I'm Travis Bader, and this is the
Silver Core Podcast.
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I'm joined today by Dan Fritter of
caliber, meg.ca and Nicholas Johnson
of the gun blog.ca.
And we were requested to put together
something talking about the proposed bill C
21, what that means, what it looks like.
Uh, hopefully answer some questions that
are out there from our perspective.
Anyways, Nicholas, Dan, welcome.
Thank you for availing, availing yourself
to this happy Travis for hosting this.
So Bill C 21, we're getting a whole bunch of
questions coming through.
We're seeing some information, some
misinformation, a lot of panic.
Uh, we're seeing how it's already
affecting businesses even though it hasn't
been implemented yet.
Uh, and we're seeing.
Uh, some businesses, some organizations using
it as a marketing tool and some political games
as well being played.
Hopefully, you know, the politics side of
has never been my forte.
I know you guys have more background
there, more insight.
Hopefully we can answer some of these questions
and maybe, maybe shed a little bit of light
on what's going on.
Uh, Dan, you've been doing a lot of work
with your magazine, putting together
information for people.
I know we put a link in our last, uh, newsletter
that went out for people and some of the
action that they can do.
What have you been seeing?
Where do you see things going?
What can people do?
I.
To, to break from tradition.
Um, I'm gonna sound like a bit of an optimist
and say it, it looks like it's working.
Um, mm-hmm.
, because what I saw over the weekend and
growing into Monday with all the other
stuff that was going on, like you referenced
the organizations and whatnot, was, uh, with
the most important of 'em, the NDP liberals.
And the block is we started to see
some splits come up.
Um, we started to see Charlie Angus
from the ndp.
We started to see.
You blache from the block actually respond
directly to a journalist on Twitter saying they
do take issue with some of these amendments.
Now, obviously as a gun owner, we wish
that they would've taken a a similar
issue with Bill C 21.
Since the foundation problem is the same,
it only impacts licensed gun owners.
But nonetheless, um, as a gun owner, you
have to learn to take what you can get to
a certain degree.
Um, and in that particular regard,
we're starting to see the NDP and the
block come around.
Uh, and I think that is probably.
Direct result of a lot of the advocacy we've
seen gun owners do.
We've seen people sending out masses of
three, 400 letters.
Um, I know Offa has laid claim to a half a million
letters going to On.
Yeah.
To, and when you consider that of a's Scope, offa
clarified their scope and said they've sent a
half a million letters.
Their members have sent a half million letters
to Ontario MPS and MPPs.
So that's a huge footprint for
a relatively small audience.
And I think probably they're seeing similar
things happen in the NDP and the block.
So that pressure that's going out
there, that, that, I think it's working.
I think we're starting to see, um, hopefully
some pushback taking form of that.
Now, obviously it helps when Carrie Price
steps into the ring and goes, Hey, this doesn't
make a lot of sense.
But I don't think gun owners should,
should sell themselves short on this either.
Like the NDP and the Block, were
already starting to walk this back.
Before Carrie Price ever made his, his post that
was already happening.
We, we were seeing that happening on Friday.
So they're starting to feel the pressure.
Um, and I think that is the, the fracture
that gun owners should be looking for.
We should be making guns a nonpartisan issue.
We should be looking for practical solutions,
not political ones.
Um, and this is a great step towards that.
I think personally, you know, that's the,
that's the, the silver lining in this not very
good cloud, but that's what I'm looking for.
So if we back it up for the listeners, cuz
some people will be following this day by
day watching as new advancements happen.
Some people are just getting into the
fray right now and they're saying, hold
on, what's going on?
I heard they're coming after my hunting shotgun
or my hunting rifle.
Um, if we back this up a little bit of where C 21
kind of started and what it looked like and kind
of what advance, what would that look like for
the average individual?
What do you mean?
? Well, I, so C 21 initially started off
with, uh, as an amendment for some Oh, gotcha.
Okay.
So C 21 started.
Introduced, I mean, this is the second
version of C 21 that's been introduced even
so we could walk it back way farther, but
for practical reasons, it was introduced as a
bill aimed at freezing handgun sales primarily.
Um, all, to be quite honest, it was a bill
aimed at getting votes because freezing handgun
sales doesn't really have any public safety
aims whatsoever anymore than adding more red
flag laws does when you've got existing ones.
So it was largely a political bill looking
for political solutions to political problems.
And now they've added what is fundamentally
the largest gun control act in
Canadian history to it.
It's a, it's a ban on all semiautomatic rifles.
It doesn't include all Semitic shotguns
by any stretch, but absolutely, pretty much
any semiautomatic rifle is center fire unless
you happen to be one of maybe the six people that
own a sour S 3 0 3 with a two round integral meg
and semiautomatic action, unless you own that one.
You're kind of stuck with this.
Yeah, so this is huge.
I mean, C 68, all that other stuff, it
didn't impact nearly as many rifles.
Imagine if in C 68 they just said it's
a Semitic rifle band.
It would've been, it would've been way bigger.
And that's what they're doing now.
So they've bolted on, you know, to what was
effectively a mouse.
They've added an elephant.
Um, and they're just trying to sneak
it in that way.
It's, it's, um, but I think also too that that
sneaking it in is also kind of the weakness.
Like you have to kind of pull back
if you take yourself outta the equation.
And if you were to say as a, as an objective
observer, and this is the first time I've done
this particular thought, observe experiment.
But if you thought academically, if you
bypass all the democratic institutions, um, and you
bypass all the normal, the rules, Bringing an
amendment like this in which normally it does
meet some of the rules, but normally this would
be asked, the minister would at least be asked
to approach the committee and say, Hey, we wanna
change some stuff.
Here's why they didn't do that at all.
Um, it gives you a bit of faith in that, you know,
that's again, mm-hmm.
. If you're looking for silver linings,
you look at this and you go, their biggest
weakness was they didn't consult, they didn't
follow any process.
And the process is what makes good law.
The process is what creates consultation,
creates committees, creates weaknesses,
creates friction.
So that one party in charge has a bit
of friction, has to automatically.
Make some concessions to the other people.
Um, they didn't do that cuz they didn't want
any of that friction.
And now we're seeing that it kind of works.
So I guess on the upside, you gotta
think that maybe this is the system working
in a really perverse and backwards way.
Um, it, it shouldn't have to work this way.
This feels like the safety net underneath
the bridge that you already jumped off of
catching you, um, more than it does any kind
of real safety thing.
But, uh, I think, you know, it's, it's
quite the progression if anyone's looking
at it and going, how did C 21 go from not
affecting me to, I can't take my bar outside?
Well, a Tuesday, a couple weeks ago,
that's how it happened.
at, at the last moment there.
So C 21 essentially was, they're
approaching pens now.
C 21 hasn't been enacted into a.
No, it's, but the hand freeze in the committee
phase, clause by clause.
That's when they brought this in.
Okay.
So it's the hand and freeze has
reached Royal Ascent according to the web?
No.
So C 21 as a bill, it's gone through first
and second reading in the House of Commons.
Um, generally untouched.
So they first reading is when they just
introduce it and it's the basic, like, I wanna
make a law and this is what I'm thinking.
And everyone goes, okay, that sounds like
a good sentiment maybe.
Sure, yeah.
Then they do second reading where it gets
a bit more serious.
It's supposed to be more formal.
They do that reading and then it's like,
okay, we've adopted that, that's what
they've done so far.
Then it goes to committee.
And the committee is comprised, the
committee is, you'll hear it colloquially
referred to as secu.
It's the standing Committee on Public
Safety in the house.
Uh, there's another similar committee in
the Senate that does the exact same job.
The bill then went to the committee.
The committee discussed it.
They had a bunch of witnesses.
Called Forward for two weeks, I think.
Was it, it was a relatively lengthy
witness period.
Nick would probably no longer cause he
covered that at length.
Mm-hmm.
, um, Couple weeks.
Yeah.
Maybe even worth, I think, yeah,
maybe three length.
It was a length, not as long as C 71 a
few years ago, but a lot of witnesses.
Yeah.
So it was out there for a couple weeks with
everyone out there kind of chatting about it.
And then, then after the committee goes forward
with it, they, they finalize what's called
clause by clause where they go through the
bill, literally clause by clause, and they
propose amendments to it.
And that's where we're at now, where they've
called all the witnesses.
Everything has been discussed, and they're
supposed to be kind of like, it's an amendment.
It's supposed to be a, a whittling, if you
will, not a complete.
Restructuring.
They kind of had all these witnesses and
they went, well, you know, handgun free
sounds great, but you know, it'd be better
if we just ban all semiautomatic firearms.
That'd be way cooler.
. And, and now they're really, I mean from a
democratic perspective, we can't go witnesses.
So the SEC committee, if you wanted to view
it from this really naive perspective, that
these parliamentarians that are in the secu
are, are truly coming at it from an open mind.
They can't call witnesses anymore.
So if they wanted to discuss this stuff with
you, me, Nick, rod, whoever, they couldn't,
they couldn't ask us to come up there and be
like, Hey, let's, let's chat about this cuz let's
restart the witness phase cuz we're completely
rebuilding this bill and we need to revisit
it from the ground up.
And actually, one of the big things that's really
been concerning to me is that from a parliamentary
standard, when you bring a bill about, you have
to do various studies to make sure that it
doesn't contravene the, the charter of
rights and freedom.
Um, a charter study was done on Bill C 21
was first introduced.
It was determined to not break the charter
because you don't have a right to a handgun.
So of course it didn't, um, they didn't do
another charter study.
