With the recent federal election come and gone, I'm getting a lot
of people asking, what does this mean for gun owners in Canada?
That's the purpose of this episode.
I've sat down with Daniel Fritter of Caliber Magazine and we detail some of
the thoughts of what we've been hearing.
We also recorded a 40 minute private podcast, which is available
for Silver Court Club members.
If you're a Silver Court Club member, log into the Silver Core website and you're
gonna find that you have a unique RSS feed for a private podcast called The Outpost.
You can plug that into most podcast players and you'll get automatic
updates as it comes through through your podcast provider.
If you're not a Silver Court Club member, consider checking it out, silver court.ca.
Now, let's get on with this episode.
Well, today's guest needs no introduction.
My friend Daniel Fritter, caliber Magazine is back again to share his ever eloquent
thoughts post-election and, uh, figured he and I would just sit down and chat about,
uh, the state of the industry where we see things going, and, um, go from there.
Dan, thanks so much for coming back.
Hey, happy to be here.
I may not be quite as eloquent as, as always through this cold medicine induced
haze that I'm currently in with this sinus infection, but, uh, I'll try.
Well, good for you for braven it out and being here.
I know.
Uh, yeah, that's never fun.
You were planning to be here yesterday and, uh, just couldn't do it.
Uh, heavy meds now.
So, uh, we'll just play it from there.
Yep.
So, uh, we had a, uh, an election didn't go the way I figured it would go.
Uh, I don't know about you if you predicted it going in that direction.
I had a feeling, um, from when Kearney won, the polls did flip pretty
rapidly, and generally speaking, Canada's pollsters are pretty accurate.
So I was kind of operating under the assumption that it was not
necessarily going to go the way we want.
I did have some hope that there might have been a surprise outcome, um, that
surprised the pollsters and whatnot, largely on the back of the millennial
vote, uh, it's a huge voting block.
It's the biggest one in Canada.
Now.
They had been polling pretty consistently as a demograph that was, uh, most
supportive of the conservatives, but they're also a demographic that
historically does not show up to vote like twice as many boomers
vote, as do young people typically.
So it was gonna be a case of the ability to get the vote out.
And then of course, as the campaign continued and at the
winding down phases of it, we see.
Poly have going to places like Alberta where, you know, as a conservative,
you, you kind of should think those are GIMs, so you shouldn't be wasting
your time there in the last week.
Um, but that was a pretty clear indicator that what they were
seeing internally was the same as what we were seeing externally.
So, um, yeah, good point.
Not the, not the result we wanted.
Certainly surprising, to be honest, the makeup is maximum chaos in terms of what
the House of Commons looks like right now.
Um, and with Kearney saying that he doesn't want a formal agreement
with the NDP, that he wants everyone to kind of work together.
I'm not sure how, what the, what this is gonna look like in the House of Commons.
And then of course, you know, I will say the big surprise was Polly of not winning
his own seat was a bit of a shocker.
It's gonna be very interesting to see how he manages to figure that out.
'cause he is currently the leader of the Conservative party, but he
cannot be the official leader of the opposition without a, without a seat.
Uh, which presents some unique issues.
So we learned earlier today, Andrew Shear will take that role on a temporary basis.
Interim.
Well, PEV seeks the by-election over there in Alberta, which I mean, if
you ever wanted to see a conservative writing, the one he is running in,
it's like 80% conservative voters.
It's like, I think it was like 40,000 people voted for the conservative,
and like two people voted liberal.
So it's, it's about the safest you could possibly imagine.
Uh, but it will be interesting to navigate.
So it'll be interesting to see how, how that party reacts to it.
Well, look, you know, you're way more plugged in on the politics than
I am, but from, from my standpoint, I wasn't trusting the polls.
And I don't know if I'm too stuck in the wrong algorithm on, uh, social
media or whatever it might be, but the, uh, it looked like there was some
Tom Foolery going on in the polls.
Maybe there wasn't.
It looked like there's some Tom Foolery going on in EFS riding, what was it, 91
other candidates that put their name in.
The longest ballot initiative.
It's this really stupid protest group that thinks the best way to get
electoral reform is to have a ballot with like a metric ton of people on it.
So the thing is like literally as long as your arm, and it's kind
of like this is just a waste of everyone's time and effort is, it
is a uniquely stupid protest effort.
Like even, I don't care what your opinion of electoral reform is, this
methodology of protesting anything, it's like gluing your hand to a road.
It's just, this is no, you're not winning over anyone.
You're not making an argument.
I mean, if anything, if you're trying to get electoral form and, and then
you hand people ballots that are three feet long, like this is where
elections happen, what you really wanna do is, is make their process of
electing someone as painful as possible.
That's, it makes no sense.
I think though.
What everyone forgets in that is that, and it's the same thing
with the writing redistribution.
'cause his writing also changed, right?
And absorbed an area that had previously voted liberal.
But that area, although it had voted liberal also demographically, has been
broadly supportive of conservatives it.
So it's like, yes, the long ballot was annoying and it's a fun thing to
talk about, but enough people frowned.
Bruce Fanjoy name.
Sure.
So Sure.
It's not like, you know, it's not like people were confused by these long bowels.
They're just a pain in the ass for all the electoral workers.
'cause you gotta fold it up like 16 times to fit in the box.
Mm-hmm.
So it's not really a huge deal.
I think, you know, Fanjoy had been campaigning in that riding for two years.
Hard, hard, like knocking on doors and that's what wins elections.
That's why before the election when I was saying, you gotta go volunteer.
'cause that's what actually wins elections is, you know, the mere
presence of someone at your doorstep.
Even if you don't agree with their politics, that they took the step to
come to your house, knock on your door.
'cause the only way a politician can really get ahold of you in a,
in a catchment zone, um, that moves the needle in a very real way.
'cause people go, oh, he, he cares enough to come to my house.
He cared to talk about what were the issues and stuff and, and especially
when it's the candidate, when it's a volunteer doing it on behalf of
a party, you're really just doing what's called Get Out the Vote.
So for those that don't know, this is gonna be a very quick little segment.
If you volunteer for a party on election day or beforehand, and you're doing
what's called door knocking, which is the, where everyone starts out, basically
you go to a bunch of people's houses and you say, how do you plan to vote?
And if they say conservative, you go, okay, tick box.
And you know their name and their address because of the
census data and elections Canada.
Then on elections, when the election happens, we don't know how people vote,
but parties do know who has voted.
So if it says, well, Daniel Fritters, he, we knocked on his door three months ago.
We knocked on his door again two months ago.
Both times he said he was gonna vote conservative.
We got this sheet from the polling place, which they do every hour,
and every hour goes by and they go, well, we haven't seen, we
haven't seen Dan Fritter vote yet.
Then they'll call you and they'll say, Hey Dan.
We, we noticed, you haven't voted yet, could we?
Do you want a ride?
How can we get you to do this?
But when it's the candidate and he's doing it for two or three years and
he's asking, what are your issues?
Yeah.
That's gonna convince a lot of people.
Like there will be people who are motivated to get out and vote.
So I think, I think Fanjoy did somewhat ironically what the Ford family has
done in Ontario of just connected with people in a way that worked.
Um, and I think like most of us, there's probably some truth in the
notion that Paulo took it for granted.
Yeah.
I could see that.
I mean, the way the polls were looking previously, it was, it was gonna be
a blue wave, it was gonna be just a landslide for the conservatives.
Even our local, um, candidate here had lunch with him, chatted with
him, and I mean, he says, you know, you don't, you don't count it until
it's hatched and all the rest.
But there was a real strong sense that everybody knew where it was going and then
it didn't and he didn't get his position.
And I think that that notion of almost, I dunno if I should, I mean almost
maybe it's the correct word, but like almost a sense of entitlement that
historically things have lined up.
You know, Canadians elect governments a couple times,
three times, 10 years, basically.
Then they get rid of the old guy.
It's never a vote for the next one.
It's always, we wanna get rid of the previous one 'cause we've
run outta patients with them.
Yeah.
The polls had been swung to a massive, you know, 20% or more, uh, margin
between the conservatives and liberals.
It had been years of saying, we just want an election, we just want an election.
'cause we knew the outcome.
Everyone, like under Trudeau, we, the outcome and polls since have shown that
if Trudeau had not stepped down, the outcome of the election would have been
what the polls look like in December with a massive conservative majority.
But I think there was a sense within the conservative party, and I don't know
this because I don't work with them, like to be honest, but from watching it, the
sense was a certain degree of entitlement of not adapting, not understanding
that the conditions had changed.
The ballot box question for a lot of Canadians had
shifted towards Donald Trump.
Um, and I didn't see any reactiveness on the part of the
conservative party initially.
And moreover, what really frustrated me, kind of more so was that what
I had seen from Pier P earlier on in his career as leader, going back
to three years, four years, he was.
He, he was presenting a far different image and option than he seemed to
during the campaign, during the election.
'cause I remember Pierre Pev doing videos, talking about wood in his
house wearing flannel, which was very, it was dumb 'cause I don't go around
and stroke the beams of a house.
But to a degree it was, it was more relatable to me and I think most Canadians
than a guy with slicked back hair, walking around in suits, constantly saying the
same things into the same microphones, taking four questions from, at any given
event, barring the media from the tour, like this was, on one hand he won the
leadership of the conservative party.
Kind of being the approachable but experienced politician other
than during the election campaign.
It was like he turned into this like, well, we're not
gonna let media on the plane.
We're not gonna take questions from, you know, we're gonna kind
of denigrate journalists, like we're gonna keep them outside.
Like, little things like if you're trying to win over a country to win an
election, the media is a great tool.
Sure.
Podcasts and new media is extremely effective.
But again, boomers who vote the most go to the good old fashioned
CB, C, and they read their news.
If you keep those journalists outside in the cold in a pen, like literally a
little steel fenced in thing, and you say, you guys gotta stay out here and you
can ask four questions, and we're gonna choose who gets to ask the questions,
and it's probably not gonna be you.
