
So they have serious concerns about that, um, on they're founded, but, um, it's
just, you know, we were supposed to have a government that's opened by default.
That's the famous phrase that Trudeau said in 2015, and yet,
as far as we're concerned, and this is, this is media wide.
This isn't just gun owners.
This is all media.
It is, it has never been less transparent.
I mean, holy crap guys, like the ATP backlogs are two years now, in some
cases like I've gotten documents released to me pertaining to Beowulf magazines.
And where like, Bob.
Still worked for the cops.
Like this is, this is going back to a guy who has retired.
Like it's, it's comical, how slow it's all gotten.
Um, and they blame it on, you know, too many people asking for a, and they
take forever to process because they are processing them so diligently to
make sure that everything that could be problematic has been redacted.
Uh, instead of just putting it out there, which in this case, you know, like this is
a great example of like an entire industry of 45,000 people is stressing like crazy.
Cause no one knows if they can move inventory, you know, individuals that
have tons of money wrapped up in hand guns, and maybe you want it to sell them
to someone are now going, like, I don't know, I can't get anyone on the phone.
The firearm center doesn't even answer the phone right now.
We feel very, there's a term for it.
Feel very othered where you've got society and culture and,
and there's us and we're others.
Uh, we aren't given the same respect.
And I think there's, again, there's reasons that we feel like that, but
I mean to go to the media stuff, cause I want to get that into.
Yeah, I attend a lot of these media briefings now.
Like I did spend a lot of time away from work cause I was dealing
with basically the cancer scare.
Um, but now I'm back at it and I go to these media briefings, especially now.
Cause they're so relevant and.
When I'm in them, the outlets that attend are not, they're not
sycophantic towards the government.
Like the questions they ask are not things that, to be quite blunt on
C 21, most of the questions were, how does this affect criminals?
Um, the answers did not convince anyone in the room that it did.
And what concerns me a lot is that I'm seeing coverage come out.
That doesn't reflect what we were discussing in those briefings.
You know, we have journalists from big outlets going like trust.
Yeah.
And I don't that one concerns me more, more than most things.
Cause I mean, I think gun owners are a Canary in a coal mine.
I've referred to us like that numerous times.
I think media is a bigger Canary cause when your media starts to collapse,
you got big problems with transparency.
You know, media would normally, their self-interests would be best served by
being as critical of government as they can, because that's what gets eyeballs.
Like when Justin Trudeau stands in front of the media scrum and
says, it's misinformation, we have to watch out for misinformation.
When someone asks whether or not this gun bill actually impacts criminals,
it would be better for journalists and outlets in Canada to say the prime
minister is lying because that headline, everyone remembers the globe headlines.
The story in the globe is false.
Well, you can't buy advertising like that.
The global mail is probably made more money off of that headline.
Then Lord knows what in a long time.
And it, it bothers me greatly because I don't understand it.
When I hear journalists from outlets, say like, Hey, this doesn't seem like it's
going to impact criminals whatsoever.
And then the article that comes out from that outlet is basically a press
release for batim from the government.
I'm not, I don't know what's going on between those two things.
And I get concerned when I start to see.
Corporations or people act in a manner that I can't attribute
to their own best interests.
And it's, it's concerning.
It's really concerning for me.
And why do you think that is money lazy?
They're furthering their own political interests?
I don't know.
And I mean, it's, I've been thinking a lot about over the past few days to be
really honest because it's, like I said, I work in media, um, to be honest, I
always think of myself as working more immediate than in the gun industry.
Cause I have a media company first and foremost, we just happen to
report on guns pretty much all the time, but I have noticed.
In thinking about it a lot.
I'm not sure why.
I know that a lot of people say it's the media bail out and I'll
say this, like, we get a grant from the government federal guard.
We've been getting it since Harper days.
Like it's designed to help Canadian outlets compete against us outlets
cause newsflash guns and ammo makes a little bit more money than we do.
Um, and they're not exactly relevant to Canadians.
So back in the, I think it was 1974, the government said, Hey, you
know, let's try and help Canadian.
So, um, it's been great to us.
Unfortunately, it's diminishing significantly in the next
few years, but that's life.
Um, I don't think it's that though, because those grants, I can tell
you, they are completely, I mean, look at us rugged magazine and they
give us a grant it's there are no strings attached to those, the $600
million tax one, there are strings attached to, because you have to be.
An accredited news outlet.
We didn't just in case we didn't do that because that seems like an, almost like
a continuous eligibility screening that gun owners get, it's sort of similar
for media outlets, where you kinda have to like prove to the government
that you're a legit media outlet.
And I worry about the impact of that, because that works from a publisher
level down through the editorial board.
Um, so basically management on downwards and I worry about the ability of
management to steer, stuff like that.
But I don't, I'm very reticent to blame that because I
don't work at those outlets.
And I'm fairly certain that when someone sits down and writes a story
and files it with their editor, I'm fairly certain that the journalists, the
editor that reads it and the person that posted on the website are not being.
They're not being given marching orders from management.
Like that would be media is not that well-funded.
And that would be an incredible amount of micromanagement that would cost way
more than the government is even paying.
So I, I don't really know my concern.
I guess the reasons that the two things that I can come around with is that
like it's easy, it's less risky, which these days journalists don't really
want to take a big risk because if you're wrong, it'll absolutely destroy
your career in your future prospects.
The second thing is we've really seen, even though there's a lot of money
rolling into it, we've really seen a gutting of journalism in this country.
And what I mean by that is you don't see a lot of middle-aged journalists anymore.
Um, you know, Broke off.
Rather those guys that we all look up to is like, you know, proper
newsmen, that gritty guys, they don't really exist in a big way.
A lot of the journalists now are either in their late twenties, early thirties,
and then the second they get to a certain sort of level within media.
They usually will take a job as a marketing consultant.
Um, uh, you know, like if things are really sideways with the gun industry
and there's no way that caliber can make money, I'll just go back
into working in marketing and cars.
Probably that'll just be the easiest transition.
Cause that's, those are the kind of resumes that they're looking for.
And we see that a lot and I worry about it because when I'm in
these media conferences, I can be.
Adversarial more than most.
Um, I know Brian Lilly can too.
God bless him.
Um, but we're a bit of the minority.
And I wonder if it's just because you know, I'm coming in on 40, I kind of have
realized like, they're just people too, but when you're a 28 year old journalist
with maybe four years experience under your belt, you're getting close to the
circles of power for the first time.