They haven't commissioned any consultation with
indigenous people.
They haven't done any of the things you would
have to do when you write a new law, when they
introduce this amendment, which effectively
constitutes a new law.
And in that regard, you know, it's if you, if
you take a tiny law that does almost nothing,
and you add a giant component that does so
much more and you don't study whether or not
that that additional component contravenes
the charter, contravenes the digits rights.
I mean, Dan Lloyd and the committee's
made very good points that this entire
law might contravene the UN declaration
of indigenous.
the right smid people like it's cause cuz they
have to be consulted on this stuff and
they just were right.
Like it was just no, we, we, we, and the comical
part is like, to put in perspective, this is the
government that won on this perspective of them
being the champions of all these Rights Day.
And Lloyd asked the committee, has anyone in
the liberal government asked anyone in the
indigenous community if this law is gonna work
or if it, you know, nevermind a full study.
Has anyone even asked?
And the witnesses from the Justice department
who I say worked for the government, had the, had
the gall, uh, to say no.
We kind of decided for them in 2022 after all
of this that's gone on.
Wow.
They literally said, well we kinda looked
at it objectively, wrote a report as a
bunch of white people that aren't indigenous.
We kind of decided this was probably in
their best interest.
And it's like, wow, God.
The hypocrisy, it's, it's, it is truly galling
in that Oxford dictionary sense of the word.
Like stainless screw, aluminum metal kind of
galling . Just painful.
No one likes it.
It's awful.
Okay, so you go in the public safety website
and they talk about the different items of
the amendment, and some are gonna be coming in
through oic, through ordering counsel and some
through Royal Ascent.
So since we've established that,
they're trying to approach us by Royal
Ascent, but it has yet to reach Royal Ascent.
One of the questions that came up was,
how come the handgun freezes in effect right
now if it hasn't gone?
, can I, uh, can I offer an opinion?
Of course, Nicholas.
Yeah.
So, uh, first of all, I wanna, I wanna commend
Daniel on his incredible, uh, optimistic tone
and looking for the positive here.
I I, and if I get down in negative,
bring me back, man.
Bring me back.
. The, the, to your question about Bill C 21
and the origins, there were, there were a few
things that happened on May 30th, 2022.
That's when the government announced
their intentions of the current version
of Bill C 21.
Part one was the intention for an order
in counsel to kill the handgun market to make,
to criminalize buying, selling, transporting,
uh, bequeathing handguns.
So they we're gonna do that by ordering counsel.
That means executive decree.
And part part two of that was they were going
to do it in legislation that's Bill C 21.
So they announced both of those three
things on May 30th.
They also announced a third thing on May 30th
that they would add an amendment to expand
their confiscations of shotguns and rifles.
Remember back in May of 2020, they announced a
big confiscation on, uh, I'll call it AR fifteens
and other, a lot of other semi-auto center fire mag
fed rifles and shotguns.
They said, so that, they did that in May,
2020 on May 30th.
The third component of, of the confiscations
was they're going to expand that
through an amendment.
And that's what we're talking about now, is
that giant, uh, amendment of, of uh, who knows
how many hundreds of thousands I've seen
numbers over a million of rifles and shotguns.
So it's the expansion through that amendment,
but that order in council to kill the
handgun market that's already gone through.
and now we're seeing into law the ordering
council of May 20, 20 plus this huge expansion.
Got it.
It's a little misleading when you read the
public safety website.
It's, it's really, well, also, this is
really interesting.
I, I, I think that it's to, to, to expand
on or add to what Daniel was just saying.
It's, I think this is, it's devious, it's sneaky
this last minute stuff, whether it's legal or
not, because I think it probably is legal by some
interpretations, but even if it's le, even if it
is legal, it's sneaky.
This is not how it should be.
And I also want to, to commend you again, for,
for bringing this to your podcast, because just to
give an anecdote on, on page views@thegunblog.ca
I was just looking at this after the May 30th
announcement in the week after, I looked
at the page views and my page views after
this announcement of, uh, November 22nd when
they unleashed the, they published the,
uh, the amendment.
I've got four times as many page views
this time around.
Wow.
So just as an indicator of how broad the
interest is, how broad the concern is.
And another point that Wes Winkle made
of the, the president of the Canadian
Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association.
Mm-hmm.
, he pointed out that the May 30th announcement,
that was the Prime Minister, that was a,
that was a Telegraph media announcement.
There were press releases.
The Prime Minister had lined up the media.
They were all there with their cameras
and their notepads to, to broadcasts.
There was huge media coverage of the May
30th announcement, the November 22nd
announce announcement.
There was practically no media.
So this huge interest that we're seeing is
predominantly grassroots.
It's people reading Caliber.
It's the gun blog, it's Silver Core,
it's it's Iko.
It's, it's, it's, it's this grassroots and the
organizations, you know, the other gun orgs, it's
completely grassroots and the level of interest.
Uh, the half the a h right, the half
million letters to mps.
It's, it's just staggering.
It's unlike anything that I have ever
seen personally.
I've only been following this a few years, but
from what I'm hearing, it's unlike anything
anyone has ever seen.
And this is where like I'll interject and say
like, it's interesting as someone that's been
follow us for a long time, because I mean,
Nick can probably attest and, and you as
well, Travis from your background, that in a lot
of these things, when we see these bad policies
come out or we see these mistakes happen more
often than not, it's.
To be quite honest, it's usually something
attributable to ignorance where it's, it's someone
that's a, and I don't mean this, like people
are gonna hear this misinterpret that I've
got some like, I mean, no animosity, this is just
people doing their jobs.
You have a public sector employee who has worked
their way through maybe agriculture, any other
department, and they see an opening in the next
classification of job up.
Cuz I mean all these public sector stuff is
incredibly hierarchical so they just kind of
plug them into the next module up in the, in
the earnings category.
And it's over in public safety and it happens
to be in the policy shop and it happens
to be with firearms.
Do you have any experience?
Well no, but you've been in the, to be quite
honest in the situation, I've never worked for
the government, but I, I can see a situation
where like, it's more important that you have
knowledge of how the government works than
how guns work to work for the government on
guns, if that makes sense to people.
Mm-hmm.
, um, cause probably maybe the government
thinks it's easier to teach guns than it
is to teach the very complicated bureaucracy
of it is public policy.
And then you get these people to get into these
roles that don't have the experience and they're
being told various things by various people
and they come up with something they think
meets these goals, which is to be quite blunt,
what I think this was.
Um mm-hmm.
and the politicians go, yeah, okay,
well the experts say this will work.
And I think basic group thing happens where
the, the bureaucrats on the inside are referred
to as the experts.
For long enough, the politicians believed
them, forgetting that these people
were promoted in through agriculture
and don't really have expertise per se.
And then everyone just goes, yeah,
this looks good.
The experts say, so.
And that's what we see in committee.
I mean that last committee hearing,
um, last week where we started to see Murray
Smith and justice witnesses effectively,
directly kind of going against what one another
were saying with what would or would not be
banned, where justice was saying, well, it's, if
the gun was originally designed with a five
round magazine, Which is not how Murray Smith
has been interpreting these words, right,
for his entire career.
Right.
You start to go, this doesn't, I know there's,
and again, there's treads on some people.
There's a lot of people who think there's
victimhood and animosity and acrimonious.
I think it's just the government kind of being
dumb, to be quite blunt.
I think they kind of went, Hey, bureaucrats,
come up with a solution to help
us ban these guns.
This was the solution.
They rolled with it and they never looked
at it, quite honestly.
Okay, so maybe, maybe, maybe let's, let's say
being dumb, but this amendment that came on
is what, 300, like 30 or 13, something like that.
Pages long.
That would take a while to put together.
And the execution of putting that forward
doesn't sound like it was coming from a
place of ignorance.
Like the idea of that we'll just tag this
on at the very end where we can bypass.
But I guess that depends on who you're, who
you, depends on who you call an expert.
Cause I mean that the 330 pages is largely based
on if we're being honest.
Cause I also think that as gun, we've
gotta be honest, it's a huge amendment.
Three 30 pages.
It's really easy to say they planned
this out forever cuz the length, sure.
We could distill this down to 10 pages if
you wanted to, right?
Like you take out all the AR 15 variance,
you probably left to the document
that's maybe 50 page.
You take out the French side, that's 50% of it
and while you're left to 20 and you take out
all the other, you know, well Visa 58 known as
you maybe got two pages, you know of an actual
synopsis of here's what we're looking at banning.
That's obviously Murray's head list.
We've all known that it's from the 2020 thing,
it's been circulated.
It's also.
Very much parallel to the list that's been
circulated by Poly and the Coalition
for Gun Control.
The notable gun on the list that you gotta look
for to draw that parallel is the Robinson Arms Xcr.
It's never been involved in a shooting.
It's, they're not common.
They're, they're pretty uncommon.
Even back in the day, they weren't common,
um, never been involved in high profile
shooting whatsoever.
It's been involved in all of these bands
ever since, and it's been on poly's lists
and gun controls lists since day one.
When you hear Marco Medino say things where
he says like, oh, mark Lapine was captured
by a gun registry at Polytechnic, no he
wasn't, but that's what Poly San S had told him.
So you can kind of just use some pretty
elementary deductive reasoning skills.
Go well, they're just consulting with Poly
Scania, which is not an expert on guns or an
expert on what happened at Polytechnic, which
doesn't necessarily, you know, everything
about a car crash is making a car expert.
Exactly.
I've used used that one before, just cuz they've
been hit in the face.