Well, you've just pissed off a bunch of people with platforms like it,
it doesn't, it doesn't make sense.
Mm-hmm.
Like, and I think that's where I do get very tired of the fact that it, 'cause I,
I won't say Carney was a whole lot better.
Mm. Um.
But we need politicians that realize they're supposed
to be winning people over.
You know, it's not this static.
I am me and you'll vote for me.
If you like me, it should be, I'm trying to win you over.
Um mm-hmm.
And I didn't see that very much from the campaign, so it was,
it was honestly one of the most disappointing elections I've ever seen.
It was interesting objectively to watch, but disappointing from the perspective
of, um, not the outcome, which I think what most people are probably
thinking, when I say disappointing, I mean the campaigns sucked, period.
Mm. Like Mark Kearney brings in an anti-gun lobbyist to run for him.
Typically, lobbyists are not the sort of people that you want to
be politicians because mm-hmm.
Newsflash, they used to lobby the government, then
they become the government.
Mm-hmm.
There's a whole lot of room for conflict there, and it's kind
of, uh, it's just improper.
On the other hand, I was looking at the conservative campaign, and this
is where like al kind of rant a bit.
They had two years to prepare for this.
They were saying, we want an election, we want an election.
We want an election.
Then they finally get one and they're left scrambling for candidates.
They're turfing out popular candidates and parachuting in other people,
which just pisses everyone off.
They're, their campaign platform is abbreviated.
It's, it's not well researched.
It's not well acknowledged.
And you kinda go like, what did, what have you spent the last two years doing?
Like you can't just run on, we're gonna scrap the carbon tax.
Okay, well that's one thing.
What are you gonna do with healthcare house price?
All of these key issues.
And there was no a disappointing campaign 'cause no one presented any bold options.
We're going into an election with huge crisis level issues like food pricing.
I. And not a single candidate stepped up and said, Hey, you know what?
Maybe if we stopped supply management and flushing milk down
the drain, food could get cheaper.
No one even bothered.
It was just, no, we gotta, we gotta protect those Quebec votes.
We gotta keep supply management, you know, well, oh, we're facing
a potential invasion from America.
Here's A-T-F-S-A top-up like this is, they're trying to sell us on
this existential fear that our, we're gonna lose our sovereignty
and, and no one offers anything better than, you know, well, I guess
we'll, we'll hire like a thousand CBSA officers or something, maybe.
Mm-hmm.
You know, no one even bothers to mention, we'll fix procurement because like, I
guess they just have all given up on that.
But like, there's just no bold ideas on offer from any of the parties.
Like it all just kind of seemed like, you know, if the needle
is right here, you vote one way.
It'll go that way.
It'll.
You know, there was nothing.
It was just very lame.
And I think that's, that's also, I think partly why the conservatives lost.
I think they didn't, they didn't do enough to win people's votes.
I think they needed to do more, you know, yeah, we are going to cancel the gun bans
'cause it's a waste of $5 billion and then we're gonna take that $5 billion that
would've gone to the gun ban and we're gonna spend it on mental health instead,
we're gonna build seven new hospitals and cross, you know, do something
like, tell us what you're gonna build.
So the, this idea of fear-based politics has been spotlight in media recently.
And I mean the liberal campaign was fear-based politics as well.
We've gotta watch out 'cause Trump's gonna take over.
And what, why would it work for them in this one and, and not the conservatives?
And how do we shift that perspective?
I think, I don't know if the, this is where it gets tricky in politics.
'cause yet it's really easy to ascribe victories and losses to individual things
like fear-based politics or demographics.
When in reality, it's always a combination of things.
And I think at the end of the day, this election was decided by the older
demographic that showed up to vote in big numbers, in very safe areas that
the liberals were pretty established in.
And the fact that
neither of them put out what I would call a building style plan, like none of none
of 'em said, here's what we're gonna do.
This is gonna be some massive stuff we're gonna do.
It was all fear based.
But the difference was that when someone who has the resume of
Mark Carney is running a machine to make you afraid, his resume.
Is a powerful tool for his team to then lean on and go, look, we are
facing some seriously scary moments.
Look at this guy.
He's done all of these impressive things, so he's probably going to be capable
of handling this stuff in the future.
Whereas Paul Ev legitimately has, you know, graduated, became a politician
as the, which is a valid skill and something that I think, again, if
the conservatives had been a little bit more bold and simply said, what
we need right now is a politician.
We need someone who has experience in the House of Commons and knows how to
work with people from all parties that has lots of experience with this stuff.
That wouldn't have been a bad thing, because politician is one
of those few jobs that you can only get experienced by doing it.
There's no training school for it or anything.
Right?
Mm-hmm.
They could have done that and said, you know, this guy's an investment banker.
He's been a bureaucrat his whole life.
Like, he doesn't, he doesn't know how to make parties work together.
He doesn't know how to hold the balance of power together and keep a country going.
Like it's, it's very, it's like they tried to out Carney Carney, hence
why the suit thing bothered me.
'cause I really felt like that was like a physical manifestation of them being
like, well, we're gonna dress you up.
So you look like an investment banker that used to work at
Goldman Sachs and, but he's not.
Got it.
He should have been that guy from that Calgary Street that was raised by two
teachers, is what he should have been.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but I think it was just that in a, in, in a crisis, a people will
generally vote for the incumbent.
That's a known thing.
Uh, the 2021 election during mid covid is a great example of that, where it's just,
people just go, they just hunker down.
They don't wanna change anything.
You know, the world's scary enough.
More change is scarier.
Yeah.
The second thing is that, you know, the.
There was so much talk about Kearney's resume.
He's done this, he's done that, he's gone to Harvard.
You know, he, he can surely handle anything the world will throw at him.
I mean, Paul F should just stood up and said, look like you guys are being idiots.
If you think anyone can handle Donald Trump, you're idiots.
The guy is nuts.
Like it doesn't what he says to you on a given day.
Totally.
You can't control it.
You know, like, you sure.
All we can control is their own country.
We should not elect someone because we're scared of Donald Trump.
'cause there's nothing that we can do about him.
Well said.
So what does this mean going forward for, I see all the rifles in the background.
You run Caliber Magazine.
I run a training company in firearms.
The people listening to this are probably interested in what does it mean for
the guns, what's it mean for hunting?
What's it mean for, what's the future gonna look like?
I don't entirely know.
And I'm hesitant to speculate because we don't know.
And that was one thing that I'd said earlier is there's, I've seen a lot
of speculation about they're gonna do this, they're gonna do that.
And um, if you don't know, the best thing to do is just shut
your mouth because speculation tends to trend towards more fear.
Induction knowing very few people speculate, oh, the
world's gonna get so much better.
'cause, you know, post nine 11, it kind of just hasn't.
But I think overall, um, if I were to speculate, I don't know if there,
the big question for me is what de what priority they'll place on this.
Because I did notice it during the campaign, like, yes, they got Natalie
Provost to run, which seems like a really bad thing for gun owners.
Now I've also heard from Tracy Wilson actually that.
They're probably considering her more for, um, an agricultural role.
'cause that's what her background is in.
It's what she does for the Quebec government is, is
agricultural science type stuff.
Um, so that's her professional experience.
And like, like I said earlier, if, if she's a, a lobbyist for guns installing
a lobbyist in the Ministry of Public Safety, a lobbyist specifically who
lobbied public safety would be kind of a big red flag that even normal
journalists would go, Hey, this doesn't, this does not meet the sniff test.
Mm-hmm.
So they might actually keep her away from the gun issue.
Um, Mark Carney didn't know her name.
He didn't know what school she'd gone to or the shooting that she went through.
So that also tells you that he was not associated with her.
Nomination.
Uh, she did put her name forward to the liberal party and then
was made what's called acclaimed where they don't do an election.
They just say, yeah, you can be the candidate.
Uh, that might have been something that was decided by like Marco Ticino,
who is Carney's chief of staff or anyone within the liberal party.
Just when, yeah, she's got a name recognition out the
wazoo, she'll probably win.
Mm-hmm.
She gets us a third of the way there with her name alone.
Um, but if that's a bad thing, she's also a brand new MP with no experience, which
generally relegates you to the back bench.
Um.
They want some experience and they have so much in that caucus right now to choose
from not only the want experience, but the experienced guys get pissed when
someone else gets parachuted over them.
Sure.
Because a cabinet ministerial have experience, position comes with, well,
it's not just that, like you make like a hundred and something thousand
more dollars as a cabinet minister.
Like normal mps make good money, but cabinet ministers make like 300
grand a year or something like that.
Like it's a, it's a significant bump and you get a huge staff,
so your job gets way easier too.
Mm-hmm.
So there's all these very real reasons that I don't know how prominent she'll be.
And then the other thing is that I just don't think Carney
breezed right past the gun issue.
During the debate, they asked him flat out about, you know, assault style firearms.
Like they laid it up on, it was like T-ball, it was kinda like, okay, you could
knock us outta the park if you want to.
And he totally backed away and said, well, you know, like we have, we're
gonna reinvigorate the gun ban or whatever he said of the buyback.
And then just kind of moved on to border and that, and even in his first speech
afterwards, he didn't even mention.
Guns in his speech as the part on public safety.
He mentioned border security, uh, x-ray dog like, or, and drug stuff, uh, catching
smuggled guns was mentioned, but there was no mention of getting, you know, assaults
now firearms off the street or something.
So I wonder if they have seen some indicator, be it internal polling or, you
know, uh, some studies or something that are showing that maybe this isn't the vote
winning thing that it once was for them.
Um, interesting because I think the world has kind of changed, like, like we
said, like with Poly F he didn't adapt.
The world has changed in, when Trudeau announced this in 2020, everyone was
like going nuts over New Zealand's band.