You're finally getting access, the power dynamic isn't the same.
Um, and if they peace out at 32 to go work for Lou Lemon's marketing
department, um, we don't get the 35 year old journalist that comes out
and goes, nah, you guys are wrong.
Hang on.
That's not the answer to the question, answer the question, please, if
you don't, you lose those people.
Right.
So I worry, I sort of see that as more of the, the problem with it,
um, than any kind of government funding stuff that said, I do think
that that tax credit thing and the, the eligibility and the government
determining who is a media outlet.
That is hugely problematic and I'm a little bit ashamed to be even tangentially
attached to any kind of industry that you know is supposed to report on.
I I'm of the opinion that no journalist should be friends with politicians.
You can't be friends with the people that you cover.
You should always be free to have that ability to be
critical as needed all the time.
Um, uh, and I'm not seeing that now.
I mean, especially with so many journalists go into
working for the government.
That's another problem.
Yeah.
I agree.
You know, you used the term othered and I I've heard that before.
Yes.
There, there is that, that other feeling people say, you know, if somebody likes
you, they're going to like you, if they don't like you, there's nothing
you're going to say or do that's really going to change your mind.
And the more that you try and protest, the more just ingrained in them gives
them reasons to further dislike you.
Um, I'm wondering.
I sometimes I look at the industry and I look at the, uh, firearms owners
and the sporting, uh, industry after a certain point of being othered and
protesting and saying, but we're fine.
And we're again, we're your neighbors.
And it doesn't seem to be the solution here.
And one observation I made, uh, recently was, uh, Ian Runkle.
Ian's got a, uh, he's a lawyer.
He's got a YouTube channel, very popular.
I think he had about a month or so ago.
Um, 50, 60,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel.
And he reports on things that he finds interesting, which would
be, uh, weapons related laws and firearms knives, and, and, and
things that, that peak his curiosity.
But fast forward to that, After he started talking about Johnny Depp and Amber heard
and giving a legal perspective on this and his views on videos went from anywhere
from 20, 30,000, 30,000, 30,000 views on a video to like one point something million.
And he's got over 200,000 subscribers now.
And I'm wondering if the industry as a whole would be well-served to diversify
themselves just a little bit and get themselves out of that other category,
because now he's got a broader platform of, uh, viewers and subscribers who
just might also hear some of his eye content on firearms and knives.
And wondering if we would be better served doing that.
It's hard to say, cause there's a couple of factors at play.
Um, one of them that has to be addressed is quite literally, and this is, I,
I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist because there are a few
around in this particular industry.
There is the issue of social media algorithm and the deck
being stacked against you.
So I also, yeah, shadow penny.
I also do some motorcycle safety advocacy here in BC because
I'm a pretty avid motorcyclist.
And I was shocked.
I mean, the first few times that I started putting stuff out on Facebook,
um, they were, let's just put it in perspective, like nowhere near the
effort that I put into caliber stuff.
Cause it's my kind of volunteer stuff on the side to help bring my
soul back to somewhere that I enjoy.
Um, but my God, the reach by comparison, uh, wasn't saying it's so much
easier to reach people on social.
When you're not talking about something that social media algorithms
are actively trying to repress.
Um, I see it on caliber all the time.
We've actually seen huge reductions.
So many companies in the firearm space have seen huge reductions on Facebook.
It is, it is nightmarish trying to get gun centric content
out on Facebook at this point.
Um, that's why we always tell people, hit the share button.
Cause if you don't hit share, and even if you do like I've done the math on
some of my biggest posts that have 80 120,000 people reached, um, even there,
the shares are like, Facebook is assuming a bunch of you have like 20 friends
and it's like, Hmm, have you ever met someone on Facebook that has 20 friends
on Facebook that isn't a scammer trying to sell you something on marketplace?
No, like that's not how it works.
Right.
So Ian definitely tapped into, uh, realizing like that's the way to go.
I think a lot of gun media could do that too.
I think that the biggest thing that gun owners could probably do to stop being.
On a broad sense.
Um, cause obviously with social media algorithms that gets into specific
strategy delivery of communications and the methods by which you do it from a,
from a larger purchase, rather tactical on a strategic level of how, what do
we talk about to stop being othered?
Um, first and foremost, stop saying, we're the victims of these laws?
Like that's the, it just, it's just not like, yes, you feel like a victim.
Yes.
We are technically victims because you can't buy and sell a handgun.
And that sucks.
But like, it's talk about missing the point, you know, like it's like
talking about the Titanic sinking and being like man icebergs, right?
Like they're so big.
And you know, like you kinda like, people will be like, what, like that
at iceberg was a real victim, you know, it was just sitting there and then this
boat came along and you know, like, you know, we're kind of doing that now.
It's.
Bring it, uh, the other big thing is anyone that's been around and there's
fewer and fewer of us that have been around since the long gun registry
debate, bring it around to a topic.
People can freak and relate upon because it's like I've done the videos.
And I see the metrics at the same time.
If you talk about, you know, how I can't sell any more handguns and that
sucks, blah, blah, blah, very few people care because it's really just
2.3 million of us that are gun owners.
If you want to get down to the brass tax of it over 75% of us
with pals are over the age of 45.
They represent a total of 18% of social media traffic.
You know, when you actually break down the numbers, 2.3 million people,
75% of them are that age, only 18% of those are on social media.
You don't get a big number of people.
Um, so first off recognize that like gun owners are what they are and
they're going to be met in person.
They're going to be a gun shops are going to be in gun shows
are going to be a gun clubs.
You're not going to be able to access those people.
Even if we just say, Hey.
Our core group of Powell holders to be more politically active.
Uh, you're not going to get there by going on social media.
You got to take that realistic view.
If you're trying to reach out beyond gun owners and make the argument to
say, Hey, look, I'm a gun owner, and I want you to care about my plight.
Uh, start by making it our plate.
Say things, instead of saying stuff like, Hey, like I can't shoot my hands anymore.
Talk about how many resources.
I mean, I'll be honest.
I got a 19 month old son who have now just figured out children are just
massive vectors of disease, like lovable, but very great at getting you sick.
Um, Days after and been doing interviews like this all week, talking about the
resources that are going into this, watching politicians burn hundreds
of thousands of dollars an hour, talking about this stupid handgun ban.