It doesn't make me a boxer.
Right.
It's, yeah.
Um, So what about the prankster?
I understand I haven't read through
the whole list.
There is the prankster, not a little 22.
Is that on the list?
There it is.
That was on the May that was already listed
in May, 2020, I think.
The Mossberg 7 0 2 Prankster.
So the 7 0 2.
The seven 15 The Blaze previously, cuz that's
essentially a prankster with a, um, AK style
plastic wrapper.
Yeah, I just put a plastic wrapper on the
thing I, from what I understand, the very
original ones that came to, I've actually
seen photos of 'em where they've taken
'em apart in videos.
And you've had a 7 0 2 plink, sir, in the
middle or, yeah, it's, its like every other 22.
You just, what do they, what do they have
against that rifle?
Now this rim fires are on there.
Well, and I gotta say some credit goes to
Tim thoroughly over on Twitter, who's done
some extensive work on the definition of
variant and filed his own AIPs and whatnot.
Okay.
Um, so credit goes to Tim on that variant.
Apparently can include guns that
look like other guns.
It's as simple as that.
The government has decided that the
ver variant includes guns that look
like other guns.
So if gun A looks like gun B, well I
guess they're variance of one another.
So, and Murray Smith's testimony in the federal
court case is also from, I think October of, I
think it's 20, gosh, I'm having a unsure
if it's 2021 or 2020.
But his testimony under cross-ex examination,
like Daniel's saying like variant is anything
that Murray Smith and his colleagues want it to be.
Right.
It's not, you remember that, that huge issue
that we've been dealing with for, uh, for years.
Yeah.
There was two terms.
What was a variant and the other one was a
modified version of, I think were the two terms.
Okay.
That would never be, uh, can't be defined.
They can't be defined and they won't be
defined because they wanna leave it open
to, but I think like, and this is again, not
to interrupt, but like no screw to interrupt
cuz I'm doing it.
I'll own it anyways.
Go ahead.
Like this definitions thing, people get
hung up on this cuz I know it's very.
Common in the gun community to get hung
up on the variant thing.
People very, very insensitive in
the gun community.
I would ask people to also recognize like
these definitions, the definition of
the term hunting gun is equally nebulous.
Like it is a gun that you hunt with.
So when they say, oh, well it's banning
hunting guns, well of course it is.
Because any gun that you could legally take into a
field and shoot an animal with is a hunting gun.
Like it.
It's as simple as that.
Like when, when people say, well, what's
an assault rifle?
Well, assault rifle does have a canonized
definition, a rifle intended for military
uses primarily with a fully automatic
fire switch that is a assault rifle.
You detach a magazine, typically 30 rounds,
et cetera, et cetera.
If you look it up in the Oxford English Language
Dictionary, it's there most crucially, if you
look it up in the APA or the um, journalist
one, what's that one?
Canadian Press or Associated Press?
Associated Press, yeah.
Associated Press has a definition
for assault rifle.
It is a fully automatic rifle period.
That's it.
Hunting rifle has no such definition.
And I guess the crucial thing, like when they
say this is an assault weapon ban, we're not
banning hunting rifles.
There's no freaking difference.
They're all semiautomatic rifles.
The end.
I, I would also suggest that we not
use those terms unless as acceptance specific
circumstances, because today in 2022, now you
guys are the technicians, so I'm stepping
outside my lane here.
But the, the idea that some firearms are
different than other firearms, there's,
well, I guess what I'm trying to say is
they're all made in the same factories.
They're all designed by the same engineers.
They all come through the same, uh, well,
factories, retail channels or I guess
even who, um, and the people who use it
might be different.
But to make a distinction that, oh,
this is a military gun.
This is a hunting gun.
This is a ranching gun, this is a
farming gun, this is a self-defense gun.
I don't think that type of language
serves us or, or even.
It might be useful for some purpose, but
it, it doesn't have a, it's not, it's not
a useful distinction, I don't think.
No, and I think, again, to expand on that, I
don't like the, this discussion around what
guns are has been one that's been kind of
problematic for me.
It's been frustrating for me because, um,
what guns are designed to do is to launch a
projectile full stop.
And I think a lot of gun owners, if anyone's
listening to this, whenever someone brings
that up and says, well, what's a, you know,
we got a ban ease.
They're designed to do blank.
If whatever blank is is not throw a rock at
high speed down range accurately and reliably,
the answer is incorrect.
Cause that's all, like, I know, I literally
have talked to people that design guns.
And if you go to Colt Canada, they say that,
no, we don't design these to do anything
other than go bang, make the, the bullet
hit where it's aiming and do it reliably.
And then the other added.
Design parameters or things like light, like
whether or not it's lightweight, is it heavy?
How long is the barrel?
It's basic stuff.
But guns are designed to go bang and shoot.
That's it.
Guns are designed to shoot.
What you shoot at is where the person
enters into it.
And that's, that's a whole different metric.
And I think this whole assault, assault
style hunting gun, these definitions do
a tremend disservice to distract from that,
that they are just guns.
They can be tremendously dangerous
in the wrong hands.
Absolutely.
That's why we invested heavily in this massive
system to keep them out of the wrong hands.
Why are we now investing heavily in
specific kinds of guns in the right hands?
It doesn't make sense.
They call it an assault vehicle.
This one's an assault vehicle cuz it was
used or it's got X weight or capacity,
it's painted black.
Mm yeah.
Or like we've got leadership style
government doesn't necessarily mean we've
got a functioning government either.
Travis.
I'd also like to come, uh, just to also to zoom
out here to, um, , I think a lot of gun owners
were surprised by what happened, uh, when the,
when this amendment to Bill C 21 was introduced
or, or published.
And I think that's also unfortunate because we
had huge signs, both, both in the short term.
We have a government under the Justin Truda,
liberals and Justin Truda himself, who is very, uh,
clearly obviously hostile to, uh, to gun owners.
He's campaigned three times now.
He's won three elections with a
message of prohibitions and confiscations.
So the, the fact that this happened
shouldn't be a surprise.
On May 30th, the government said they
were planning an amendment to expand the
confiscations, so it shouldn't be a surprise
from that point of view.
And bigger picture, back in C 68 of the
ninth of 1995, the the Firearms Act, the the
Anti Firearms Act has.
Or let me rephrase that.
C 68 has, uh, an amendment to the criminal
code that allowed cabinet to ban any gun that it
wants any time if cabinet doesn't think it's
reasonable for hunting or sporting purposes.
So the minute that was in the law, we should
have known, and a lot of guys who paid attention
back then did That's way before my time, way
before I was interested.
But I'm, I'm relying on stories that have
been related to me.
Anybody who was paying attention should know
that, that the fact that that was in the criminal.
And the fact that all gun owners are regulated
by the criminal code meant it was not a
matter of if, it was a matter of when.
Right.
So that plus Trudeau saying he's, uh,
cracking down, he's adding prohibitions
and confiscations.
So I can understand people would be upset
or angry about what happened, uh, on
November and November 22nd, 2022 when the
amendment came out.
But nobody should be surprised.
Right.
The writing's on the wall.
Yeah.
It's been on the wall for, for either decades
or months, but mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
There's also another thing that I just
want to add to that, that, and, and this
is being positive.
I think that what we're seeing now, the
thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands
who are watching the SEC U committee in the
House of Commons debate this bill and who are
paying attention to the policy at all.
Cuz there I think there are a lot of people who
are paying attention.
It's serving as a very valuable.
Political education about how policy is made, how
the legislative process works, and going back
right to the beginning of the things Daniel was
mentioning about this last minute amendment.
After all the witnesses has come in, snuck
in under the wire, all this stuff, um,
introducing a massive amendment that was not
presented to parliament.
All this stuff is making people very suspect of
this government and about government ethics and
the political system.
And I think that's actually dangerous
because we need trust in politicians.
We need trust in the system to function
as a society.
That's, that's my opinion.
And this kind of stuff, the way it's being
done, nothing to do with firearms, just
purely the procedural aspect is undermining
trust in politicians and the political system.
I think that's dangerous.
Well said, Nicholas.
I, I want to talk about the, the terms,
uh, hunting guns and.
A assault weapon a little bit.
But you know, one point on what you were
just saying there, C 21 encompasses
more than just firearms, doesn't it?
I, the only aspect I paid attention to is firearms.
But it sounds like you, it sounds like
you know something.
Well, I know very, very little on this,
but I think Daniel probably has a little
bit more information covers before Airsoft.
You talk of the Airsoft.
Yeah, I mean, it, it's obviously impacting
Airsoft and then broader reaching kind of brackets
or, or parenthesis around firearms is the
red flag laws and all the additional work
around, um, exemptions for things like nuclear
facility guards to carry AR fifteens
and stuff like that.
Because apparently AR fifteens are the
only tool that is acceptable for our
nuclear facilities to be defended with.
But you can't have one.
Um, yeah, the biggest thing is airsoft.
Um, it bans airsoft.
Okay.
That's all there is to it.
There's no other way to put it.
I mean, it doesn't ban it.
I mean, being a big glib there, but, um, it
basically bans anything.
It's a replica firearm.
And if anyone's familiar with Airsoft, uh,
airsoft is all about, for most people, about
Milsom, it's about the simulation aspect.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, but you can't really simulate, uh, those
situations if you've got some funky nerf
looking space do da that you, you stick the, the
BBS in the side of, or something like it's, you
know, kind of ruins it.
So, and plus too, this is something that Canadian
gunners have to realize cuz it's, it's where
airsoft and gun owners overlap significantly.