Jaina Arden was seen as like a progressive god amongst leaders because she had so
succinctly and immediately banned guns after the massacre there and, mm-hmm.
Trudeau was trying to get that, hence why our band looks so much like New
Zealand, hence why the New Zealand police actually consulted on it.
Yeah.
But I don't think, I think in the interceding years it's changed.
We've seen growth in gun ownership.
There's more people with pals today than there ever have been.
I don't expect like for, for your job, like I don't expect
that rate will decrease.
I think enrollment in PAL courses will remain at the same level.
It is, if not higher.
Uh, because once you start seeing things taken away, people
get interested in getting it.
Like if there's a, you know, oh, the government could ban guns.
I should go get my pal now is something that you hear from
people, they stop putting it off.
Yeah.
So, uh, in Australia when they banned a bunch of stuff after Port Arthur
10 years later, there were more guns in the country than there ever were.
Yeah.
I saw that stat.
It's
people just adapt and I think that's what Canadian gun owners will do.
The people that used to shoot, you know, tack rifle stuff,
if they can't shoot those.
They will just shift to, you know, uh, rim fire precision or brutality
style matches where there's kind of a physical component or they'll, they'll
find other com competitive venues, they'll find other things to switch to.
Um, I don't think hunters will be overall impacted very much.
'cause I think that thus far what the liberals have tried to do is really avoid
targeting anything that could be conceived as like a super popular hunting rifle.
So.
Mm. But that's a game where we get into the priorities.
'cause I think if they do end up prioritizing it, like if there's
a, if there is another prominent news item involving a, a gun
in Canada, for example, yeah.
We could see them do what they promised to do, which was take a look at the existing
legislation around classification.
And what concerned me is, was.
The one time they talked about legislation and the platform
was around classifications.
It's kinda like, well, legislation's a, a big thing to move for the
government, like OICs and regulations.
It's like a couple forms.
The minister signs and it's all done.
Legislation.
You know, you get a small army of lawyers, you draft it, you gotta get it through
the house, the Senate, it's a big deal.
And if they do that, I think, and this is what I don't wanna speculate
around 'cause I don't, I don't know if this is gonna happen and I have
no idea if it's likely or unlikely.
But if they were to legislate around guns, IE make a law, I would expect what
they would do would take the definition that C 21 provided for bans on future
designs and make it retroactive.
So semi-automatic center fire rifle with an detachable magazine capable
of holding more than five rounds would just become banned, not by name as they
currently are, but banned by legislation.
And then you would get into things where like, does the browning
BAR have a detachable magazine?
I mean, technically the floor plate swings down, you pull it out.
Mm-hmm.
So it is, and then there are models where it is just straight drop free
mag is the sks a detachable mag?
Well, the SKS D is so, and you can convert all the other ones.
So I don't know how that would land, basically.
And that's why I don't like the speculation.
'cause it, it could happen, it could also not happen.
But also if you're gonna go down that rabbit hole of fear of it could happen,
you arrive at all these other, well what if this and what if that, that
it's impossible to know this stuff.
So it's kind of just wait and see.
I'm, I'm getting a bit of a sense of optimism actually listening to you here.
It sounds like you're not quite as pessimistic as I figured you'd be.
And from what I'm hearing through the, uh.
Uh, through the gun community, I'm getting a lot of people calling up or emailing
and, and, uh, they're getting rid of their guns and they're, they're quite upset
and they don't know what they can do.
But that's not the tone that you're projecting right now.
Yeah, I mean, I think I am not, I mean, I'm, I'm, I am a naturally
optimistic person who then tries to be even more optimistic.
So maybe I'm just naive 'cause I believe what some people call that actually.
But I don't find a, I don't find purpose in pessimism.
There's a lot of bad stuff and I mean, if, if you want to
sell your guns, you go for it.
Someone will be there to buy them.
And I think that for every person that sells a gun, there
is someone there to buy it.
So it's kind of a, a zero sum qualifier there.
If someone's like, oh, I'm gonna sell all my guns.
Okay, well, I'm sure you'll find some to buy them, therefore, mm-hmm.
It's all the same, you know.
Um, I'm not that pessimistic, I suppose, because.
When, when the conservatives are looking at winning and I've been
talking to them about all this stuff and saying, Hey, you know, we
could really get some reform going.
I was told so many times by so many conservative people, well gun
owners are gonna have, be patient.
We've got a lot on our plate and this is going back to like 2023.
It's like post covid, pre-Trump.
Now that sounds like a downright quaint existence.
So for the liberals, I, I expect that, uh, they have a lot on their plate.
Carney did not put a gun buyback in his budget.
They are currently operating on the caretaker convention, which is the,
the funding level the government got last year is what they get this year.
No new, no new programmatic spending.
I supe, I suspect that we will see more come out once the budget numbers
start coming out, but I really don't think for the same reasons that
I've maintained for the entire time.
The gun buyback is such an untenable thing.
I. Mm. And from Mark Kearney to go up there and go, oh, we're we're
gonna do the reinvigorated gun buyback sounds really great because
the reasons why the gun buyback is untenable are not known to many people.
You need to know that there are an unknown number of non-restricted
guns owned by people that they can't identify, that they have made illegal
and thus have an obligation to now buy back and provide compensation.
The government can't just go like, well, we, we said it, but we're
not gonna, we don't really care like they have to do this now.
Mm-hmm.
They have created the responsibility that they must follow through, and
I think that's where it's kind of, I don't know if Carney will, perhaps
someone's gonna walk into an office in public safety at some point in
the next couple months, and they're gonna get handed a, a pa a book, a
transition book, and they're gonna go, okay, so we're gonna reinvigorate
this buyback and they're gonna open the book and they're gonna go, oh.
Fuck, this is, this is not, this is not good.
Why did we do this?
And it'll, we'll, 'cause it is just, it's, it's a rock and a hard place.
It's, there's no good o option for the government to do this.
They could do the air fifteens.
Sure.
But, and that's where I kind of wonder if it's just gonna be more of the same.
Um, I still think they'll probably extend the amnesty too, because
the government always has an obligation to induce compliance.
Not, especially when there's no men.
There's no criminality intended by most of the people that own these things.
So I. I'm sure there's legal statutes out there that Ian and uncle could probably
cite, where like, you can't just make it illegal because then some lady who, her
husband passed away and he had an rink one 14 and she finds it in the garage.
Well now she's, you know, obligated to go to jail or something.
Like, that's not a, that's not the way that the legal system works here.
So they'll extend it and it'll just keep getting kicked down the road.
And we will burn a metric ton of money at the sacrificial altar of
liberal gun policies like we did with the Long Gun Registry until someone
goes, the P is big enough, let's just stop and rewinds the whole thing.
Um, and I have some optimism in that, at least with Carney, he's, regardless
of his skill and ability, 'cause I have no idea, he's had some very incredible
positions at jobs making tons of money.
But I don't know anything about money, so I don't really know what he does
or what the skills that involves.
Um.
I think he, we can say he's trying to distinguish himself from Justin Trudeau.
He is trying to create distance, the carbon tax, for example.
I do know that he is someone that once defended the carbon
tax with full throat of defense.
He loved carbon taxes, um, as a great way of reducing carbon emissions.
And his, the particular area that he worked in was sustainability,
finance, and investment.
So like it's all very tied together if he's willing to, you know, sacrifice the
carbon tax, which is something he felt strongly about, uh, it kind of feels
like everything's up in the air now.
Mm-hmm.
And maybe he sees what the bill is like, maybe he said, yeah, we'll
reinvigorate the gun buyback.
'cause you know, Marco Medico, his chief of staff champion the thing told
him this is gonna be the gun platform.
Or the people that are associated with the party that are pushing
the, the liberal party's gun policy forward was saying, yeah, we'll
just keep doing this, but, mm-hmm.
These are the same people that also defended the carbon tax
for the last however many years.
And then he looked at it and went, no, we're not doing this anymore.
Maybe he'll do the same thing on the gun thing.
Maybe someone will finally hand him the estimates and go, it's
gonna cost somewhere between 2.6 billion and $6 billion to do this,
and we're never gonna be done.
So we're gonna have to have the office open for the rest of time.
Because whenever someone finds one of these things, we're gonna have to have
someone there that can identify it, verify it, provide an accurate value.
Then we have to have a second string of people that if they want
to contest the value, they gotta be there with, you know, audits.
Oh, the condition is this and this forever is mm-hmm.
Like literally forever.
Like it's, and this maybe he just looks at that and goes like, kinda
like the carbon tax now this is not, this is just not gonna work.
It's not winning.
Um, 'cause I also too, this is a bit anecdotal, but I think everyone
thought it didn't matter where.
People were commenting during the campaign, be it Reddit, Twitter,
YouTube, Facebook, on individual news stories like CTV, comments,
sections, anytime the gun bans came up, it was just universally despised.
Mm. There was no groundswell of support everywhere it came up.
Media members were saying it doesn't make sense commenters.
Like no one, no one thinks it makes sense anymore 'cause it's, we've
had the five year free trial, free being a hundred million dollars.
But you know, in government talk, I guess that's basically the same thing.
And everyone just sees more crime.
So it's like, I don't see anyone supporting it.
The only people that are staunchly supporting it are people who, in
political terms would never vote for anyone but the liberals anyways.
So there is no more political capital to be squeezed from this particular fruit.
The liberals could kill it tomorrow and lose exactly zero votes,
but gain potentially a majority.
And I think that's, you know, if, if Carney's trying to distance himself
from Trudeau to set up his identity, he doesn't need to do that anymore.
To be quite honest.
He's one.
Mm-hmm.
He could just govern however he wants to, but he is continuing to set us
different tone than Trudeau, which tells you he's, he likely understands that with
a minority and with the way the block is, there's probably going to be another
election within the next two years.
Mm-hmm.
He wants that to be a majority.
So he's looking for the way to get more votes.