And then I go down, I gotta spend four hours in emergency because it
takes that long to get a doctor in an emergency situation, you know, bring
these issues home, start saying like, yeah, you know, like they're talking
about handgun bans while gas prices are going through the roof, you can't afford
groceries and no one can find a freaking.
Like a good old medical doctor to say nothing of the vast quantity
of people that are gonna need a psychologist after all this COVID stuff.
Um, make those the issues.
Cause those that is the issue.
It's not disingenuous.
It's not passing the buck.
It's not trying to circumvent the gun issue.
It's the same issue.
I keep telling people, government has one tool in its toolbox and that's money.
That's all it has.
If a government goes bankrupt, it ceases to function.
There's no law.
There's no government.
There's no order because it all works off money because they pass a law.
They got to pay a bunch of parliamentarians to meet,
discuss the law, pass it.
Then they got to pay a bunch of cops to enforce it.
And I got to pay a bunch of judges to pass that law in courtrooms at a
bunch of jailers to put people in jail.
If they break it, it's all money.
It's the same money that they could be using to reopen.
Reopen.
I mean, God knows they couldn't, but tranquil medical hospital over
in Kamloops been closed for 50 years, reopen something like that.
Build God, God blow minds, build a new mental health facility.
It's all the same money.
And I mean, I get really pissed off because I live in downtown Colona to
put in perspective for those that don't know, it's a great little Summertown.
I highly recommend visiting.
Um, but we do have a little bit of a crime problem growing here.
Um, there are homeless people and addicted people.
I can't walk more than two blocks from my house.
So they'll come in and across an encampment and I'm starting to confront
the issues of, well, when my son learns to speak and he starts asking, well,
what does that guy putting in his arm?
How do you answer that question?
I'd rather solve that problem.
Like when Trudeau stands it from a microphone and says, oh, can you
just worried about getting shot?
No, they're not.
They're worried about, they're not worried about getting shot in
a grocery store, the rural paying the price on the grocery store.
That's the reality.
And as gun owners, we need to stop talking about the freaking
guns because no one cares.
We care.
Sure.
But no one else does.
And it's, I'll be Frank it's asinine to expect Canadians to care because they've
gone through the same two years of COVID stuff we have, they're worried about
their mortgage going up too, because the interest rates they're worried about
putting gas in their truck, they're worried about the grocery prices.
They're worried about trying to find a doctor for their family.
You come in and you say, Hey, worry about me too.
They don't have the mental space for it.
And we shouldn't expect them to, because it's unrealistic to, if you asked
Canadians to care about it, because at the same time, it'd be like going to gun
owners and going, like you should also care about the, and to be very clear, gun
owners should care about these things.
You should care about the addiction crisis.
You should care about the pending homelessness crisis.
You should care about the lack of clean water on first nations reserves.
You should care about all these things, but if you care about these things
all the time, you will crater your mental health, like never before.
So we can't ask that of people.
We gotta just say like, Hey look, you know, like the problems you're facing
are because of the fact that keep coming after people like us, instead of
addressing the greater issues, because those issues are hard trying to get
their poll numbers up by banning guns.
And I think that's the way to get through this.
Other thing to get back to your big questions is we keep othering
ourselves because they keep basically setting us up to be othered.
And we just don't, we just take the bait every time it's like Charlie brown
and the football man, like they queue up the gun ban and we just go running
straight towards it, like, you know, yeah.
Gun salesman of the year.
And then when the football leaves wait, what, like how, like that's a surprise.
It's not a surprise guys.
Like, come on and see the forest for the trees.
Pull back, take yourselves out of this, put yourself in your neighbor's shoes.
Think about what they'd say, you know?
Yeah.
Excellent, excellent message.
Uh, you mentioned earlier that you don't think the judicial
route is a route to fix this.
Uh, maybe it helps.
And I agree with you.
I mean, I'm, I, I deal with, uh, law firms all the time and I, you and I are both
dealing on a couple of matters as well.
Just, um, uh, for the benefit of the gun owners, should they be successful?
Perhaps they're useful as a delaying tactic.
Would that be about it even then?
I don't even see that as, I mean, I don't,
it, this is all my opinion as someone who is not a lawyer and who tries to
avoid lawyers at all costs, uh, quite literally, um, the problem with did
judicial perspective is it could be a delay, but that would only assume
that did judicial branch would deliver a verdict to us at the same time as
delivered to the government, what was more realistically going to happen?
It would be that, you know, the government got word from the crown because the crown
is who they're fighting in this case that the crown would go, Hey, like it's not
looking like it's going to go your way.
And the government goes, okay, well, we'll just legislate.
I mean, that whole key component in the law that says you can't pass this
OIC because, uh, they're sporting guns.
You know, that's what, so much of this hinges around.
They'll just legislate that away.
Amended out of firearms, act the governor and council can determine whatever gun to
be, whatever they want the end, you know, pass that with six readings you're done.
And like it's, that's where it's, it feels good.
It absolutely does.
And part of me does want to say, we need to oppose this stuff in every way.
We can't, including by using the judicial tools, section 74, hearings
would have been a great way because it would have again, making our
problem, other peoples problems.
It would have made the courts tie up like crazy, and the government would
have been forced to confront that issue.
Just like to be honest, right now we hear from some gun clubs saying, look, we're
going to bar federal, uh, range rentals.
So that RCMP CVSA, corrections, that sort of people can't qualify on private ranges.
Um, it's making our problem, their problem.
And I do support that in a lot of ways.
And I do think that the judicial method.
It's an option to make our problem a bigger problem for the government.
But I think that the big issue with it is it's, it's, it's sucked all
the air out of the room completely.
It's seen as the, the only way forward.
And unfortunately it was never a way forward.
It, it was at best a delay tactic.
It might've gotten our guns back for a little while.
Um, but as we're all learning now, like courts move molasses,
slow, and governments are capable of moving substantially faster.
Um, so when they've got the inside track on knowledge from the crown and the
ability to respond faster than we can.
You know, you're, you're in an asymmetrical situation there that, you
know, in any kind of conventional logic, you'd go, like don't get in that fight.
Um, so I don't, it's not the way I would've gone.
Um, it's why to be totally blunt.
So why we haven't reported on it a ton, because I do feel like it's just
kind of, whatever happens with it.
The legislation will probably take precedence.
Um, and I do hope that as we lead up to, uh, this next election, hopefully
20, 23, because minority government.