We're not a big market.
Canada is not a significant
airsoft market.
We are not a significant gun market.
Full stop.
There's no other way to put it.
I, I used to argue this point when I
was 10 years ago and doing the industry, I
was gung ho Canada's big, no we're not.
Like they sell more guns in Texas than
they do in Canada.
Mm-hmm.
. And in terms of Airsoft globally, there are other
bigger markets by far.
Um, what the liberals are looking at doing
ostracizes, the Canadian market for both.
Uh, it requires Canadian airsoft people to find
a product that does not currently exist
on the market today to practice Airsoft
as they currently do.
So they're either gonna have to change their
behavior to, to meet the law, not that their
behavior's currently criminal, they're gonna
have to change their currently law abiding
currently entirely unharmful behavior
to be unharmful and law abiding some more
with different stuff because no one's gonna
build guns for them.
And it's the same as Canada.
I've seen a few people kinda say on social
media, well, I guess we're gonna have to
redesign Mag Wells.
We're gonna have to, no, it's not gonna happen.
Guys.
Like, like designing a magazine.
Is one of the most expensive parts
of designing a gun cuz it's sees a ton
of wear and tear.
It's very diverse in terms of your metrics
where things have to line up, measurements,
you name it.
It's very, very complicated.
Like to the point where a lot of gun designers
say designing a reliable gun is as important as
designing a reliable mag.
Then you wrap a gun around it.
Mm-hmm.
, you're gonna really expect people to go out
there and design a whole new magazine format that
cannot be replicated anywhere in the world
to hold more than five rounds for a market
of 2.2 million people.
Mm-hmm.
, how many of those 2.2 million people are buying
new guns every year?
Well, not all 2.2.
Okay.
So let's take those people.
Now you're getting to the market size,
it just won't happen.
Right?
These laws will not be adapted.
By the market, they will meet their objectives
in that goal of ever greening legislation that
will prevent gun owners from circumventing it
because there's no point.
Mm-hmm.
, but that's just the death nail of it.
It doesn't, it's not, it's not like Airsoft
is adapting, it's dying.
Mm-hmm.
, it's over.
Like no one will make a semiautomatic rifle
for the Canadian market.
Yeah.
If you're rich enough, you can go buy a
sour S 3 0 3, someone will sell you one.
They're custom mate.
You call 'em up, give 'em your name, they'll put it
on the side of the gun.
Mm-hmm.
. But if you don't have five grand, well,
I don't know, go buy something else.
I guess that's what your dad would say.
Like it's something else that's equally
good but worse.
You know, like follow up shot with
a bolt action rifle.
Never as good , you know, as an animal
advocate guy, this pisses me off to.
. I think also, Dan, what you're saying is
incredibly important and it answers the question
that, that I've seen on social media that, that
some people are asking and say, oh, I don't
have any guns that are on the list, so therefore
this doesn't affect me.
And that's, that's false.
You might not be targeted by the confiscations
directly yet.
Yeah.
But how are you affected?
Well, every gun owner in Canada is affected
because as the market shrinks, well, some
manufacturers are going to simply
say, you know what?
The Canadian market is not worth it to us.
That's gun manufacturers and that's ammo
manufacturers.
So what does that mean?
Well, you're a gun owner who, who shoots whatever.
Well, you're used to buying your ammo at
your local gun store.
Well, is your gun store gonna be able to
make it through this?
Maybe, maybe not.
And let's say your local gun store
makes it through it.
And let's say you're used to going the day
before you, before a hunt or the day before
a a range event.
A range day and, and stocking up on
a couple boxes or, or dozens of boxes.
Well, are the ammo manufacturers still gonna
serve the country the way they do now because, and
so we're talking about, um, some gun stores
disappearing and dying.
We're talking about gun clubs eventually
disappearing and dying.
So this, this confiscation is
suppressing the, a huge gu there, the relatively,
that's suppressing the Canadian gun market.
And that has ramifications on
everybody who is in the Canadian gun market.
Every gun store, every gun club,
every gun owner.
I mean, to put that in perspective, if
anyone's wanting to noble context on that
from an industry side, imagine going to the
range with a Lee Enfield.
How many rounds are you probably taking
for an afternoon?
Let's see.
You get there after lunch, you're gonna
leave before dinner.
You probably, if you're me and you're
taking, let's say my K 31, I'm gonna
call 50 rounds ample.
That's, I probably come home with half
of them cuz I'm, I'm just there to.
Plink away and, and practice breathing
and all that.
Now imagine you go into the range with an AR
or WK 180 to practice three gun matches.
How many rounds have you taken?
Hundreds.
Right?
A lot more, right?
Yeah.
That's what the retailers are seeing.
When you worry, when, when, when Nicholas
says this is gonna affect your retailers.
Think about that.
Think what?
Every gun owner, if you're listening to
this in a big city like Toronto and you're
talking about Al Fla or you're listening
to in Red Deer and you're talking about
a small shop there doesn't matter.
Maybe the powder keg and Camloops could
be Reliable Gun.
This is a huge reduction in volume
and that's gonna have dramatic effects.
So even if you don't shoot these guns, let's
say you're that guy that only shoots the lean
field, well your box 3 0 3 is gonna go a hell of
a lot more in terms of price because the lease
that reliable gun, the powder, okay, everyone
else has to pay, which has gone up tremendously
cuz real estate under Trudeau, that lease
still has to be paid.
Except instead of being paid for on thousands
of rounds of 2 23 or 7 62 like it normally
would be, it's gonna be carried by guys shooting
20 rounds of 3 0 3.
Got it.
Every one of those rounds is gonna go from one
to maybe five bucks.
Even like we are looking at effectively,
if people wanna know where this goes, the
European gun culture where if you can afford
it, it's a great sport.
And if you can't try baseball,
tough, tough . Yeah.
Like, uh, fishing.
Like it's really that there's no other
way around this.
It's, they're moving it into that for the rich.
And if you're Joe Blow blue collar
hunts for your food, you're Sol man.
And I've spoken with numerous gun stores.
You've listed off a few of them right there
about the effects that they're seeing currently.
And the same thing keeps coming back.
The people who want to buy new kit and buy
lots of ammo, those are handgun shooters,
sport shooters, people who are shooting
the semi-automatics.
The handgun when that announcement came in,
there was a surge on buying, but there's no
new guns being bought.
This has all been addressed before.
It's the same number that would
be sold over a year.
It's just sold over a condensed period of time.
Yeah, it was an untenable thing for the stores
and now they're seeing the repercussions
very quickly.
If C 21 goes through, Dan, what you're saying
will come into effect, is already largely
coming into effect.
You're gonna see layoffs, you're gonna see small
stores shut down or really niche down
and prices go way up.
Um, one thing that we talked about earlier
was about terms, and I know the lawyers were
really keen on pushing, let's say Murray Smith
on, on saying what a variant was or what a
modified version was.
I know earlier we had mentioned maybe not,
let's not get hung up on these terms cuz there's a
double edged sword there.
Uh, legally sometimes if there's no legal
definition of what, let's say, what an assault.
Weapon is, or an assault rifle is, uh, they
will, they'll go to the Oxford dictionary or
they'll look at US law.
They'll look at other places where it's
kind of been defined and, and lean on that.
Uh, I think the lawyers really wanted a
definition of a variant to constrain future,
uh, prohibitions and put a box around what it
is they're looking at.
And the very telling point is, is that
nobody wants to put that definition on.
If we move forward, and we're talking about,
like you say, this is a hunting rifle or
going after the hunting rifles, I don't know.
I look at this two ways.
Uh, number one, it's giving some, uh,
context to those who are outside of the firearms
industry and saying, well, that doesn't
really make sense.
Why would they go after, uh, indigenous
groups who use this firearm predominantly?
Why would they go after the farmer or the hunter?
And I can see some value into leaning on that.
I do understand the gun owner standpoint
of saying, the second we define hunting
rifles, everything else is gonna be gone.
And these are the only few until they whittle
it down further.
I, I, I'm torn on the two sides of that.
It's kind of like saying, never call it a
weapon, it's a firearm.
Well, the criminal code actually
calls it a weapon.
Right.
Even the receiver, a weapon isn't, anything
that is used can be used, designed to be used to
threaten, intimidate, or cause bodily harm
to somebody else.
And without precluding, the generality
of the forego includes a firearm.
Words are important.
Where should people stand on this one?
Should we be doubling down and saying, , look
at what they're doing to the hunting firearms?
Or should they try and distance
themselves from that?
I'd like to respond to that.
Okay.
I would say I agree with you and that it's, it is
a double edged sword and there's, there's pros
and cons to each one.
I think the.
The advantage of using phrases like farming, gun
hunting, gun ranching, guns, uh, target gun,
is that it, it makes it sound nice and
it's maybe appealing to certain people.
The risk is that we forget that it's the
same guns that are used by military,
uh, self defenders, home defenders.
It's, it's exactly the same tool.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is I, I've chosen to, in, in my
coverage@thegunblog.to, in my, in my
presentations and, and discussions, focus on the
confiscation from people.
Cuz we have to remember, we, it's, it's simpler
to say that they're going after X Ys at
guns, but we have to remember that the
confiscations are always targeting certain people.
Right.
At the end of the day, it's, it's not the gun
that's legal or illegal.
It's the possession, the purchasing, the
acquisition, the, the, the, having
buying, owning.
And that's a human activity.
It's to bring the people back into this
and remember that they're not, I even
prefer to say they're not going after guns.