And like I said, with this particular policy, it is one where absolutely.
The only people that vote for the liberals because of gun bans will
vote for the liberals without gun bans because they're Who else?
They're, they're liberals.
Sure.
Like they're, that's, it's kinda like the conservatives have always said,
if you like guns, you vote for us.
'cause we're the only party that won't ban guns.
Mm-hmm.
So it's sort of, what are you gonna do?
And that's why I say, I think a lot of gun owners should probably get
out there and start talking to their mps, especially if they're liberals.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
No, that's very wise.
And I, I agree with you.
I think the can's gonna get kicked down the road history, history would show.
That's typically what happens.
It just gets kicked down further and further hoping people forget about it.
It gets a little less on the radar, barring a shooting or some massacre
or something in the news that comes up, whether it's in our country
or not, uh, firearms related.
That's, that's usually the impetus that will get something moving
again, in a, in an anti-gun way or more regulatory, uh, restrictions.
Barring that.
I see you getting kicked down the road further,
but I think we're gonna reach an intersect at some point here where, you know, for,
for a long time now, headlines around guns and crime have generally been
bad for the gun community, resulting in more bans, this sort of stuff.
But I think we've reached a bit of a, a, I think we've already reached
a bit of an inflection point.
It's just whether, how long it takes to percolate to the surface and to Ottawa
where, like when I got my gun license from Silver Corps, like 20 whatever years ago.
Mm-hmm.
If you, if you were to go into the gun community on, at the time, the only way to
talk to the gun community was on Canadian gun nuts, which was to, to date it.
Like when that was the only place.
Yeah.
If you mentioned defensive use of a gun, you would be.
You wouldn't just be ridiculed, you'd be railroaded.
Sure.
There'd be guys being like, you can't say that.
Get GTFO, mute this guy.
Block the con, delete that.
Like they would lose their minds over the notion of that.
Mm-hmm.
If you went to a gun club and you mentioned defensive use of a gun, at that
time, gun owners themselves would look at you like you'd run a third eyeball
and go, no, you can't do that here.
That's not what we have guns for.
You got your license, you know what you understand?
You can only own them for recreational shooting, hunting, and collecting.
Those are the only three valid reasons you cannot have a gun for self-defense.
That was the overwhelming rhetoric from within the gun community.
Hmm.
That is absolutely not the case today.
Like mm-hmm.
At all.
It is now common.
To talk about home defense, talk about defensive gun uses.
We are seeing defensive uses of firearms occurring with what would
be considered by 20 year ago.
Metrics.
Shocking regularity.
Like there were like two cases for like 10 years.
There were huge news because it was so uncommon.
It was so abstract.
It was so rare that like a Canadian was having his house firebombed and he shot
his pistol in the air twice to scare the intruders away was breaking news like
people were following that court case.
It was a huge story.
Now, like it happens and I don't even notice, like people be like,
oh, did you hear about this guy that his, he was having his truck stolen?
I'm like, no.
Oh yeah, he came out with a shotgun.
I, I had no idea.
'cause it happens so frequently now, and I think that's where this intersection of.
And it's, it's almost ironic if it wasn't so depressing that I've said for a long
time, there's, there has been for, up until now, I suppose, no incentive for
the liberals to stop crime because the policies that they also use to leverage
votes being gun stuff rely on crime.
If there were no mass shootings, they couldn't use gun politics to win votes.
It just, it wouldn't work.
Mm. So they, they kind of don't, there's, like I said, I don't think
they want to, but there's also no motivation for them to stop gun crime.
It takes away a, a pretty big cudgel that they've always carried, but it's almost
like they've let it fester for so long by tilting at gun bans and gun owners instead
of the actual causes that now so many people are seeing so many stories about.
Crime, really bad crime.
Like here in Colonna, there's a story that came out two days ago, and
this is the perfect example 'cause there's so many examples of it.
It was the headline was something like Woman who Shot, brother in
head, released on time served.
Okay.
It is, it's as simple as that.
People are reading these things and going, Jesus.
She shot her brother in the head with a shotgun and she's out
a couple years later on time.
Served any, yeah, there were circumstances around it.
There wasn't like, one of them was a saint and the other one was the devil.
They were, they're arguing over drugs, but like they're still people.
Mm. And I think that's where even liberals are starting to go.
Those are still people, and yet they're people that constitute
risk to me and my family.
Mm-hmm.
And they're just being let out.
They are committing these crimes over and over again.
We're hearing always about these, whatever, it's the, what's the term?
The offenders that do a metric ton of crimes.
There's like eight guys in colon that have done like 300 crimes like a month.
Right.
Under tying up all of the resources and it's, it's such a common thing that it's
now resulting in more people getting gun licenses because they don't feel secure.
Like this growth that we've seen in people with gun licenses.
I think a large portion, I would love to do a poll on it someday, but I, I
would argue a lot of the people that are getting gun licenses now, a lot
of this current surge is people who are concerned for their security.
'cause let's, hundred percent.
It's not like they're going into ips.
I
a hundred percent.
It's a safety security driver and that.
Uh, from what I've seen is two fronts.
One's gonna be personal safety, just like you articulated.
And the other one's going to be, uh, the idea that if everything goes sideways,
they still want to be able to get food.
They wanna learn how to hunt.
Like the,
the reality of that self-sufficiency is a lot more self-sufficiency.
The idea of being self-sufficient.
And more and more people are coming in just for that a lot more, uh, women and
bringing their kids in and families that are coming in that are getting firearms
because of what they consume in the media.
And the idea that there is so much uncertainty and, um, how unsafe
it is in the world right now.
I mean, the reality is we live in a pretty safe time.
I mean, it's, it's pretty damn, I think it's safer than it's, if you
look at the polls and it has been in a ever really, but that's not
what people see on an ongoing basis.
Um.
So, yeah.
Why they're getting the license a hundred percent.
It's because they fear for their safety and they want to be self-sufficient.
Well, and I think too, like
the stats scan data shows that, generally speaking, there's more
crime than there ever has been.
Now, the last 10 years has been a pretty reasonable tick upwards
and a lot more crime of a serious nature, which results in the violent
crime index number coming up.
But the, the rate of people reporting crimes has gone way down.
Um, not way down, but it's gone down.
So we're getting farther away from good outcomes.
Uh, 'cause when you see the crime rate going up, like 30%
of crime is reported in Canada.
That's it.
The other 60% just goes unreported.
Now
in terms of what is reported, generally speaking, crimes like homicides.
Are reported because it's hard to cover up the fact, not fact
that someone is now missing.
Right.
Um mm-hmm.
But other crimes like assaults, sexual assaults, and obviously property crime,
theft of a bike and stuff like that are less reported because they're
not noticeable and people just move on with their lives a lot of times.
Mm-hmm.
Um, the rate of reporting has gone down, the clearance rate has gone down as well.
You can see all the sask can does all this stuff.
Um, so we are seeing less crimes reported than victims.
So they, what they do is they compare the general census that
they do with the crimes that are reported to the federal courts.
So they'll do the general census, say, Hey, have you been the victim
of a violent crime in the last year?
Or whatever.
Right.
And then they'll compare that stat to how many people actually reported
a violent crime the year prior.
And they'll say, okay, well 30% of the people who've reported
the crime to the police.
60% said they were victims of violent crime on our census.
So they, it's referred to basically as a victim versus crime comparison.
Sure.
Um, yeah, it makes sense.
So we have a lot more victims than we do crimes.
The gap is growing, the rates at which we are solving these crimes
is going down, but at the same time, stats, Canada's reported crime rate
has gone up by percentage points, like 10% or more in various areas.
Um, so things are getting worse.
And I think too, it's younger people specifically because a lot of the
victimization of crime heavily, heavily impacts people at lower income levels
because they have to live in Sure.
More dangerous areas and stuff.
Right.
Well, if you're a 65-year-old who bought your home in 1985 and you've
marched your way up the property ladder, you probably don't live in a
very dangerous neighborhood anymore.
Mm. And that's why I think you're getting a lot of young people coming out while
we're seeing the growth, especially amongst young people and getting gun
licenses, is that they are also the population that is most influenced
by these increases in crime rates.
'cause they are the ones confronting these crimes.
They maybe they can't afford a car, so they get a bike.
Well, bikes are stolen all the damn time.
Do you report it?
'cause it's a bike?
No, the cops aren't gonna do anything.
That's right.
So, and that sort of mentality leads to, well if the cops, if I can't trust
the cops to find my bike, what happens if something more serious happens?
Mm-hmm.
I should probably then get a gun.
And where I think the intersect will happen is eventually this
liberal mentality of, oh, we'll kick the can down the road.
Maybe a bad shooting happens at some point.
A bad crime is going to happen.
If this trajectory continues, it's inevitable.
If crime keeps rising, eventually a bad crime will happen and Canadians
will turn around and instead of saying, govern us harder, daddy, they'll go.
Why can't I get something to stop it from happening to me?
Mm-hmm.
That will be the shift is they will have just given up hope that the
system, the authorities, the courts can stop these things and they'll
say, I need to have that right myself.
Uh, nothing else.
You obviously can't provide it.
If you won't provide me with the safety and security that me and my family need,
then you cannot deny me getting the security that me and my family need.
And that's why I say it is inevitable because that's just how the world works.
Like people will not continue to accept a less safe area, less safe
for their kids in Intuity, constantly allowing the responsibility of safety
to be downloaded to an authority.
A court system.
A jail system that does not seem to be capable of it.
Like you wouldn't hire a taxi with a broken engine.
It, it's just one of those like, I need to get there.
Well, my engine's broken, well.
I guess I'll have to walk 'cause I'm not just gonna sit in the
back of your cab while you,
I I, I see that tipping point further on down the road though.
Um, a fair bit further.
I think there would have to be a lot of civil unrest and a lot of, um, people
grabbing a pair essentially to stand up and start, um, um, recognizing the amount
of agency that they have as an individual to be able to affect their own destiny.