On average, last 450 days were 180 days or so into this one already.
Um, and for everyone to take again, context, we're 180 days into a government
that on average, last 450 and neither leader of the largest parties can attend
events like Jagmeet Singh gets shouted out of and attend an event attended entirely
by seek people and claims as racism and Trudeau can't attend an event in Burnaby.
I believe it was without getting showed it down to the point where
they say it's a security risk.
And recognizing that doesn't seem like the most stable situation for
governments to be going into, especially when we're going to be facing at the
end of the summer per roadman likely higher than expected interest rates
higher than expected inflation rates.
Lord knows what coming out of Ukraine and Russia.
They're our neighbor too guys, like let's be real clear, like, uh, there
are Chinese jets that we're now learning about that are interdicting
our Aurora aircraft in the Arctic air space to distances of 20 feet.
Like we have big problems here.
Um, when they come back in the fall, the problems that government faces
will probably be much bigger than any of the problems are currently facing.
Um, so whether or not this government holds a whole lot longer than
fall or spring is anyone's guess I personally don't think it'll last
much longer than spring of 20, 23.
So people already gotta be thinking in that, like we have this problem,
like I keep saying, we know these guns are gonna get banned.
The th the transfer is gonna freeze.
Magnatune has even said that the ban isn't off the table, so maybe we'll
add them to the buyback and then do the buyback thing at the end of the year.
Again, two year amnesty means that even if they start the buyback at the end of
the year, which they've talked about.
Unless they rescind that to your amnesty, uh, which I don't think they will.
Cause there'll have to be a compliance period.
They can't just say like, okay, October 1st, the gun buyback starts October 1st.
The amnesty ends because like what they want a few hundred thousand
people are now with the handguns, hundreds of thousands of people
giving their guns in, in one day.
So there will be a, an amnesty period there.
Um, start thinking about that election, start getting involved there.
Like if, if you just can't bring yourself to volunteer with the conservative
party, find the writing, like in your writing, go talk to the other people
and be like, look, I'm here, I'll help.
But you got to change your stance on this issue because like it is
screwed up and it's not even about me.
It's about the, the amount of resources that you are letting this
issue consume at a time when we desperately need them in other avenues.
Like more people died today of overdoses in this country that
have been shot in a mass shooting in the states pretty much ever.
So like, let's just get over this whole guns of the issue thing.
Like people that die from overdoses are people too.
They don't want to die.
It's not intentional.
They're called drug poisonings for a reason.
It's not an overdose, not intentional.
They get the wrong thing.
They stick it in their body and then they die.
And no one that's someone's kid that's someone's brother, they don't
deserve to die any more than to be quite honest, that we always refer to
these older gang bangers to get shot.
It's still a tragedy.
We should not want these kids shooting at each other with guns.
Like we have to take that holistic perspective to our national health
and our national safety, um, start getting involved in that stuff.
Now, if you, if you do see the conservative the way forward and like by
God do it, I mean, the fact that IPSec Canada and IPSec BC and all these groups,
like they should be like the guys that do them, like, how are they not the
chief door knockers, every election?
Like that was it that like every election rolls around and the cowboy action
shooters, the lipstick shooters, the local gun clubs are like, how are they?
Not even like, they, they should be hosting the conservative party
candidate and the writing and being like, yeah, we've got the 4,000 members
we'll go out and knock doors for you.
We'll go put literature up, like.
You're starting to see in this now gun owners, I'm speaking
to you guys, you're starting to see what happens when you don't.
I have said a few times a little bit, probably not publicly, but like gun
owners are getting what they deserve.
We, as a country are getting what we deserve.
We too many Canadians were complacent in the last few elections.
Too many Canadians did not take a hard look, even in 2015.
I mean, I was one of those guys that was trying to buy a house.
Me and my friends in 2015, when prices started to do this in Vancouver.
And I mean, even then I had friends of mine saying, oh, Trudeau's
going to drive housing prices down.
And I'd say, have you read the policy?
It's all about rental income.
He just wants cheap rents.
And if rents go down, the value of owning a rental property goes up.
Like, it's just, if they're going to subsidize rent for people that
can't afford it and you are a lamp.
Well, that's the best tenant you've got.
Cause they've got a government check coming, but you can't,
they can't skip that check.
The government sent it to you.
So I kept saying to guys like, look, no, it's going to drive prices up.
And no one known to be able to, to honest, no one listens.
This is, this is what happens when you don't stop being complacent.
Start taking some personal agency, read the policies on your own goddamn self.
Stop, listening to what other people tell you about them and take action, go to your
gun club and say, Hey, we really should be volunteering with these candidates because
we need to affect change this time.
Cause if we don't win this election, it's over.
Like that's it.
If the liberals win again in a month, even a minority, as
we've now seen it, won't matter.
Just this will be, if you own a handgun right now, you'll
be the last person to own it.
The end, when you die, it'll go into a smelter period.
There's no.
Other answer here because one more liberal majority is that that's, it it's over.
Like they'll pass the laws and furthermore, it'll move us so far
away from this being a normal Canadian pursuit that no conservative party
candidate will come back to it.
There's already questions about whether or not a conservative party.
We see it already.
John Sharay feels totally comfortable running as the leader of the conservative
party will saying he will support Trudeau's ban on assault, style weapons.
That's where the conservative party finds itself already.
It's been like seven years.
Imagine what a few more we'll do, right.
It'll be over.
So I'm a little bit heated now because admittedly like, yeah.
Where are you guys all the time is one of those people that has
door-knocked and volunteered.
I can tell you, I don't see anyone showing up in an episodic sweater.
Every time I go door knock there's like me and 40 old people.
Literally that's what it is, is me.
And like geriatric people who frankly like as a young guy, I look around and be like,
where are all the other young people here?
Like if this lady is in a wheelchair and she's rolling door
to door, where am my gun owner?
But.
They're all able-bodied, you know, like it's it's insanity.
So I think gun owners got to start doing that.
You know, if you want to say you are the gun lobby, be the freaking gun
lobby, you know, step up very well said.
So with the, the current tabling of, of C 21 here, it's going
to have to reach Royal assent.
You've talked about the process that has to go through there.
Um, there's a likelihood that will never go through, but the likelihood that
it will be dropped altogether, in my opinion, is slim to none with the degree.
I think everything that anyone needs to know about that is simply the fact
that we've already seen a bill of and holy crap, there's another one.