They're going after people.
And Daniel said this for me in his opening
sentences, government licensed firearm users.
This is where we get to the coincide.
That's a, that's a mouthful.
That like, what the heck is the government
licensed firearm user?
It's much easier to call it.
They're going after hunting guns.
So rhetorically, if you have to make
an ad or a meme, they're going after.
Hunters is much, it's conceptually much
center, much simpler.
So there's a huge advantage there.
Does it come back to bite us in the bum in our, in
our policy discussions?
I think it does.
So, pros and cons, man, pros and cons.
And I think, like from my perspective,
I, I echo Nick's sentiment entirely.
Like I agree with everything he said.
Um, I, I have no, there's nothing really to add
beyond, like, I think maybe gun owners maybe
just get too hung up on the terminology.
Yeah, because I used to, I, I've
been guilty of it.
I think a lot of us have been at various
junctures and at this point I can say like,
my background is, is primarily in writing and
English literature, so I kind of rely more on
the, the language purity.
A gun is absolutely a weapon.
It can also be a tool.
It can also be a fishing weight.
It can also be a hunting rifle.
It can be whatever you want it to be, you know,
like you can strap it to the tire of a car
and use it as a ski in the snow if you want to.
It's, it's just a metal implement, right?
Like it is a thing that's commonly called a gun.
What you add to that is kind of secondary and
is more projection, and this is how I viewed it
and I think gun owners would be beneficial, is
maybe get caught up on how other people refer
to it less and correcting them less and maybe infer
from their usage more.
Like if someone refers to a gun as a weapon
constantly, maybe instead of correcting
them and being like, no, they're not weapons.
Maybe in further, that person has a little bit
of hesitancy around guns.
They have a little bit of an acrimonious attitude.
They're a little bit nervous.
And the best way to address nervousness
or ignorance, which is commonly what that
comes out as, is not by just steamrolling
over them being like, no, you're wrong.
Right?
So I just don't get caught up.
And if someone's, cuz I've done tons of
interviews or people call on weapons, rifles,
guns, you name it, it doesn't matter If you've
been in the army and someone calls it a gun,
they'll bitch slap you back and say, no, that's,
that's an artillery piece, that's a rifle.
You know?
Mm-hmm.
So it's names are, are really more about who's
using it than, than, than what it actually is.
And I think gun owners get too caught
up in that stuff.
And I think we let our politicians get
caught up in it too.
Cuz it, and this is where this hunting gun thing,
it exposes a bit of a mutual flank for both
the conservatives and.
because the liberals have to kind of admit
that an AR 15 is just a semiautomatic rifle no
different than a Browning B AR at some point.
Mm.
And at some point someone, and believe me,
I'm sure that there is someone in a liberal war
room, it's a little bit worried about someone
holding up an AR 15 round and holding up a b
ar 30 odd six round and going, oh, this rifle
shoots these four of 'em as fast as you want.
The other one shoots these.
Um, so they're worried about that.
The conservatives on the other hand are also
worried about it because they want to be seen as
defending hunting guns cause that's socially
acceptable in Canada.
But they also have to accept
someone eventually.
Reality has to accept that there's
no difference.
A semi-automatic AR 15 and 2 23 is just as good
at hunting coyotes as a semiotic b ar, and 30
odd six s at hunting elk.
They're just guns.
And uh, we should, by that, I agree also that
we should be calling, um, in certain cases
that we should be referring to the AR
15 as a hunting gun.
Because in it's most popular hunting gun in
America in the world.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I guess cuz it's the largest hunting market.
So, so the ar all popular in the world.
So we've, we've, we've, we've, uh, I I've, I
I avoid referring to firearms as weapons
because I think, uh, philosophically
they are not.
But I also agree, Dan wholeheartedly with you,
that that's, that's, they can be's like that.
That's a, that's a discussion that
about three people are interested in.
I'm people who like to splice hairs and three
of us are interested in the, the, but, but all
three of us are in this one pot is, oh my God.
And that's, and that slippery,
what are the odds?
I think you're also pointing to a slippery
slope of, of how this policy is, is
being rationalized.
First they say, oh, you can't use it for hunting.
Oh.
And part two, since you can't use it for hunting,
you don't need it.
Oh.
And so let's just confiscate them.
So the, it's, it's a minute.
That's where those people who say No,
we draw the line at the, the first step is
where we draw the line.
Cuz once they go take that first step, there's
always the second and then the third.
And that is, and the fourth.
Absolutely true.
Like in committee, I remember vividly last
week, justice Witness, and this is a, this
is a non-political public sector employee
working for the Justice Department who had,
again, the gall, when the benellis were brought
up to simply say, well, they were banded 92.
So obviously they don't have any practical
reason cuz they've been illegal since 92.
Right.
Like that somehow, like being banned 92 prevents
them from being useful and, and Nick's right,
they're gonna do this.
They're gonna say these guns, they're
gonna ban them.
If they do ban them today, these guns will
never be considered viable hunting rifles
in the future because they'll simply say, well
no, they're illegal.
They have been, you have kinda like the air
15 in Canada is not a viable hunting rifle
cause you're not legally allowed to hunt with it.
It becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy effectively.
That's right.
Same with handguns in the bush.
You can't, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
I always figured Alberta, Alberta should come in
because the only thing that stops people from
shooting a handgun in the, in the woods is
that your att, which allows you to transport
it to a range, not out into the woods.
And ATTs are given up.
Provincially, although you'd know more about
this being the, the hunting and guy.
The hunting, well definitely more than
me like is could you be able to hunt in
Alberta with a handgun if the CFO said so?
Yeah.
I mean, they do it in the States.
I remember being down at the, well, I,
Massachusetts legally like could, oh, I see
the CFO of Alberta legally without rewriting
the f the firearms act like with the current
framework issue, an at t to someone for like a,
a 44 meg and then that person have a, a tag
for a deer and go get a deer with a, a handgun.
Would that be legal?
So we have federal and provincial laws
and provincial laws.
Uh, if your province says you're good to
go and use a handgun, then the federal laws
say, I kick in mind you ATTs, and this would
be great to have Ian on because I'm no lawyer,
but the, uh, ATTs are issued provincially.
From my understanding, that's one of the things
we're trying to, uh, to change and have a federal
oversight on all ATTs as as we move forward.
ATCs Well, and ATC is also something that you
can bring out, but it'll have conditions attached.
I think they're moving the ATCs to the RCMP
federally for ATCs for Protection of Life.
But the ATTs, I think that's part of C 21.
Isn it, yeah.
Yeah.
But the ATTs, I believe are staying are, I
don't think that the, the, the regulatory
body for ATTs changes as, as far as I know.
Again, hashtag not a lawyer.
Um, the tribe on that question though, is,
isn't it the, isn't it, and I'm not a hunter, not
a lawyer, not a hunter.
Is it not?
Um, my understanding was that it's illegal
in Canada federally to hunt or to use a quote
unquote prohibited or quote, unquote
restricted firearm for hunting, you can only
use a non-restricted, and therefore handguns
are automatically out.
So that would be a provincial rule,
depending, I don't, I don't, I don't know
every province, but the provinces govern the,
uh, the use of implements for hunting, whether
that be a spear or a bow or, uh, a firearm that
would, that would fall under provincial rule.
Municipally.
They can put extra rules in place as well.
But um, like they can say, well,
not in our city.
You ain't, you can't, no firearms or no single
projectiles, for example, corporation of Delta.
Mm-hmm.
guess for a city now, city of Delta.
And, but from the use of a firearm would
come down to can you legally discharge it?
Well, you can discharge a firearm anywhere.
It's lawful to do so.
Well That's then brings into, you know,
have a loaded fire.
Anywhere you're allowed to lawfully discharge it.
Can I lawfully discharge my handgun
out in the woods?
And this is getting perhaps a
little off topic.
If ATTs, if, if what you're saying is that
ATTs aren't gonna be affected, it's the ATCs.
I must have misread that part.
. But, um, the, from my understanding, not a
lawyer, the only thing stopping you from using
your firearm out in the woods would be an a t
which is why many law enforcement can go out
in the woods and shoot their pistols just fine.
Mm-hmm.
Because they've got that blanket transport.
I have, I have a different understanding
the opportunity for Alberta there.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
, I mean, given they've been pretty clear.
I mean, that's the other thing that I think we
haven't talked about is probably the provincial.
Like we were already seeing that you think
back to, it's, it's funny now how, how
thoroughly this shatters your, like there was,
there's the before C 21 Amendment times, and then
there's the after times
Because before we oh's huge, the big
talk was Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba.
Mm-hmm.
all saying, we're not gonna do this by.
Um, Yukon and, and New Brunswick.
Aren't they jumping on too?
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
It was five total, isn't it?
And now, like this, this ban, I mean it's the,
the, the compensate.
Cuz justice has been pretty unequivocal by
saying that if these ban goes through, these
prohibited firearms will not be available for use.
They've been, they've repeated that ad
nauseum, so it doesn't sound like it'll be
like a grandfathering.
Like if you got a bar, you'll still be able
to hunt with it until you die kind of thing.
No, you won't.
Um, so I think from that perspective, it's
very interesting to.
. And that's why we've included on some of
the form letters that, you know, people should
be emailing their provincial ministers of
public safety because the bill to pay for
this will probably most be felt by those
provincial authorities.
And it, there's so many wedges.
Like it's funny that this one wedge, it's very
obviously a, an attempt to create a liberal wedge
for likely an election next spring has created,
I think, probably a lot more wedges than
they anticipated.