And I think that's something for a long period of time that's been, uh,
intentionally, uh, taken from people.
Whether that's through school systems, whether that's through
media, whether it's, whatever it might be through legislation.
You can't defend yourself.
Don't you worry we have the police, I'll take care of you.
You know, seconds count.
The police are minutes away.
Is is how the saying always goes?
I think.
I think we have a lot of.
Timid individuals who don't understand how much power that they actually have.
And that's one of the things that I, like you and I were asked to do a chat for the
National Firearms Association recently for their A GM, and that's something that's
always been on the back burner that I try to help people with is just understand
what the rules are, understand what you're able to actually do in effect, in a legal
way, in order to push things further
for the benefit of yourself, your family, and those around you.
It's not gonna be somebody else who makes these things happen.
You're not gonna rely on an organization, have given you some
money and it's all gonna happen.
You're not gonna rely on the police.
Okay, the government's got the police in here and now I'm safe.
Right?
At some point people are going to have to be, I think, pushed into a
position where they start standing up and I, and I see that slowly happening.
I mean, there's a saying too that, I can't remember what the exact wording
is, but it's basically like, you know, very slowly then all of a sudden is
how change usually seems to occur a lot of times is it's, it's incremental.
It's incremental, it's incremental, and then suddenly a tipping point is breached.
And it's whoosh.
You know, it's, we've seen it all so many times.
Um, I mean, the us, the housing crisis, everyone knew it was a bubble, knew it's
a bubble, oh, it's gonna be a bubble, it's gonna, then it bursts and it's, oh
yeah, that was a bubble and now it's a giant recession, and that sort of thing.
I think, um, it could happen on an, on a more evolutionary standard of just,
you know, okay, well things are getting worse and police can't protect me.
But I think what will more likely happen, especially given today's media
makeup and the, the way politics works is, is you reach these moments in
time that are like a perfect push pull opportunity wherein something happens.
Uh, in, in this context for, for the hypothetical, say there's some
terrible crime that someone could have prevented if they'd had a gun.
And there's some sort of key piece of clear evidence that if this person
had been armed, they would have done something outstanding, phenomenal, saved
a bunch of people, something like that.
Um,
with that clarity, politicians then get the license, the political
license to entertain the notion that we need to move forward.
And it inspires people to push for that change.
And you get that push pull where you get a massive uprising in people,
but it won't be, uh, it, it won't be because Statistics Canada releases
a report and people just keep going.
Yeah.
Things are getting worse and worse.
And at this point, with that number, that's the thing
that we need to now pursue.
It'll be some really emotionally motivating event that will
provide people with enough.
Yeah.
Emotional motivation to push forward and go, that can never happen again.
We need to do whatever we can to prevent that from ever happening again.
And politicians will look at it and go, there is a critical mass
of support for this process.
It may be historically speaking, not something that we wanted to touch with
the 10 foot pole, but we are recognizing a moment of zeitgeist in social, I guess
engineering at this point was what we're talking about is sure they'll see that
and they will be able to pull towards it.
And the combination is usually what results in, in wholesale change.
Um.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, good example would be that movie that Al Gore did that really inspired
the whole climate change discussion.
Mm. The movie comes out, people watch it, it's emotional 'cause it's
got animals dying and everyone sees the sad looking polar bear on the
ice flow that's starving to death.
And they go, wow, we, we can't let this happen.
And that gives people the incentive and the politicians respond to it.
And you get that, that kind of.
Cooperative effort.
I don't know what that looks like in Canada.
I also don't know as well because there's, I feel like there are,
there's two Canadas at this point.
There's, there's like my parents Canada, and then there's me and my brother's
Canada, and they're not the same country.
Hmm.
Because you will never convince my parents that things are worse
today than they were in 1985.
Like, you can't even convince them that houses are more expensive.
I've had that debate.
It didn't go well.
Um, sure.
When you try and have these discussions, they just, Nope, nope.
It was tough for us too.
The interest rates really high and you kinda go, well, you know, interest rates
and principle are two different things.
Like, would you rather have a really huge principle and a low
interest rate, or like a really low principle and a huge interest rate?
I, I know which I would prefer.
Um mm-hmm.
It's not the one I've got unfortunately, but, uh mm-hmm.
I think that if you can't convince people of, of these basic facts that.
Younger people are confronting in a very, like daily basis.
Uh, you're dealing with, with a, such a general generational divide as I'm
not sure the closest that I can come with, uh, for a comparator would be
like Americans in the sixties with the hippie movement in the Vietnam War.
Sure.
War, drugs, Reagan, that whole period.
But that whole period was also one of extreme violence in the us like
multiple presidential assassination efforts, some that were successful,
multiple, like Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers bombings.
Like it was, it was a phenomenally, people do not realize how the sixties in America
was an exceptionally violent period of time because of that generational divide.
And I think Canada is going to have to confront that.
And that's where I start to go.
You know, it's really easy to say, well, I think Canada's really far away from
accepting firearms and self-defense as.
An innate Right.
Well, we're also the only country where foreign diplomat's ever been executed.
The FLQ did it.
We have that history with the Mohawk Nation of Armed Insurrection.
We have the FLQ bombing things in Montreal.
Like these are not, this is not ancient history.
Like my mom moved out of Quebec during the War Measures Act
there because of the bombings.
Mm-hmm.
Like this is recent stuff.
Um, and unless this is where I do hope, like this is one of those cases
where I hope Mark Carney can do better, some politician needs to do better
because of that gap keeps growing.
If that misunderstanding between the generations continues to grow, uh, we
will reach a point where the violence that was born out in the sixties in America,
or the race riots and all the other things that were largely generational.
'cause young people didn't have a problem with integration, their parents did.
Mm-hmm.
If, if.
Kids today are going, I can't afford a home.
'cause they're way too expensive and their parents are going, it was hard for us too.
It was just as expensive.
You're gonna start to see people do things that will become the inciting moments.
That could be the emotional push that will make a politician go, Hey look,
the young generation seems really upset.
The sound of explosions indicates that we should be, and they're
also the largest voting block.
So maybe what we should do is listen to them and start making some changes.
Um, and those changes are, I agree that it's down the road.
I don't think it's as far down the road as most people think.
Um, and I don't know where the change will take us, because some
of these things can go very far.
Some of them can be somewhat more incremental, but they, I think there
will be much larger changes than most Canadians are used to seeing.
I agree with a lot of what you said there and.
One of the things that you touched on was the zeitgeist, you know,
the spirit of the times, which is the literal translation of it.
And I, so I just got back from Montreal when I was over there.
I dropped by one of the local gun stores.
I talked to Dante, uh, or sorry, not Dante.
I talked to Rudy at Dante's, uh, sporting Goods and had a really good chat with him.
And he comes in, he says, Trav, you come over here.
I, I don't show this to many people, but take a look at this.
And he opens up his books and he says, look at this.
Here's how long I've been running for.
I mark all the months, all the years, how it goes up and how it goes down.
And I correlate what's happening at the time.
You know what other gun stores at this point right here, when this thing
happened politically, they shut down.
I didn't, here's what I did.
And he talks about how he pivoted.
And any good entrepreneur and business person.
He can find a way to make a pivot within their business.
Like I walk in his business, it's a gun store, but it's also got like higher
end kitchen equipment in there too.
I don't know if you've ever been there, but uh, and his wife's got
all her stuff and the son's a chef and he is got a kitchen next door.
And I'm like, it's a pretty cool family operation they got going and
it didn't happen just by a accident.
It's a longstanding ongoing family operation.
But you know, I get something from that.
What I get from it is there's always gonna be winners and
there's always gonna be losers.
Losers will whine, well, what happened?
Well, it was 2008 and there's a recession.
So if it wasn't for them, my business would've thrived.
There's a lot of businesses that did thrive in that time because
they pivoted and they adapted.
And I look at this in a similar way.
What can individuals do?
What can businesses do?
Businesses can adapt.
I mean, there's a lot of different ways and ideas that a business
can actually, uh, use current legislation in order to be successful.
It's the individual portion that I think I'd like to touch on a little
bit, because a lot of people will listen to you talk by self included.
I'll listen to what you have to say and the holy crap, you're well informed.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Right?
And people will then sit back and wait, okay, I guess we'll just wait
and see what happens, when will this spirit of the times happen?
But individually, we have a lot of power.
We've got a lot of ability to influence that spirit of the times.
And I, I think of Daniel Bofski, you know Daniel, um.
He called me up many years back.
I'd love to have him on the podcast if he could get his microphone figured out too.
But, uh, called me up many years ago and says, Trav.
I'm a silver Court club member and I'm having a hard time getting my, uh,
authorization to transport a restricted firearm and my restricted firearms
license renewed here in Ontario.
I, they say I have to belong to a gun club arranged, I belong to the
Silver gu, silver Court Gun Club, and you are an RCMP approved club.
So I started helping him and he is, I think he's an accountant by trade,
so he is meticulous in his approach.
He's not a lawyer, but what he did is he made a legal issue out of it, one person,
and he pushed the issue into the courts.
I think when he went to the courts, he ended up getting another club membership
through Silverdale, if I'm not mistaken, and, uh, used that as an expedience
point so that they couldn't argue the fact that Silver Court is a federal club
and this one's now a provincial club.
But he pushed it and pushed it and pushed it and came back with
a somewhat favorable result.
The judge says, yes, Chris Wyatt, current head of OOPP and,
and, uh, head of the Ontario.
Um, firearms office there.
You issue him his license.
He, you have to issue him his license and give him his at TT.
So Daniel left all happy.
Chris Wyatt says, yeah, not a problem.
We'll do that.
We've got this court order and then tells Daniel, not a problem.
We'll, we're gonna issue your at t as soon as you, uh, show
us your, your club membership in the way that we want to see it.
Daniel says, hold on a second.