And like, what do you think we'll call it the third one, like, you know, um,
and the last one wasn't this bad, right?
The last one was, it didn't include a handgun freeze.
It was, uh, potentially a.
Provincial or municipal handgun ban.
And now it's a national handgun freeze.
Well, you know, let's to connect the dots to your people.
If you project like those old, you know, like what's the next thing in the
sequence, duh, a national handgun ban.
So I expect what we'll see is this is what I think just offhanded.
This is just an opinion.
There is no, I have no sources on this is just kind of the I've
spent 10 years watching this.
I'm not that great at prognosticating what this particular government can do.
I'll I'll admit that because I did not see this freeze coming that again.
I don't think anyone did.
Um, also too, this government does some weird stuff.
A lot of times that are just make it really hard to predict.
Um, what I actually think they're going to do is to see 21 we've already seen,
like the Friday, the stats Canada report came out saying handgun crime is the
biggest issue and all that kind of stuff.
And then the weekend was dominated by the Canadian press article that went
through global CTV, CBC, you name it.
They all had the exact same verbatim article about how
handguns are the problem.
And then lo and behold, Monday, we get this national.
I expect they'll keep banging on that gun drum, um, throughout the
election because they see this as key to their electoral math.
That's how they get to a majority by going through Toronto and Vancouver
or him and I were a minority government in this case, probably.
Um, I think the problem is that they're going to.
When the rate drops and this all dies, uh, on the RIT cause any, for anyone
that doesn't know any legislation that has not passed when an election
drops just dies, it doesn't pause.
It just dies has to be reintroduced at the next sitting of parliament
because the government turns over.
Obviously I expect that they're going to use and the vilification of handguns and
the continued sort of, um, misinformation of, and displacement of legal gun owners
for criminals and saying, hang on to the problem, hanging out with the hub.
The problem for the government with handguns is a buyback of
handguns would be quite expensive.
There's like 1.2 million of them out there.
Um, and they probably average about 800 to a thousand dollars a piece.
You do the math on that.
It's a really big bill and that'd be really hard to justify even
for the liberal government that throws money around like it's.
So I think what they're probably going to try and do is use this built to
vilify us and handguns, um, effectively enough so that when they run the
next campaign, they are able to say, um, we're going to ban handguns, but
we're not going to buy them back.
That's my concern.
Uh, they have to get some social license.
They probably have to do a little bit of marketing work between here
and there to get to the point where Canadians will be okay with that.
But I think, uh, it's probably not entirely beyond the pail to,
to say that that's their goal.
I mean, again, the goal here is not stopping crime.
We all know that.
So what is the goal political gain.
Okay.
How did what's and you code on that road and you start to go, okay.
Well, political gain will eventually mean they're probably going to be.
Demanding a handgun ban the advocates that they listened to so
closely are demanding it already.
So they're trying to get to that goal and they're gonna go, okay,
well, we need to get to the point where we can ban handguns, but
we can't afford to ban handguns.
How do we ban handguns without having to buy the back?
Well, we make them all look really bad.
First kind of like if someone was to say like, oh, we're going to ban cigarettes.
The government would never say we're buying them back.
People go, they're unhealthy for you.
And they'll give you cancer.
We're not buying them back.
You should've bought them in the first place.
That will be the exact same sort of statements.
They'll make one handguns.
They kill people.
There's no reason to own them.
You've never should have bought them in the first place.
And I think when you hear those phrases, it's not that far
from what we'd expect to hear.
Right.
So that's where I sort of expect them to take C 21.
This is the test balloon to see where that goes.
Um, they're anchoring.
Exactly exactly.
Um, I wished that I could have some faith in the notion that if there was enough
pushback, the government would go, okay, well, hang on, whoa, this is too much.
And it's not obtaining our goals anymore of either political
gain or preventing crime.
So they just back off, but that's for real, say, I'm not great at
predicting these liberals because that's what a rational person would do.
They don't seem entirely rational all the time.
I mean, Marco Mendocino himself.
Let's also just point this out.
He's likely going to have less than 4,000 votes separating him from
his next rival in his own writing.
There were like 80,000 electors in that writing.
When you do the math on that, it's not a huge chunk of people.
And here he is gladly, happily being the face of this ban.
Seemingly not recognizing the flank on the political front and opens up to him.
Like, I don't know what kind of gun clubs are in his writing, but like,
or gun clubs here in Vancouver, he got two gun clubs and you're riding
that's over 4,000 people right there.
If those gun clubs all go vote on mass.
Well, and that's what we'll be trying to do with gunboat is, is
trying to get that strategic voting and understand it a bit better.
But, um, that's where, you know, if we can start to change the risk and
reward, you know, just like you would with any kind of training, anything,
children, dogs, you name it, risk reward, you know, and you just gotta make
sure that the politicians understand.
I think that's how we get out of this partisan loop.
As gun owners too, is, is to take our own political power and keep it ourselves.
Don't don't allow it to be co-opted for the last few years.
I've definitely noticed a lot of the gun organizations do not represent
gun owners to the politicians.
They represent politicians to gun owners.
They, they we've seen it.
I mean, the worst example of it was, um, oh, Maxine burdensome hate for this.
I don't care.
I mean, people can hate who cares.
Um, Maxine, Bernie is the best example of it, right?
He, he was represented to gun owners as the savior and when that
failed, we now have to deal with the fallout of that in the form of the.
You know, because he got, he was given a massive platform for his gun policy.
Um, and instead of going to going like, you know what, start delivering
and we'll start talking, you know, um, politics is always a little bit of a
give and take, but for a long time, I think gun owners have been giving
a lot more than they've been taking, especially from the conservative party.
I mean, an arrow tool is a great example.
I mean, that guy, his campaign manager was a former lobbyist for the NFA.
Like, and he's the guy that turns around and says, no, I'm not going
to reverse the AR 15 ban that's that kind of blew my mind, you know?
So.
It's great to be nice to people.
And we definitely should be nice to politicians that want to be nice to us.
But if, you know, as everyone always talks about it, it's so common now in
the quote unquote masculine blog world to talk about, you know, if you are
not a dangerous man, you're not really, if you don't have teeth, you can't
really do much, you know, you can be kind, but unless you have a little bit
of power and you're willing to exert it yourself, what's the point, right?
Um, I think gun owners kind of need to recognize that too.
We got to stop being, you know, please are going to have another, instead of
saying, no, we've got 2.3 million people that have pals, we can access them.