So, I mean, Nick's saying, don't
be surprised.
I think, uh, he's right.
But I think it might have surprised some
people that it probably really shouldn't have
surprised, like the people that wrote it.
I'd like to add to, to that if I made that
the, um, this bill is also quite nefarious
because even though it's a federal, it would be
a federal law ordering confiscation essentially
because you won't be able to buy, sell, or,
or pass on to your heirs.
It's, it's offsetting the cost of that
confiscation.
There's no mention of who's gonna do
the confiscating.
Well, who's gonna do the confiscating is your
municipal police force.
So when Hunter Bill or, or Hunter Joe, uh,
dies and someone has to come and collect
the guns, well, who's gonna do that?
Well, that's presumably gonna be the municipal
police force.
Well, municipal police forces keep saying,
we don't have the budgets for this.
There's, there's, this is a massive,
massive, uh, we're talking about millions
at this point between the handguns and the,
the rifles and shotguns that are involved.
Millions of firearms.
It would be a nonstop job just to go around
the provinces or the, the municipality and
collect this stuff.
Well, they don't, that's not no police
force at the moment.
I mean, it wants to do that or has the
budget to do that, or they're responding
to 9 1 1 calls.
Right.
They're, they're busy fighting bad guys.
They don't, they don't wanna turn into, they
don't wanna be turned into confiscation agents.
Mm-hmm.
. So this is, again, federally.
Who's going to, whose defacto is my
understanding is gonna be charged with execution.
It's the municipalities and no one's
talking about that.
Well, the really interesting one for me,
for example, Alberta, when they came out and
they said, okay, we've got the RCMP here,
we've got their tasks.
They're under contract.
We're not gonna use our money to fund the RCMP
to do this extra duty outside of their normal
policing duties to go confiscate the firearms.
That was interesting.
But they went further and they said, we're looking
at enacting legislation to prevent the federal
government from funding the RCMP or allowing
them to confiscate these firearms.
How do we have federal laws in Canada that
provincially can be opted out of that
I, you know, that's an interesting one.
It's an untenable situ.
Well, what I understand from Alberta and
Saskatchewan is they're preparing their own.
I just took a very brief look at this stuff in
the past few days, right.
They're planning their own firearms acts to
require licensing of any confiscation agent.
So they're gonna, they're, I guess they're
gonna have lawyer people who are actual lawyers,
not, not some blogger, but who are finding
very creative ways to say, we're not having
your confiscations here.
Mm-hmm.
. Well, I mean, that's a brilliant one because
that, that licensing thing, I mean, you first
read it and you think it sounds pretty harmless,
but I mean, who, who currently administers
those licenses?
If you wanted to take a course, who would
you take it from?
Travis.
Mm-hmm.
. It's private individuals.
Private sector businesses.
They can refuse customers for various reasons.
Mm-hmm.
. So it'd be very easy for the instructors in
Alberta to go, well, we're just not gonna
take any potential confiscation agents on
as potential students so they can't get licensed.
And that kind of stalls it there.
I love that.
Which again, It all, you can be otherwise
designated by a firearms officer.
They do have a section in their That's true.
Yeah.
But I, which has happened, but I mean, the
Alberta Chief Firearms Officer ain't a boat
to appoint anyone.
Right, right.
Like it's, it's Fortress Alberta as a, as a BC or
that's halfway between Vancouver and Calgary.
Um, it's basically Fortress Alberta.
Like they, they've, they've got a pretty
decent amount of buttress against it there.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, and I've heard for a long time people that
have been around, For probably seven plus
years might know that like non-compliance,
when Trudeau was first elected, non-compliance
was always discussed as the thing that the
liberals feared most.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, we heard it from liberal party
insiders back then that anything they looked
at passing, they were always concerned that
compliance would be low because the long gun
registry compliance was never greater than 50%.
And that was always what killed them
on the costing.
Mm-hmm.
, way back when we went through all that, and
I remember it vividly, it was you, you spent
billions of dollars and you got 50% of the guns.
It's pointless, right?
Mm-hmm.
. Um, so they're still sensitive about that and
I think, you know, with C 21 and what's going on
in Alberta, this, this semi-automatic ban is
really stolen all the air out of the room for sure,
for obvious reasons, cuz it's massive.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, but when you view it, when you kind of
pull back and view the forest for the trees and
you contextualize that this is an amendment
to a bill that was already being opposed
openly by the entire.
Prairie provinces, Yukon, new Brunswick.
Um, it does change the perspective a
bit if people are starting to panic.
Well, I don't know.
It kind of changes the math a bit for me
personally, like I work in the industry, it's a
game changer for sure.
Mm-hmm.
. But looking at all those things, it does at least
gimme a little bit of hope of going, yeah,
you know what there is, the system might
kind of work maybe.
Mm-hmm.
, there's enough pushback, enough feedback,
enough political pressure, enough
friction that maybe this won't go through.
You feel they got a little too greedy,
they threw too much on that boat and it's
starting to sink?
Or do you think it was by design?
Perhaps?
I worry because I think that we can all conclude
that the liberal party has access to better
data than any of us have.
Mm-hmm.
, um, they are incredibly efficient.
They have won two elections now by
losing them, as in they get less votes
than other people, but they win the election.
That's efficiency.
And I worry about that cuz this
stuff does play in.
And if anyone's, again, people gotta step, if
you're, if you haven't step out of your echo
bubble and just Google carry price on Twitter.
Just Google it and look at not, not the results
that you wanna see, but just scroll through
'em and read 'em all.
Cuz you'll find that it's probably about
50 50 that mm-hmm.
, there's a lot of people of Oh yeah.
You know, happy to stand with him, happy to see
him standing up for, for all that stuff.
And there's a lot of people saying they're
gonna throw his jersey in the garbage and
stuff like that.
So it's, it's pretty even.
Um, and I think people should probably keep
that in context.
Um, so I, I don't know.
I mean, I wanna say, so, um, ultimately I guess
the, the pragmatist in me wants to say that
on exit polling, gun politics never actually
cracks the top 10 on why people cast a ballot.
Mm.
Um, so will this be the reason people vote for
Justin Trudeau or don't?
No.
Will this be the reason that people volunteer
for a political party?
Yes.
Will this probably create more, does this
create exponentially more leverage within the
NDP and the block way be wha for gun owners
to create change within those party structures?
Absolutely.
That's the big takeaway.
I think if gun owners are looking at this
for the absolute, like what is the absolute
best thing that could happen from this?
It would be gun owners liaising with the NDP
and the block and, and effectively taking guns
off the political table by doing so by, by using
this as an opportunity to recognize liberals
of open the door for us to have a conversation
here and for us to have that conversation
with all of the other parties that want to,
um, and clarify that, like I said, we license
the people, we don't, we license who has.
I wouldn't want to be in a room with someone
with criminal intent, whether they were armed
with a 22 or a 50 cow.
It wouldn't matter.
I'm probably not getting outta the room alive.
So we control the people.
Let's spend a lot less effort controlling
the individual things.
A lot less time, a lot less money.
Um, I think that that could probably work for
the block in the ndp.
Those parties wanna spend a lot of money,
um, which means they probably need to look at
saving money right now.
It's one of those things where you gotta look,
the economy is kind of a perfect storm, or they
gotta look at saving.
If they wanna spend Trudeau's opened
the door with this semiautomatic ban.
I think that's the, that is the big thing.
I'd love to see the NDP shift back to
a jack, late gun agnostic perspective.
Mm-hmm.
, I think it'd be the best, honest to
God for gun owners.
I think it'd be the best for Canada.
It'd be the best for the ndp.
I voted for the NDP in the past.
I'm not like it's, I voted for every party in
the past at some points.
Like it's, it's very important that we have
a three party system and the health of that is,
it relies on the NDP not being the liberals laps.
So you bring up a good point about the
communication carry price, getting up there
and everyone's like, you know, I stand behind him.
And I, it was gonna be one of the questions I'm
saving, uh, to the end, but we're into it now.
You guys are both media professionals.
From your perspective, uh, how should those
who are affected be communicating
their concerns and communicating through
social media, through their, uh, MLA's,
through their mps?
Like, what, what should, what should
be happening on a communication standpoint?
Because I, I see some groups, some businesses,
some individuals even are trying to make
hashtags popular, so it's used as a marketing
tool for themselves.
Which I guess is great for them to, to market
in their way unless they come under some form of
censure and everyone can make that association
The, uh, the attacking point, which is what's
happening right now with the ccfr and, and
the, uh, the hashtag we sent with them and they
didn't like the, uh, the code that was used.
I just got some information on that.
I don't know all the ins and outs, but I
guess there is some, uh, hue in Christ saying
they use a distasteful discount code.
And, um, now the message is disappearing and
everyone's focusing on the, that, I guess,
marketing aspect of it.
Should people be staying away from that?
How, how should we be communicating?
I mean, does it change?
It's tough.
I don't know if it changed.
That's kind of what I'm at is I think
Carrie's Carrie price's point is unchanged.
Mm-hmm.
, I think, um, The discount code's.
Unfortunate there's all you can do.
Like, just to be blunt, cuz we can't, I'm not
gonna dance around this subject for the
entire conversation.
I think the discount code was unfortunate.
I see how they did it like it
was two weeks ago.
It was long before the anniversary.
And, and in that sort of situation, poly say,
and Su has taken the name obviously of kind
of poly technique, which is where the shooting
occurred, the similar component being poly.
Um, so I can see both sides.