That's not what I said.
That's not what the court said.
Took him back and he lost on the appeal.
But a byproduct of that one individual's efforts was that that
province removed the requirement to belong to a gun club or a range.
They changed how they approach things 'cause they didn't want that.
Pushed further.
And I'm not saying the courts are the proper mechanism for
individuals to move through.
They're expensive, they move slow, and most often history has shown you're
not gonna get a favorable result.
However, how we comport ourselves, how we help control the dialogue so
that the truth is getting out there is something that's, that we're able
to do easier and easier through online blogs, through podcasts like this,
through talking with your neighbor.
And that's the piece of the puzzle that I think I would like to touch on further is
what can the masses the many do to help affect a bit of a change in a way that's
gonna be positive for them, at least in this one regard in the firearms arena.
It's an interesting question.
Um, 'cause it, it also brings up something that I've thought about
in the, the days after the election.
You know, comparing a game to those old CGN days where gun owners in
Canada had like literally one web forum, uh, as this kind of solitary
platform upon which to have these discussions and share ideas and whatnot.
We now have so many tools at our disposal that, although especially in
the last five years, we've been hit pretty hard by regulatory changes.
We as a community have also never been stronger.
Uh, all of the organizations have grown tremendously.
We even grew a third organization like in, in the interceding years, we've, we've
gotten more organized than ever before.
Our gun clubs have an easier time getting ahold of us.
There's, there's a much bigger network of gun owners and it's created a much
more informed gun owner in general.
Um, I. W way back when we were trying to get rid of the Long Gun
Registry, I would go to gun clubs and I would hand out pamphlets.
'cause I was that guy.
This is before Caliber.
This was when Harper still had a minority and we were trying to get it
Jack Layton's, NDP, to come on board.
And the pamphlets were super simple.
It was just basically like, this is why I want get rid of the Long Gun Registry.
You know, go contact your MP sort of thing.
And I would say at the time, probably about 50% or more of the gun owners
that I would talk to would tell me that the Long Gun Registry was a great
tool because it helped the police catch criminals because they could
get the ballistics off of the bullet and then run it through the registry.
And like then the guy from CSI comes along and takes his sunglasses
off and he goes, it's that guy.
And I was like, that's not, I eventually realized you can't convince these people.
'cause I kept being like, that's not how any of this works.
Um, right.
But they were grossly misinformed to be blunt.
Hmm.
That's not such a case these days.
Like when you go to the gun ranges and you talk to people, you find people that
are quite aware of the bans and the effect that they're going to have and stuff.
But at the same time, it's, it's created this neural network of great
intelligence coming across the community.
It has also absolved every one of personal responsibility
because back then we didn't have.
You know, there were organizations and you could call them, you could pick
up the phone, you could talk to, you know, the CSSA, the NFA, eventually
the CCFR, but like, they weren't places that you could just post a
comment, fire, and forget, right.
You know, activism.
Um, and because you had to get on the phone, no one really bothered.
So it was kind of just more a case of, well, the, the organizations would tell
you, go meet with your mp, go do this.
We're doing a phone drive, that sort of thing.
And there would be very real, like 24 hour phone drives where gun owners
would just, everyone's gonna call their mp and over the next 24 hours, the
liberal party's phones would ring off the hooks and everyone would get really
frustrated and remember that everyone would go on Cgn and be like, man, so
and so-and-so's voicemail inbox is full.
Ha ha like jokes on him.
And like everyone enjoyed it.
That's what we need to get back to doing now, is I think the liberal
party has seen on a macro scale.
From, from the fact that, and I'm basing this solely on the fact that
like, it doesn't seem like people really want the gun ban anymore.
Like when I do an interview with the CBC and even they're like, yeah, this gun ban
doesn't really seem like it makes sense.
Um, that's, that's kind of evidence that like there's no media outlet
that's overly supportive of this except for like maybe the ones in Montreal.
Hmm.
Now you need to apply the pressure.
If they are aware that this is no longer a winning policy for them, they will not
change it unless they have incentive to do so, or they're being pushed to do so.
If it's such a pain in the ass, then they go, we're, we know that
we can gain votes by losing this.
And also too, these people are being a giant pain in my ass.
That's when they will start to actually push things through the cabinet
table and say, yeah, you know what?
We could probably just find a compromise and what that would probably look like.
And I'm not saying this is what I want.
'cause I would just like it all to go away and we could just go back
to the way things were, which is what I think what most people want.
But there is, you know, within the realm of politics, that's unlikely
to happen to just completely, I mean even with the carbon tax, Mark
Carney reduced the rate to zero.
He did not get rid of the legislation.
Right, right, right.
What they could do is go up, we'll grandfather them.
You can still use 'em, you can keep 'em, we'll go back to the
way the ban was sold to you.
You can keep them, you can use them, but you can't sell them.
Okay, fine.
That's even, that's easier to walk back down the road because
now it's an incremental thing.
A future conservative government could come along and go like, well,
everyone can keep them and use them.
It's silly that they can't sell them.
Let's just make them legal again.
Right.
It moves us closer to what we want.
Um, and I think that's where gun owners just need to take the personal
responsibility and say, look like.
I know a lot of people are intimidated by their MP because the constant media cycle
and the way things are portrayed, they seem like people who, like, for example,
Mark Carney is someone's MP in Neon.
He's just their member of Parliament.
Mm-hmm.
The guy does have an incredibly advanced resume.
You have every right in the world to sit in his office, not be rude, but tell him
your gun policy is absolutely retarded.
Like, you should just stop this.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Like you, you know nothing about our existing gun laws that you made this
law because you would've known this is impossible to do because you don't
know where any of these guns are.
You can tell him you're gonna burn money in perpetuity 'cause you
don't know where the guns are.
And you have no legal avenue to make the people give them to you right away.
And even if you could, you still wouldn't know who has them.
So you would never know if you got them all.
Like there's no, there's no way to tick the box that says gun buyback complete.
It's literally impossible.
No one knows how many there are, so they can never go.
We've got them all.
So it's.
It is just programmed forever.
You have every right to sit and tell him that even though he's got Bank
of England on his resume and Bank of Canada, like you have that right?
And that means that every MP has the obligation to listen to you.
So if you're a gun owner, I think that your obligation as a gun owner to the rest
of you know, your kids, your community, is to go down and just meet with your mp.
Don't email them, don't do something that they can ignore.
Say, I want to sit down and have a meeting with you.
There is policy that is dramatically impacting my life and I, I intend
to speak with you about it.
And again, don't be rude, don't be derogatory.
But you can absolutely say this is, this is stupid.
It is beyond the realm of stupidity.
And the best thing you can do is roll it back.
I. Because I, I think like that's, and that's the thing
that everyone's just gotta do.
I've done it.
I've done it with mps and MLAs 'cause I get involved in some provincial stuff too.
And it's quite satisfying.
And to be honest, you get more done in a 15 minute meeting with
an elected representative than you do in three months of emails.
'cause they'll never read the email.
Eventually.
Like we can do the big email mass drive thing that floods the inbox,
which gives them the impression of volume, which is really good.
We can tie up their phone lines for a day, which is good for the same reason.
But the best thing is to be the constituent that steps up,
confronts them, and goes your like hugely impacting my life.
It has impacted my life for the last five years.
Please stop.
It's not benefiting anyone.
I think that's, it's as simple as that.
There's no, we can do lots of other stuff, but that's all
secondary and tertiary things.
The first thing is to just, they're your member of parliament.
You pay a metric buttload in taxes, as we all just figured out recently.
You know, you fill out those CRA forms when you send it off and look at all
the money that you gave to the CRA guess who's getting some of that?
Your mp?
Mm-hmm.
Make them earn it, like mm-hmm.
You've paid them.
Why not get some value out of it?
Right.
Like it's, it's pretty simple.
And resources like this.
People listen to the podcast, people reading your magazine.
We'll help them approach your MP in, in a more articulate way, in a
way where they can, 'cause there's gonna be emotion and it's hard to
separate emotion when you come up to something like this emotion from fact.
And sometimes maybe it's not the best to separate the emotion from the
fact, because if you try to fight an emotional argument with simply Facts,
well that doesn't really work too well.
But there is a way that individuals can comport themselves, how they can
couch a letter, how they can, uh, meet with an MP and, uh, stay on point.
And that's the area that I think that the gun organizations could
be of real value is in talking to their membership and saying.
Okay, let's have an accountability, uh, check.
Who here has talked to their, their local mp?
How did it go?
What worked, what didn't?
Here's some tools that you can bring in when you talk and some
talking points that you can go off.
They're not all gonna be the same if everyone comes in and says the
exact same thing over and over again.
Okay.
They're like, yeah, yeah.
I heard this one when Bob came in last, or when Jane came in, she said the
same thing, but here's some issues.
Pick the one that you find is most important to you within it, and here's
some, here's some fodder, here's some facts that can go behind it,
or ways that you can approach it.
I think that would be an effective way for the gun organizations to
help her help mobilize people.
Oh, for sure.
And I think that's the, like from a top down and bottom up approach.
If, if you, me, Joe, gun owner is at the bottom, best thing you can
do is just reach up to your mp.
It's the, the best sphere you could influence.
So do that.
But from the, the top down, the organizations, um.
I mean, there's nothing stopping them from making appointments for their members.
Like they could, you know, they, they could do an accountability
check where they could just go, do you wanna make us, do you want us
to make an appointment with your mp?
Yes.
No, they know your name.
They know your address.
So they could then just go, hi, we represent so and so
at Blobbity blah riding.
He would like to have a meeting with you.
When would you like to schedule it?
And then they just email the member and go, okay, well you're
meeting with your MP at this time.
You know, does that work for you?
That's brilliant, Dan.
Just do it.
That's brilliant.
Or, and then go to, you could, you could download that as well.
'cause one thing that I will, I will criticize our gun organizations for one
thing, and that is quite a few of them, or I guess all of them, to be honest.