They've got significant others, kids, friends, uncles who are
sympathetic to their plight.
So we've got control over 7 million volts in this country.
You know, don't screw with us.
We just want to be left alone.
And, and that might be enough to start saying to the liberals, if Marco Mendicino
had a very strong sense that running this law was going to make him lose
the next election, I'm fairly certain.
It wouldn't look the same way it does today, you know?
And that's the point that I'm hoping we can get to good point.
Yeah, the whole co-opting of, of all you're ever getting all the responsibility
on a third party, like your, your gun org do just go ahead, support the
gun org, but stand up for yourself.
Do some work yourself.
And can you tell me a little bit about a gun vote?
So the gun vote is.
Started out as a branding thing that we did for the last election, we
all those podcasts and a gun vote.
Cause this has been a very long project in the making.
Um, it's effectively going to be at its most basic level, um, uh, strategic voting
engine, because we've got the ability now to, uh, figure out we're gun owners.
We know where we know what riding you all live in.
We've got that data now officially.
Um, we're working with a polling company to have that sorted into
electoral riding association.
So we'll have an interactive map available.
It'll tell us, you know, let's say, uh, the nine or south Oakenoggen
is a great example because I'm not in it, but it's very close to me.
Um, Richard Cannings is the NDP candidate on there.
And to be very honest, he's a nice guy.
He's a, he's a very nice guy and he's not a bad MP.
And what I mean by that is he's responsive to his community and he
raises community's interest in the house of parliament, which is what
your elected representatives should do.
Um, when they just pair it a party line.
That's when you've got a bad MB, um, searchers, a nice guy.
He's just good.
But he only wins by like a few hundred votes, usually over
the conservative candidate.
And they've the same conservative candidate they've
had that pitched battle twice.
Now it's been quite entertaining to watch.
Um, if we have an interactive map that tells us look, there's 600 votes
that separate Richard from the next conservative candidate, and we've
recognized there's 3,500 gun owners there.
Well, that's, that's what we would call a target riding where the vote gap is
exceeded by the number of power holders.
So we'll start pulling the power holders.
How'd you vote last time.
If we find that enough of them didn't vote well, now we know it's an actionable
target writing where we can put effort into mailing those individuals,
relevant stuff, reach out to those people, go to the Penticton gun show,
have a booth, et cetera, reaching out to gun owners in the area to not
only tell them like you can make a change, but like you can make a change.
Like you need to go vote because if all of you vote, this riding flips, right?
So that's at its core.
What it started out to be now.
Since we're starting to work with the polling company, we're recognizing there's
a lot more validity and merit to it because the combination of knowing where
pals exist is a great political tool.
Obviously combined with the data that we have from our subscribers already, and
our ability to pull our own subscribers.
Because the other thing is people assume that pal holders
will all vote conservative.
They will not.
Absolutely.
A lot of us are not single issue voters.
For some people, it might be, you know, my dad's got Alzheimer's, so I
really need to get a better hospital in this area and blah, blah, blah.
So there's understanding the complexity of all.
This is something that no one I don't think has really done.
So we're going to try and combine the data that we've got with our subscribers,
polling, our subscribers, to find out, to get a better idea of what gun
owners in Canada think, what they want to see, what policies are important to
them, even on gun policy, seeing what do they think, what do they stand for?
You know, like are hand guns important to them?
And if not, like, why not?
Like what's the understanding them better.
So that in the next slide, We can speak to them better.
Uh, cause I don't think anyone that we've been we've often, I think we've been
thought of as a, as a monolithic entity a lot and we're not like an owners, all of
us, we're all complicated people, right?
Like you're a business owner.
I want, we have lots of other concerns beyond gun stuff, taxes, you name it.
Um, so we really want to get a firm grasp on that so that we can develop a
better profile of what gun owners want to see and how politicians can deliver
that so that we can have more political.
Um, and when it is done, which will hopefully be over the summer, um, it'll
just be delivered to you guys as a tool.
It will be something like gun owners can sign up for it to receive.
It'll don't do newsletters as anyone that's subscribed to caliber knows
you never get an email from me, even if you want to sometimes, uh, cause
one guy it's a lot of work fan.
Um, we'll have some staff for it though, especially in the election silly gun vote.
We'll be pushing content out so that if you live in a riding, it's the sort
of thing where, uh, you'll know, like if you just want to like, Hey, I'm
a gun owner and lives in sod, blah, blah city in Saskatchewan, you know?
Well, you're probably going to vote CPC cause they always win.
But let's say you're in Southern Ontario.
We'll give you a better idea of your writing, your ability to influence it.
There'll be some writings, for example, where you might go like, Hey, the
conservatives can't win on the NDP can and we can tell gun owners like, look, it
sounds antithetical, but vote NDP because it's one less thing for the liberals.
Makes it one less that the conservatives need to take
from them to get to a majority.
So, um, it was used to great effect.
The same system was effectively used, uh, by companies called
press progress and lead.
Now, both of which were funded by the tides foundation, which I had
some of those tides dollars baby.
We had to be looking at a different reality, but, uh, I
don't think that's going to happen.
Um, and they figure they flipped about something would be 20 and 27.
Uh, the responsibility that, and we have that like gun owners have that ability.
Cause like, when you think about what had to happen for lead
down, cause like I love politics.
Like this is the kind of politics I love.
Like I'm one of those dark cider type guys and politics that doesn't
happen legitimately anymore.
They had to get volunteers.
So you got to go out there, you got to put a message out there that inspired
a bunch of young people to put on shirts that said, press progress and
they'd knock on a door and go, you shouldn't vote for Stephen Harper.
And here's why, you know, I lived in a riding where that happened and it
happened like six times these groups.
So like two or three young people would come up and be
like anyone but conservative.
Here's why like we don't even have to go looking that hard.
I can just call it gun club.
Like, Hey man, I'm a fish and game club.
Uh, do you mind if I come out there for a weekend and chat with
you guys and maybe we can get some emails out to your members.
It's really, really, really simple.
Like this'll change the future of handgun ownership in Canada.
Let's get you guys out there and I bet you, I can get enough guys knocking
on doors and areas like that by going through gun pubs, because where our
hand gun owners, we know where they are.
Um, we have a repository of those people available to us.
And as a community, it shouldn't be hard to get to them and it
shouldn't be hard to engage them and get them enthused about this.