I can see why the Ccfr used it.
I can see why people think it's distasteful.
Um, I don't think it distracts from any of
this though, just like, I don't think like gun
owners like this, gun owners love the drama.
We just follow the drama.
The Trudeau does the band.
We love the drama.
Then it's the organizations, the
drama just distract from all that human nature.
6 21.
The problem with it was in day one, it only
impacted licensed gun.
Gary Price makes a tweet saying they're banning
a bunch of hunting guns.
Again, the problem is fundamentally
it only impacts licensed gun owners.
No criminals are losing any of their guns.
If you are a criminal without a gun license,
you cannot be charged with the contravention
of any of these laws.
You just can't, you're not actually contravening
these laws, so they can't charge you with it.
All of this stuff is a distraction.
Wow.
And I think in, in that regard, like people are
gonna make a lot of hay of the and, and I think
from what the rumors are, we're gonna see it
probably continue for the next little bit,
that things are gonna continue to go poorly
with this discount code and whatnot.
Um, again, it doesn't really matter.
Like we're supposed to be a country of serious
people with a serious government spends a
bunch of serious amounts of money on this stuff.
Um, I'm a little bit personally, I'm actually
like, again, Big.
I'm not a hockey guy, so when I say I'm a big
carry price fan, I'm a carry price fan for him
standing up the way he has, I have tremendous
amount of respect for the manner in which that
man has stood up for mental health and gun
rights in this country.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, for men, it's incredibly important.
Um, but I'm also a bit insulted that this
government produces a law that doesn't
do anything good.
Everyone says from police officers,
chiefs, lawyers, gun advocates, industry
members, even people that have had, you know,
victims groups say, this won't work, government
doesn't do anything.
Anti-gun, criminal defense, lawyers,
anti-gun groups say it's not gonna work.
Government keeps going.
They add a bunch of semi-automatic
hunting guns to it.
Everyone that's involved goes, this is banning a
bunch of hunting guns.
The government's response, you're lying,
and NHL goal tenderer makes an Instagram post,
and now the government takes it seriously.
I find that, yeah.
To use some extreme language,
fucking insulting.
Mm-hmm.
because, , I count as much as he
does, like mm-hmm.
, I'm a citizen of Canada.
I pay taxes just like he does.
I own a business, just like I'm assuming Carrie
Price probably owns a business at this point.
Mm-hmm.
, why is it that he makes an Instagram post and
Justin shows suddenly has to reconsider his list.
But when countless witnesses, countless
police officers, countless lawyers and
countless stakeholders stand up and say
the exact same fucking thing to him.
He doesn't say a goddamn word except, oh,
that's misinformation.
That's lying.
Don't believe the hype.
We're not banning hunting guns like that is
fundamentally offensive.
And again, the drama around this promo
code, the drama on the organizations, it's
just a distraction.
We got a government that is literally governing
by Instagram and it's freaking bullshit.
Right?
Like, gun owners should be pissed about that,
not about this stuff.
They should be pissed at the fact that an
Instagram post is what made Trudeau take notice.
That's the world.
That's I totally agree.
And unfortunately, that's the world we live
in of, it's a, it's a.
We live in a world of circus and superficial
and appearances, right?
So if we're gonna be governed by public
perception, how do we comport ourselves or
use that in order to be able to achieve an
end that's gonna be beneficial for everybody?
I think so.
All just a pine here that the, the one
thing is that I've done is I've written
to my member of, um, federal parliament and
my member of provincial parliament legislature
to say, I oppose this.
I urge you to vote against this or to,
to, in the case of provincial, they're not
gonna vote against it.
But to say, you know, thank you for, for
what you're doing in standing up for gun
owners, or basically to communicate with them
to say that, Hey, this issue matters to me
and I vote based on it.
Mm-hmm.
. So letters, I think letters are, are
polite and, and, you know, professional
letters are useful.
I think also for me, another silver lining
here is that Bill C 21 is unenforceable.
There is no enforcement mechanism to confiscate
all these firearms.
And that is a sign of hope.
It's risky because any single person can
be targeted and your house can be raided
and they can, they'll find what they find.
But the mass confiscation is absolutely, is
just unenforceable.
It's entirely reliant on the goodwill of
individuals, and I think that a lot of individuals
don't have that goodwill at this point.
And so they will, if they will, defacto become
outlaws, not because of what they've done
or any kind of harmful intent, but simply
because they've been standing on one side of
the line, they've played the bargain, they got
all their paperwork, they follow all the
laws, and the government arbitrarily capriciously,
perhaps even with malice, redrew the
boundaries, repositioned the line and put us on
the other side of it.
So it's unenforceable and I take hope from that.
Your earlier point though, of this
legislation being incredibly harmful from
the perspective of.
It's ability to disillusion people.
Mm-hmm.
And the, the division that it
causes and whatnot.
Cuz I think the fracturing that
all this is causing amongst society, the
vitriolic, this didn't exist like for, for
any new gun owners.
Cause I, I forget that like, I am, I'm
37, I'm not that old.
I've been in guns for 12 or 14 years I guess now.
Um, long enough that I remember the old Long Gun
registry fight and back then there was not this
sacrimonious attitude.
If you were a gun owner, it would be maybe, maybe
one in 10 Canadians would be like really anti-gun.
You know, like most of 'em were kind of
just like, yeah, okay.
Like if that's, I'm not really into it, but Cool.
You know, that was the majority of people.
Mm.
Cause we kind of accepted that we didn't have
the US' gun problem.
That was the, that was Canada.
If you think about growing up under crutch
and then under Harper, most people would think,
oh yeah, we used to think of ourselves as a
country that didn't have America's gun problem.
And now Canadians do think we have
that problem, but.
The number hasn't changed.
Right?
The homicide rate has remained
largely the same.
So it becomes more when you say like,
how do we combat this?
It's, is it, is it a case of public perception?
Do we need to get more people to carry price
on side to support us?
I don't know, because we haven't really changed,
like the perception has shifted for no reason.
Mm-hmm.
, and unfortunately I think gun owners kind
of have to accept that.
Like when I say no reason, we all know the
reason the government has shifted the perspective
by continuing to make guns sound more dangerous
at every juncture.
And I think you gotta be realistic as a gun
owner go, how do you fight the government?
How can we possibly beat the government at pr?
Well, that's pretty tough.
So you have to look at other alternatives.
And I think that's the realistic option that is
confronting gun owners now is it's not a case
of we need to make guns acceptable in Canadian
society because that's never gonna happen.
Let's just get that right out the window.
Let's, why do I say that?
Well, let's look at the most gun accepting
country in the world.
America.
Are guns controversial in America?
Yes.
Okay, so in the most gun contented world
like country, with the most guns, it's
still controversial.
It doesn't seem likely that we're going to
move from a gun that, or a country that
generally is mediocre to disliking guns, to a
country that loves guns, that seems unlikely.
We're much better off just using our
political leverage.
The dairy farmers of Canada have been proudly
propping up supply management for decades
through nothing other than political will.
They don't go out there and try and make people
feel great about milk.
That's actually the dairy Farmers of America with
their milk campaign.
They just quietly go about and do
the political work they have to do.
And I, and some people may hear this and
go, well, that sounds like nefarious gun
lobby backroom stuff.
No.
What I mean by that is just be freaking honest.
Yeah, just stand up and go.
Yeah.
We're serious about public safety.
Absolutely.
This is what we want.
We are the experts on public safety with guns
cuz we own them all.
We're the ones that keep them.
We know the licensing regime because
we have them.
Nobody wants to keep you lean on all those things.
Families, nobody wants to keep our,
our husbands wives, kids safer than we do.
And, and to be honest, if you take it back
to, to gain, cuz people like to use analogies.
This whole convince the entire public is, is
kind of the equivalent of like trying to run like
a student union election when you're trying
to convince the, the principle of something.
Mm-hmm.
like two separate entities here.
Mm-hmm.
, like we can convince the public the
guns are great.
Yeah, sure.
Or we could convince 338 people to not
fuck with them.
Mm-hmm.
, that's it.
There's 338 people on one side and 36
million on the other.
Which one would you rather convince?
Like it is literally less of 338.
People like to be very clear, the gun community
needs to convince 338 people in Ottawa.
That the licenses they hold and the gun system
we have works 338 people.
There's 2.3 million of us.
There's 3 38 of them.
We used to work on that math and it used to work.
Now we've got this whole, well, let's convince
the public first and let it trickle down where
we tell the public and then slowly over time,
carry price hears about it and carry price
makes Instagram post.
And Carrie Price makes it and Trudeau sees it and
then he changes the law.
We were better off just talking to Trudeau when
he used to get 6,000 emails and letters in one
day go, oh Jesus Christ.
No, nevermind.
I'm backing off.
That was better.
So if we're governed by public opinion, how do
we, how do we make this something that those who
are unaffected, who don't own firearms or have no
interest in firearms, how do we bring this on
the table so that they actually have a stake
in their interested in conveying their
concerns to government?
I don't think this should be to be clear.
If you don't have a stake in firearms and you
don't have the knowledge and you haven't taken
it upon yourself to go and learn the existing
infrastructure of laws and regimes, storage
rules, regulations, I don't really give
a shit what you're feeling on guns is
cuz it's a feeling.
It's not knowledge, it's a feeling like I'm
scared of small spaces.
There's nothing wrong with them, I'm
just scared of them.
It's a feeling.
I think we can, um, educate, and I don't
mean pre-chat, I'm guilty of preaching that,
but educate, uh, share information with our,
uh, family and friends and colleagues about,
and we don't even have to mention the word guns.