It's not that many of them, but they all, uh, I'm not saying that they
exclusively focus on members, but they almost exclusively focus on members.
Mm-hmm.
And good organizations don't do that Good.
What good organizations do is they user members to speak
for everyone in that area.
Mm-hmm.
Um.
There are, for example, a great example would be the Royal
Automobile Club in England.
Their membership is like, like, like you gotta, you gotta have some
money to be in that club, right?
But they try and advance all drivers.
They not just their members.
And I think that's where the gun organizations could make a lot of progress
is saying to their members like, look, yeah, we're gonna do this for you.
We'll make appointments for you, but we're also gonna reach out to all of
the gun clubs members are not, and we're gonna offer them the same service.
Mm-hmm.
Because A, they get more members who just make sense.
But also two, it's, it's, I don't know why it is, but yeah,
they're so focused on just kind of working with their memberships
and not getting out beyond that.
Um, that I think would also be a really good step for them 'cause it would
amplify their voices quite a lot.
'cause right now they kind of just purport to speak for the people
who have paid them the annual fee.
Mm-hmm.
But they, there's nothing stopping them from expanding out into a much broader
perspective and saying, yeah, we have, you know, 40,000 members, but because of
the work we do with people who are not members, we can now kind of com purport
to speak for all gun owners, you know?
Um, and I think especially with the, the hunters and stuff that's, that
would be something that would be quite effective if they were to, you know,
perhaps I don't, and this is beyond my like stuff, but like they could work
with BC Wildlife Federation or Offa, um, to kind of bridge a gap and recognize
like, we're gonna spend some money.
On these wildlife federations on some of the stuff they're doing.
'cause we support what they're doing and, and we think our members
do too, that would then give them that, that credibility that when
they approach government they go, yeah, we do, we have 40,000 members.
We represent people like the BCWF membership, offa membership sport
shooters, like much broader in scope.
So I'd like to see them do that.
But I think also to really, like I said previously, some,
some straight up tactical stuff.
'cause I've not seen a ton of actionable work, like from any of 'em going, okay, so
here's, so we sent out this thing asking and we made, you know, 25,000 appointments
between members and our, their mps.
We did that and I would go, wow, like I'm, I'm guessing what half of the
people forgot the appointment existed and didn't go to the meeting with their mp.
But that's life.
But you still got half of those.
Which is better than the zero that we're currently getting.
Um.
Mm-hmm.
But they really are, they're not, I don't see them using
their members in the same way.
It is, it does seem to be a bit more of the, you pay us and we'll represent
you instead of you're a member of our organization and we're gonna give you the
tools and empower you to do the advocacy that we are also doing on a macro scale.
Yeah.
The using of members, I've seen some of the organizations essentially
weaponize their members, but more in a recruitment driving fashion as opposed to,
or in a negative way where they put out some information and knowing full
well that it's going to result in like a cavalcade of brigade comments
or angry emails to people mm-hmm.
That don't.
Really deserve it.
Like, you know, there, there was, there's been a few cases of that where it's
like, you know, someone's just trying to do a job and I don't like it, I don't
like the result of what they're doing, but like, it's just their nine to five.
Mm-hmm.
They don't need to be inundated with hatred over it.
Um, and it's tactically not sound.
And in the long term too, it's just, it doesn't benefit advocacy organizations.
They never benefit from, from destruction, ever.
Like Right.
You look at Ducks Unlimited and, and the really successful organizations
over the years, doctors the Borders, like they build things, they build
better things than they previously had.
Uh, and it's never done by tearing down other entities.
It's always through collaboration and support.
Um, and you just don't see that's, I hope we need, I hope we see more
of that in the next little bit.
I'm not optimistic.
I, I think that's a strong,
I think it's a strong indicator that people can be looking at.
I mean, I. People want to savior people want somebody to come
in and say, it's gonna be okay.
I give you the my money, they're gonna go out, they're gonna do their thing.
I've done my part, we're gonna be fixed.
That seems to be the sentiment and that's reinforced by some of the
organizations, uh, through the fear-based, if you don't donate, we're doomed.
Right?
More, more money, then we can do things.
But, you know, I've had the chance to peek behind the curtains on some of the
organizations and some of the wildlife organizations and these different
groups and seeing how they try and, uh, mesh together to reach a unified goal.
And a lot of egos get involved.
You know, it always comes down to the same things, money and power or perception
of money and perception of power.
And it seemed, I, I think members should be demanding a higher level of
transparency from where their money is going within an organization and how
the efforts are being actually used.
Not in an anecdotal where we are so transparent parent and anyone can
ask for things, but in an actual way where it's, it's tangible
where you can actually see it.
And if you wanted the, uh, the things that are being, they say they're being
transparent about, they're out in the open because I, I think, I think we have
something here in Canada that can be quite successful, but we have to change the
conversation and we have to change this paradigm that we're stuck in of infighting
and, uh, people abro getting control to a, just to a third party to solve
their issues for them and walking away.
Yeah, it's, um, I, I wanna say it's kind of, it's, it's bizarre, uh, for me.
'cause like, I'm not naturally that way, but I mean, even if, like, even being
involved on a low, low level, like on a gun club board, like how I was president
here of a club in Kelowna for a while and, you know, I guess I think I've said
it before and I don't know if it's a shocker to the people listening, but like,
I don't really shoot for fun anymore.
It stopped being fun some time ago.
This is my job now.
Um, I think that's a bit of a, uh, a strength when it comes to me doing
media stuff because I, if someone's like, you love guns, they're like, no,
I actually really love motorcycles.
But you were close.
Um, they're both loud, I suppose.
Um, I feel passionately about guns and I feel very passionately
about the policy around them.
To me, they're more about what firearms and how a country handles them, what
it says about the country and how it.
How it feels about its own citizens.
So they're hugely important.
I don't want to, you know, I'm, I'm not walking it back.
I'm saying they're hugely important, but it's work for me.
Sure.
So when I was running the gun club, I kind of fell into it.
So I moved to Kelowna like eight years ago.
I think I've told you the story, but it was kind of comical.
Chris Weber here who works at Weber and Mark and Gunsmith, he's the
Weber part, in case anyone's curious, um, he, I've known him before.
He's a very tall, large, kind of grumpy German guy, and.
When I moved up here, I went to a shop, we chatted, we hung out, had
lunch, you know, he's like, Hey, you should come out to the, the Joe
Rich Club Ag GM, and I went off.
I mean, sure, why not?
That sounds like the club that I'll join.
I'll, I'll go pay my money, go to the club, go to the Ag gm.
There's like 12 people in the room.
The president basically goes, well, we have like three grand of the bank.
We'll be broke next month.
Uh, I'm not gonna be president again.
Who wants to be president?
And no one stuck their hand up.
And I'm sitting there going, what the hell have I gotten in?
Okay.
And then eventually they did the one call, two call, then the third call.
Chris goes, I, I nominate Daniel Fritter.
And they're like, I had never been on the property.
I'd never even seen the club.
I had paid for a membership like two weeks prior.
Everyone turns around in the room, looks at me, and I'm like, I don't
know who any of these people are.
Like, I don't, I don't even know where this frigging place is.
I know it's up Highway 33.
That's it.
So like, I fall into this position and it went really well.
But what I learned was that.
I think when I was in a lot of those meetings, my only goal was
to build a shooting facility for people in the Okanagan period.
Hmm.
I don't shoot for fun, so I don't really care if it's the 300 meter range, the a
hundred meter range, the 50 meter range.
It was, which range do people use the most?
That's the one we should spend the money on right now.
Hmm.
That attitude is unfortunately not super common.
No.
Because as every gun member knows there's been involved in a gun club, there'll
be people that go, well, I really like shooting at 300, so we should invest
all of our money in the 300 meter range.
There's no collectivism, there's no sense of we're here for the people down
the road, or we're here for the other person before the before ourselves.
And I think that's where people need to be asking their
organizations like, are you if
is what you're doing for your organization or is it for gun owners?
Period.
Mm-hmm.
Is it looking to grow your organization?
Which is, it is a very noble goal 'cause organizations do need to have memberships
and be big to have a good voice, but they also need to be putting as much or more
effort into initiatives that move the ball forward for gun owners in real ways.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and I think that's the one where it's, you don't, there there
are things, they're all doing it.
'cause again, I'm sure there will be people that hear this and think, I'm
speaking of individual organizations.
They all do this.
They all do it.
It's true.
They all do it in varying ways.
Like every organization has at times done a phenomenal job of something
that is great for gun owners.
They have all done stuff that is extremely self-serving at other times.
'cause nothing is perfect and that's life.
But what people and gun owners need to do is push for more and better and say, look
like we do deserve organizations that do.
Not just well or better than the other organization, but do properly good work.
There are a ton of gun owners in this country.
There is a, there's a lot.
And I think the fact that none of our gun organizations have ever gotten really
huge memberships, even though there are millions of gun owners in the country,
which are very accessible, is largely because they're, they're not, they're not
doing the things of reaching out to other organizations, meshing with them so that
they can expand their own sort of reach.
Um, and, and I guess their own, I'm trying to think of the word, but
like basically what they represent.
It's almost like they've all become hyper distilled into these very small
organizations that represent very specific things about gun ownership.
Maybe it's mm-hmm.
That they represent, you know, a regional area or they represent, you
know, and I guess it's their name, but shooting sports, you know, there'll be
organizations where it's like everyone thinks that's what they represent.
Like the CSSA Canadian Shooting Sports Association grew out of
the Ontario Handgun Association.
So you get a regional tie and then you get a specific tie to pistol shooting that
grows into a shooting sports association, which they represent gun owners of
every strike with their membership.
But like, you know, the name is, is something that people kind of go there
for shooting sports, other organizations that are a bit more on the rights side
of things, which comes with a whole political set of problems for advocacy.