So that's what gunboat is gonna be doing entirely, just literally that.
So I'm building it up.
How can people support that?
Uh, right now just subscribed to caliber because we don't take donations.
Um, I've got a few meetings with people to try and get kind of a
funding seed started for it, just to get it off the ground in a big way.
And once the website's up and running, we are hoping to take
like a Patrion type model.
Cause I'm, I'm pretty reticent to take donations.
It's just kind of.
Uh, we probably will have to at some point, but I'll hate it.
Cause I'm just not, it feels a little bit too much.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't have to really talk about it too much.
There's nothing wrong with donations.
It's just not like me.
Like it's not, I gotta, you know, at some level you just got to kind
of recognize your own role in this and it's not, I'm not that guy.
So we'll probably do some patriotic stuff and use it as content linked.
So like you can use Patriot on to support the content being created really directly.
Um, and, and that'll be how gunboat is probably fun.
We're also doing the same thing for caliber.
We're trying to get caliber over to a Patrion type model because a lot
of guys like that month by month sort of thing, and a lot of people do want
to support the stuff we're doing.
Cause while gunboat is kind of the, the political entity looking to create
change, you know, we've really made a real concerted effort to shift
caliber towards kind of like the.
No scribe of the community.
Like we're trying to take down histories now, like we've got
this great writer named Richard.
He just came out of the woodwork, like talk about a
God said, no, he's in Ontario.
And he's got all the right contacts to take down the history of like that
big article we did on long branch.
He's moving on to smaller is limited to the next one.
And like I'm working, we're working towards this big article
on D'Amico because of course they macro doesn't exist.
Now.
Now it's ancient history.
He was D'Amico, which has been gone for years.
And then it was called Canada, which has been gone for years.
So taking down these histories of like, like there's a guy that sold a bunch of
guns to the SAS and started DeMarco on that special operations kind of angle
that we all know and love them for.
I think he got fired because he wasn't supposed to sell any more guns.
Like this is the kind of history that, you know, like there's some history,
like one thing in the long branch factory that no one writes this stuff down.
And if we don't, who will, there was a massive problem with.
Because it was a factory full of women and people got needs, man, like wars going
on, like stuff goes around, you know?
And then when the factory actually got going, our next article, we're
talking about how it actually got the nickname, the butcher shop, because
they were producing so many guns.
They were putting so many people through pretty rapid
training to get these guns out.
And I mean, guns are even today, they're a big ass machine shop that
makes these things, usually in machine shops are not inherently safe places.
So you can imagine like with rudimentary training coming off the street with almost
no experience with machines like that, there was a metric ton of injuries and it
got the nickname, the butcher shop because it was so brutal and they had to, they had
to address these things like these were, these are real issues that like, I'll be
blunt, better politicians than we've seen in a long freaking time had to address
on the, well, they were hitting the road running, they had to fix these problems.
Um, and I'm very cognizant of the fact that like, We are now the longest
running gun magazine in Canadian history.
And I view it, like, I take it in, it sounds super cliche, but it's just a game.
Like the way I might love history.
If I don't write this stuff down, no one will like the history of
para, like everyone, everyone that works in the industry has a
pretty well-known understanding.
Like para got into some problems because a lot of guns went missing pretty regularly,
like right off the factory floor, they'd go into a lunch box and poof, they start
turning up in organized crime circles.
And there was a lot of like problems with pair that way.
But like I've also met the guy.
He was not associate with any of this who he literally invented the double stack,
1911, Meg for para that's his patent, you know, like he's a guy he lives in Ontario.
He's super, super nice.
That's a story right there.
And that's the kind of thing where like, if you want to support what
we're doing, just go get a subscription because it's the only way that we
can take your money effectively.
Um, so just go to the website by subscription and we'll send you the
magazines, um, because that's what we're doing and whatever we make extra
that we can spare goes over towards gunboat to help pay for, for hopefully
creating the change in the future.
So I'm going to have links to that up in the, uh, in the podcast
notes and the YouTube notes.
Uh, definitely support the magazine.
Definitely a gun vote.
I think you should be putting it on to a Patrion sooner.
As opposed to later, I get the concept, they get the, they
will do like a Kickstarter.
So I'm, I gotta, I gotta look into the crowd.
I've never been into the crowdfunding stuff, so I'm a bit of a fish out of water
on that front, but we'll probably look at getting that up and running really soon.
Cause it's because I'm working with an existing polling company that
everyone knows very, very well.
When it finally comes out, it's not difficult.
It's just the bill to pay, you know, and it's, it's not like it's not
like they need more and more money.
It's just, okay, it's going to be about 80 to $150,000, depending on what level
we want to go to the website integration and largely the integrated mapping stuff.
So, you know, it's just kind of a finite amount.
And if we can reach that threshold, then it will be a very good
tool, hopefully in perpetuity.
Because now, like I said, this is, that was that that's literally the report that
I had to go back and forth the RCMP five times and be like, I know you make this
report and they kept saying, no, we don't.
And I was like, I know you freaking do like send it to me.
So now that we've got it, it's, it's really easy to keep this
as a living document, moving.
And also too, the more that we pull with the combination of our subscriber
data and, and gun owners at large, we will always be working towards a more
refined image of who gun owners are.
That perspective will get better and better and clearer and clearer
until eventually we have a very good grasp of who gun owners are and what
they want to see, but also to what, what do other people want to see?
Because I mean, part of this whole thing that I've been trying
to work on is like, I have a gun license, my wife has a gun license.
We have lots of friends that don't, and they're becoming more and
more sympathetic for our plates.
So like how many, how many people do you think in your social circle
are now sympathetic to gun owners?
That'll always be a changing metric, but we should always have a firm
grasp on it because that's where we can embrace a little bit of this
power and stop having to rely on.
You know, co-opting power from a political party or working with
politicians on deals that unfortunately are not always guaranteed.
Right?
Right.
Especially if you don't have the, if you have no power in the
political sphere, you have nothing.
I agree.
Is there anything else you should be chatting about before we wrap things up?
No, I'm still hearing that.
Apparently there's no motion.
The federal government did not present their motion today.
The next meeting is June 7th.
Uh, the Canadian sporting arms and ammunition association is
saying that they believe the next opportunity the government has
introduced the transfer freeze.
Um, I don't, I'm not really sure what they're basing that on, but if you can
still get a transfer done, uh, Do it now.