That's troublesome, but like.
There's no, like, as much as they're vilified and as much as they have
huge problems related to money and power, the nras program is huge.
Like when you go through what the NRA does from legal battles at state
levels to their Junior Eagle program or whatever it's called, for like Kids
Gun safety, Eddie, Eddie Eagle, it is a wide range of stuff that they do that
supports gun owners that are maybe not NRA members, period like, but that's
what allows them to be the NRA if.
If a gun organization Canada wants to truly be the NRA of Canada,
they need to do those things.
They need to go to school boards in remote areas and say, Hey, look,
we have a program for gun safety.
You are in a rural area.
Gun ownership is a very high rate here.
We can send someone along that can do this to your grade 12 class that can show them
that if they come across the gun, how to handle it safely, what to do, et cetera.
You know?
Mm-hmm.
We have this, we've got it through ba we, we've talked to the advisors,
we've got people to sign off on it.
We've got the pediatrician signature here, it's best practice has been
followed, et cetera, et cetera.
Do the necessary steps to get a school board to Yes.
On that, while also taking a court case to a judge while also trying to get people
to make appointments with their mps.
Like that's, that's what they should be doing.
Um, but,
you know, and you know how simple that is.
Like a lot of these things can be, can be automated.
I mean, if you want to have appointments with nps, you can leverage AI in order
to organize schedules, calendars, call outs, emails, whatever it might be.
Like these are really simple initiatives that, that can move the needle.
Yeah.
I mean.
You could automate the whole thing.
We used to have the email machine that, I can't remember who made it, but uh,
there was a system where he would do, like, you wanted to email your mp, you
pressed on a button and it just, like, it was, again, this is going back to cg, you
pressed on a button and it just opened your email client into your MP and it was
like you just write whatever you want or read a form letter that you just copy.
And it's stuff like that where there could just be a portal where like maybe they
make the appointment for you or maybe they just send you a link with a button and
you click on it and voila, there's a form letter in your email client or you copy
paste it in of, hi, I'd like to meet with you, what time is available, et cetera.
You know, and it is really, really easy stuff to do.
Um, I struggle with it as well from the perspective that, you know, the
organizations are the only people that can rely on volunteers to do this.
The rest of us have to pay people.
So, right.
It'd be when, when you can have volunteers that are doing this stuff for you on a
volunteer basis, which it's, I don't say that to denigrate it 'cause it's awesome.
Like that's what makes this system work, right?
Yes.
But it's also what drives further volunteerism.
If some guy mm-hmm.
Is, oh, well I can do code and, and computer programming.
I can make a website for you that will automate people clicking
on the link, figuring out where, you know, accept your location.
Yes, this is where I am.
This is your mp.
Fire off the email.
If they see the number of emails going through that system, they're satisfied.
They go, that was good work.
And now they're more likely to volunteer.
They tell their friends and that's how the organizations blossom in really
organic ways compared to, you know, the kind of just beat you over the face.
Donate, donate, donate, uh, thing, which, you know, I'm
pretty exhausted with personally.
A hundred percent.
Um.
That was one of the things on my checklist that I wanted to touch on without pointing
fingers at anyone in in particular.
'cause like you say, we could do that.
They've done good, they've done bad, but we can all do better.
Uh, the biggest thing though is the individuals and their ability to hold
their organizations accountable and what they can actually do to affect change.
And number one on my list I put together here was get politically literate.
And you're one of the more politically literate people I know.
Like subscribe to Caliber Meg, listen to you got a YouTube channel.
Listen to the podcast that we do together.
They tend to do quite well.
I ask the stupid questions, you come back with an articulate answer as to great.
So we we can figure these things out.
Um, normalizing firearms ownership.
That's another thing I put down there.
Um, you know, don't, don't take the bait.
Why does anyone need to know?
Own a gun.
Maybe just flip the script, change the conversation.
There's, there's no reason why we can't.
Firearms ownership is normal.
It, it just is, it's like car ownership is normal.
Um, it's how we talk about it and how we, uh, comport ourself that quote unquote
normalizes it in the, in the public eye.
I've got a whole list of things here.
I think maybe what I'll do is I'll point form them off and
we can talk about that after.
In the, uh, in the Silver Core clubs, uh, we've got a private podcast through there.
And, um, just, just a quick point form, people can look at that
if they, they're interested.
Is there anything else that we should be talking about that
we haven't talked about so far?
I think the one thing that I would say, since you mentioned that thing about,
you know, who needs a gun, and it kind of triggered something in me, 'cause that's
a pretty triggering phrase these days.
But sure.
That people should like, think about these things.
It sounds dumb, but just think about these things.
Don't just parrot back the comments that you've heard other people say,
like you're an individual person.
And unfortunately because Canada is 40 million people in the
States is like 440 million people.
Our media space, be it on social media or on any streaming service or
TV or whatever, however you consume your media, is hugely influenced
by the US culture, which I think is, uh, I don't like it personally.
Not that I don't like American culture, but I don't like that
Canadian culture has been so subsumed by American culture and in few areas.
Is that more true than gun culture?
'cause although Canadians did, you know, a few years ago, going back like the 20
years ago, they, they had a weird attitude around guns and were kind of misinformed.
There was a unique Canadian gun culture.
We, we shot things like visa at 50 eights.
We really proud of the fact that we got to divorces before the Americans did.
Um, right.
A lot of Canadians were proud of the fact, like when I say that at some
point we'll probably reach a, an intersection where gun ownership and
public safety, IE like a crime happens and people see it as a reason to
own a gun rather than not own a gun.
Unless the trajectory changes, we will get there.
I don't like that.
I actually liked it better when Canadians could go, you don't need
a gun for self-defense because crime here was so uncommon.
That was a great thing.
Um, it, it sounds great to carry a gun for self-defense.
It sounds super cool and badass.
It sounds like John Wick.
Then you realize it's five pounds you gotta carry around
on a sweaty day in July.
It's not mm-hmm.
It's not that awesome in the reality of things.
No.
It's better if you don't need to sit down.
Yeah.
Like it's, it's just, it's better if you don't need to.
So I think it's, Canadians think about our own gun culture.
So when someone says, well, why do you need a gun?
A, one of the biggest problems with us gun culture is it's combative.
Because it comes from that defensive perspective, and it's a
bilateral system with two parties, so it's naturally compatible.
You have one party that doesn't like guns, one's that does hates guns, one's
that like guns, and they just fight.
And a lot of the talking points that you see around guns are engineered
around that combative perspective.
Canada is getting that way, but I would really prefer it didn't.
So try and find common ground with people.
If someone's saying like, well, why do you need a gun?
We'll start to, instead of, okay, so they have an issue with guns.
So if you bring up gun stuff, you're, well, why do you need wine?
Well, A, you sound like a dickhead, first of all.
Yeah, because like, yeah, yeah.
No one likes that.
But B, ignore the gun entirely.
Say, well, I do you think we, we should legislate around perceptions of necessity.
Mm. Is that a great thing for a country to do?
Because now you're into legislative fairness and mm-hmm.
And basic citizenship and you know, why does one person's perception
of necessity mean it should be illegal and someone else's?
Doesn't it?
It allows you to find common ground where if you both go, Hey,
it seems fair that if I think is something is unnecessary, I probably
shouldn't be able to make it illegal.
And if you think something is unnecessary, then you probably shouldn't as well.
Well, now you're at a common ground where you can say, well, so, so
if I don't need a gun, who cares?
It's not important.
Necessity is not an issue around legislation.
We don't legislate around need.
Right.
Find ways to say yes,
but guns are only made to kill people.
Right.
Well,
they aren't though.
But that, that's, that gets into the combative stuff
where you say, well, right.
Why do you think guns are made to kill?
Well, because they can shoot a lot of people.
Well, that's a person that does that.
The guy who engineers the gun just designs it to shoot.
No one can engineer a gun to shoot someone.
It would have to have legs, it would be the Terminator.
And no one's made that yet.
But, you know, give you Elon Musk some time.
Like it's, it's once you start to stop going at the bait, stop taking the bait
and swallowing it so deeply and start actually picking apart some of the stuff.
It sounds like pedantics and not a lot of people have the patience for
it, so most people just go, yeah, whatever, and move on with their day.
But some people will hear you out and it can change a lot of perceptions.
Like, you know, way back to the beginning of this conversation.
Did we get the election result we wanted?
No.
Did we get the election result we wanted yet?
No.
But that doesn't mean we won't down the road.
Mm-hmm.
Like you change one word, the whole sentence means a different thing.
And I think where that's.
What gun owners kind of have to start doing is thinking about this stuff
pragmatically, thinking about it from their own perspective, thinking
about it from the Canadian side of things, and tell people, look, we
never had American style gun laws.
That's why we don't have a lot of mass shootings.
What I want to see is that we don't get American style gun laws
wherein they have been weaponized by political parties for gain.
That's what I don't want.
Mm. I think most people would agree with that, so.
Mm-hmm.
And, and even most anti-gun people would agree with that sentiment.
So it's kind of, you know.
Yeah.
Did you, do you remember a lot of shootings in 2008?
No, and we had Canadian gun laws.
I could buy an AR 15, like most people will kind of go, oh yeah, that's
weird, you know, then you hit 'em with your dad could buy a machine gun, a
Canadian tire and see what they do.
But, you know, that doesn't always work.
We could go right back
to like 1962 and it'd be great.
Daniel, thank you so much.
I really enjoyed chatting with you.
Um, always a breath of fresh air.
Always learn something when I talk with you.
And for the listeners, of course, there's gonna be links in the description to your
website where they can subscribe to te Caliber Bank, social media, all the rest.
Um, and if they had questions, if they have, uh, thoughts or ideas on
anything that's been covered in here.
Throw it in the comments.
I read every single one of them.
I'm sure you do as well, Dan.
Yep.
Dan, thanks so much.
Thank you.