Cause that way you can still at least shoot the damn things
between now and the next election.
And like I said, just reiterating that like take some agency of your
own damn self, get your gun clubs, your friends do what makes sense.
Don't just say like, Hey look guys, look, this is how we're going
to solve this political problem.
We've got, we need to help a local candidate.
We need to unseat the liberal.
We need to go and put ourselves in front of a liberal.
If you got a liberal MP, don't be afraid of them.
They can't do anything to you.
They're your MP.
They work for you.
They are your elected representative and they should be reminded of that.
They do not represent the government to you.
They represent you to the government.
So put yourself in front of them.
There'll be in your riding all summer.
There'll be hobnobbing, Canada day.
I can guarantee you.
Most of them are going to have a table at the local candidate, a
parade, get out there and be like, Hey, look, don't be an asshole.
Don't be like, Hey, what's your fucking problem with me?
Because that will go exactly nowhere.
Oh, I got that far without swearing, almost all.
Ah, I'm going to really work it on that too.
My wife told me to swear less.
I've been trying, but it's, it's tough, colorful language.
As I keep saying, I like colorful language.
I don't know why people want to talk in black and white, but I agree.
Go put yourself in front of the MP.
Uh, if it's an NDP or liberal, put yourself in front and say, look like I'm,
I'll have, you know, that I understand.
You're just wasting a colossal form of resources and I'm going to make
it my mission to ensure that everyone here knows that unless you change
your too, and I'm happy to work with you to change you in and educate you.
I could take you to a gun club.
I can show you the rules.
Like did you know that everyone that has a gun license has a
daily criminal record check?
And if we commit a violent crime, we lose our guns the next day.
So when, when people ask, is this affecting violent crime?
You can tell them it absolutely is not.
It can't by law.
That's the way it's worded, you know, and, and get out there because it's, if
we don't do that, then what's the point.
Like if you can't even stand in front of a liberal MP, that's
representing you to the government and say, Hey, what the heck, dude?
You know, We should probably all just fold up and go home.
Cause I mean, this is just basic civilian duty.
This is you doing your civic duty as a voter to, you know, it's not,
it's not just dropping a ballot on a box every four years, guys.
This is, this is being a citizen truly, you know?
Um, and thank you.
Don't it's not Starship troopers.
You don't have to go to orange that's so you can just walk right up to them.
It's not that hard.
So I would, I would definitely say that that's try and get a subscription.
Sure.
That's great.
But, uh, yeah, no, that's actually really important too, but also important is
the definitely go and put yourself in front of your elected representative
and make sure that your opinion and the opinion of all of us gun owners is
being adequately communicated to them.
I like it.
Get, get your subscription, support your gun stories.
You're going to organizations, your ranges, your clubs.
I mean Silvercore Club we've we haven't gotten so many emails and phone
calls and uh, in the last couple of days, messages through social media,
Yeah, because clubs will die too.
But just in case everyone doesn't understand.
Like if, if this passes, like I've been a club president for two years
past the allowable term limit at my local club, I'm not eight anymore.
So you can't get me societies that can have, um, but clubs are
run on restricted ownership, man.
Like you gotta have a club membership to get a handgun.
Not legally.
I get it.
Your technical people.
Technically actually I don't want to hear it.
Most of us just get a gun club cause these way to go about it.
Those clubs all die.
Like if you like shooting at a gun club, you better enjoy it while it
lasts, unless you start stepping up because there ain't no way these
clubs exist 10 years down the road.
If there isn't any more handgun ownership, they it's what people belong
to clubs for primarily, you know?
And, and that includes clubs that have very vibrant other sections like
here in Colona, we have a club of 350.
20 of them are historical reenactors that shoot black powder.
That's their thing.
Well, guess what if our club closes down cause hand guns go while
the black powder is gone too.
So we lose that whole group of guys that can tell you how Hudson bay, fur
traders, stitch together, their tents.
And they do this every year for high school students and boy Scouts.
We lose that as a very real part of our actual community.
Like, you know, the boy Scouts should care that this handgun ban is going to affect
them because it means they lose that.
They won't get their leather working badge next year.
Like it's, it's important to show people that this isn't just the
fact that handguns are being frozen and oh, you can't buy that 1911.
You want, in fact it is not about that at all.
It is about the fact that your neighbor can't get a doctor, you know, it's,
it's everything and it's right.
Get into that sort of mindset guys.
It's not, it is not just handguns.
If you like to zero your rifle once a year at your local range, because it's
got a fixed distance probably should care.
Because you won't be able to do that now.
Like it's, it's that important.
And that stretches as far as all of the businesses too.
I mean, caliber is magazine.
We have the ability to sell ads, to realtors and car companies
and diversify our income.
And we're trying to do that now to be very clear.
The reason I keep asking for subscription so much lately is quite
literally because I'm trying to reduce the amount of financial strain we
put on the industry because we've been advertiser funded for years.
And with what's going on, I don't want to go to the industry guys and say like, look
guys, we've got to increase our rates.
Paper rates have gone up a ton.
We've been eating those costs because I really.
I'm aware of the fact that like I'm a cost center for a lot of these companies.
I do not want to burden them.
It's much easier to say, Hey guys, 30 bucks for subscription, like it's 30 bucks
gets you like an eighth of a tank of gas.
Nowadays.
You don't even bat an eye spending at the grocery store.
You send it to me.
It makes a big deal in my life.
And it reduces the strain on the industry.
These are the sorts of things that we'll all die.
Our entire culture will just cease to exist as gun owners.
And as a student of history, that'd be tragic to me.
Cause I already look at old gun magazines from the turn of the century even, um,
which I'm hoping to republish soon.
So the guys can see them.
Cause they're pretty crazy.
Um, yeah, like 1920s magazines from like the Aiden days.
They're awesome.
Um, I've got the full, I wish I'd there on my shelf over there, but the stack is like
this big, um, We've already lost that.
Like I can flip through that and everyone will see all these articles go like,
wow, I wish we still had these fine gun makers needs, historians that we've lost.
Well, whatever we got now is what's going to be lost next.
So get off your ass, basically start working.
Okay.
Daniel, thank you so much.
I really, I always really enjoy our chats.
It's uh, it's enlightening.
You're a, you're a Ray of light in an otherwise bleak world here of you
provide a perspective that I find is a really helpful thank you for
being on the Silvercore Podcast.
Thank you for having me always a pleasure.