Oh.
And I don't know how this would come up, uh,
but there are people in my own garage.
I'm thinking of the person I live with.
Really care about guns or know much about them.
But she understands that a lot of everything
Daniel just said, she would agree with that.
It's, it's, um, not about the 338
individuals, but about the wrong headedness.
The nefarious, the sneakiness of what is
happening legislatively.
Now, maybe this is a little very, again,
back to this small self-selecting sample.
Most people don't give a hoot about
legislative policy or regulatory affairs.
That's just not their thing.
So to your question, how do you reach people?
How does a non-gun person or someone who
doesn't have, um, for whom guns don't really
matter in their day to day life, how do
we reach those people?
I don't know, other than the old faithful, take
them to the range and put a smile on their.
. What, what about from the perspective of
like Canadian Taxpayers Federation talking about
the price involved and people say, well, I
don't care about guns, but geez, that's a
lot of money we could put elsewhere or, yes.
Uh, people saying they're confiscating property
doesn't, doesn't matter.
It's not mine.
But if there's a, uh, analogy that could be
made that say, well, maybe your property
could be confiscated like in real estate or
without compensation.
Without compensation.
I mean, may, maybe talking about the
firearm issue is ancillary, although
of high importance of those who are affected,
who own firearms.
But maybe the bigger conversation is for
the populace to be writing their letters
in is something that's going to be how
this is being enact.
Well, the, the example, one example, maybe it
was one of you guys who, who mentioned it, so
credit where credits due.
But people have used the example of
cars or, uh, cars.
You know, let's say the government says we're
banning, uh, we're, we're confiscating, um,
fossil fuel engines.
Cars with fossil fuel engines we're, um, date
acts, let's say 2035.
We're confiscating them all and we're not
gonna compensate you.
Is is that on the dock?
I don't think so.
Is it, is it imaginable?
Well, it's not crazy.
Or any object.
Any object that the government decides we
don't like these, we're confiscating them and
we're gonna do it in a sneaky, devious way.
Running a disinformation campaign saying that
people who own these objects are evil
people and past laws sneaking amendments
at the last minute.
It's, it's not, um, it's not hard to
imagine this happening for other objects.
Maybe that's a way to go.
I don't know.
It's tough though, cuz you always think
on the opposite side.
Like if you do the old red team thought
experiment thing, that there's gonna
be like when you do that, you think, let's
try and do the public sentiment thing.
Let's try and get people frustrated with the
process that this is an amendment instead
of like the OIC thing.
I tried that so hard to try and
impress on people.
This was not a democratic solution.
It was effectively an executive order.
No one cared.
Um, it went exactly nowhere, unfortunately.
Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
Which might color my response here, but
um, with, I think also to, from a political
analyst perspective, true to, has ushered in
a new era in much the same way as the Fords.
Um, with the Ford government in Toronto
and Ontario, they've run incredibly effective
grassroots social media campaigns that
have been marked with incredibly low costs.
If anyone follows politics, like they spend
very little and they have incredibly large
reach on social media and it's very popular
and effectively is in some ways very similar
to the Trudeau campaign.
And that's why I say it's a new era because
he's entered this era of efficient politics
that is only attainable by social media because
you have to have the ability to pull very
tight geographic areas on very specific issues
to get data that allows you to extrapolate
this stuff out.
And I worry that if gun owners try and
do this political.
I'm like, try and change everyone's
mind thing first.
That effectively will kind of be in a game
of whackable against the opposition.
And as much as we're constantly trying to
whack the anti-gun mos down, be like, Nope,
nope, nope, nope, nope.
There's gonna be a strategist out there
constantly finding new populations of people in
writings that we're gonna have to go and find.
So until you kind of get like, you're kind of
gonna need to get a, a decent, like, you know,
a 20% message incursion into every given writing
for that to be effective.
And that's where these strategies
start to fall down.
I think this is where this gets into the
larger discussion of gun owner politics
in Canada where it's incredibly frustrating
cuz 2.3 million people with gun licenses in
Canada constitute one of absolutely one of the
largest identifiable vote blocks in the country.
Like if you can say there's a single thing
that ties everyone together, that and
Ford pickup truck ownership are kind of
the two big ones, right?
Like those are the big ones.
But unfortunately because our country's so big,
2.3 million people spread out across 338
ridings does not equate to enough votes to sway
most electoral outcomes.
And especially, especially in this era of
new efficient politics.
Where I think unfortunately, unless
there's a way, unless someone can come up
with a PR campaign in the next three years
is going to convert urban Toronto and GV RD
voters to pro gun, like straight up more than
50% pro gun, um, I think that's effectively a
waste of money to invest in, to be quite honest.
Kinda like, cuz again, this.
To add some context.
Social media plays into all this stuff
in a dramatic way, but social media is also
incredibly censored for guns like all of us.
Nick, you, Travis, we've all talked about Sure.
That you try and put stuff on Facebook or
Instagram and it's incredibly restricted
by being gun content.
Yeah.
Even if you're not gun content that
you're putting up, but you're a gun business.
I just got notice back from TikTok
the other day.
I said, sorry, you're not gonna be shown
to the same audience.
And I'm looking through what I have.
There's, there's one video of me walking
with a rifle over and one of a scope and not
talking about guns, not promoting guns.
The one that was looking at being promoters on
survival equipment.
They said, Nope, sorry.
And I think that.
And that's like I get, I get, I used to run
Father, my biggest one was Father's Day sales.
I'd run Father's Day sales from magazine
subscriptions, used to make a good
amount of money off the Facebook ads.
Now I can't even get the ad approved and we
don't sell guns I guess, you know, but we promote
the sale of firearms and ammunition apparently,
so we're banned.
When you consider like again, pulling back in
five or 10 years time, where do we want to be?
Well, we're probably not gonna be allowed on
social media straight up the way things are going.
It's very unlikely that based on its current
ownership change, Twitter may be an exception,
but Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, there will
probably be no gun content allowed, right?
I mean there used to be a gun emoji.
If you doubt that there was a straight
up gun emoji, it's now a squirt gun, right?
So we are getting kicked out of the
social media circus where politics will be
more and more important again, leading against
the end conclusion that gun owners really
need to invest in the politics side of things
cuz we unfortunately have to confront
the stacked deck.
That winning the public debate is to
be quite blunt, I think impossible.
Uh, if the gun ownership, if, if gun
ownership in Canada is going to become widely
acceptable, it's going to do so organically.
And I say that by way of like it's going to be,
uh, to be quite honest in a circumstance that
probably none of us want.
Hmm.
Through circumstances like a war breaking out
or some sort of unrest where people feel so
insecure that they feel that their only way of
being secure is having a gun of their own.
And some people may think that's a great thing.
I personally don't.
I think it'd be a bad situation.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, but I don't think Canada, with our 2.3
million licensed gun owners and all the money
that we donate to any organization is going
to be able to sway the court of public opinion
to 50% in favor of guns.
Mm-hmm.
. So if you view that as the outcome, then
you have to go What are alternatives?
Well, the alternatives are to work directly
on the political actions, work directly
with politicians, work directly with
parties, and I don't.
Again, it's not partisan, cuz this shouldn't
be a partisan issue.
We should be availing ourselves to every party
to say, Hey, I'm here to provide you with
the expert knowledge you need to know about
gun stuff so that you can pass good policy
and keep people safer.
Mm-hmm.
. And so it's really, it's, it's almost naively
altruistic to say so, but I, I just don't see,
I think we have to be realistic about our,
our, you know, the first thing, whenever you have
a plan, have a goal.
What is our goal with this public?
What is our goal with the, like, if someone
can tell me what the goal is, like maybe you
can, what's the goal?
If we're trying to reach out to the, how, what is
the goal of this public?
Can we convince 50%?
What's the percentage we're reach.
I think, how many do we need to reach?
How do you change a conversation?
How do you find a public trend?
That's something that you can jump on that is
trending if we're gonna use the social media.
Um, but if you jump on a trend, how, how resilient
does that change?
Like this carry price thing, for
example, right?
Like a lot of people might be shifting
their views, maybe some people have shifted
their views going, oh, he's, he's my idol.
And he says It's i'll changed my view.
If that's all it took, it's not a
very entrenched view.
You'll probably shift back.
I, I guess it's depends on what the trend is.
I mean, like the, the trend of when we talk
about hunting or, uh, selfsufficiency
through C people wanted to protection.
They wanted to be self sufficient.
Uh, I, I think framing the conversation a
little bit differently and having firearms
just happen to be a part of it as opposed
to from my cold dead.
Hands and having the gun front and center might
be the way, cuz you're right Meta, which owns
Facebook and Instagram and Google, which owns
YouTube and they're, they're not allowing
gun content in the way they have in the past.
But there are, there is other content that they
will want to see on there because it's trending
and because that's how they make their money
is through the views.
Uh, maybe there's a way to just have
the conversation change a little bit.
Not that we want to, but just from a realistic
standpoint, like you say.
Oh, I think it could.
And I think that's one of those, it has to be
reactive, like you said.
It's gotta be, you gotta see the trends and
respond to 'em, kind of grab 'em when you can.
Um, and I think react to, to trends that
are occurring in the real world and
reflect them back.
Um, I think that's kind of like maybe a
bit antithetical to my personal nature.
I tend to be a bit more like, I just kind of
wanna plan and, and just get on those tracks and
roll down 'em rather than kind of react.
And, and that's probably where I do view a bit
of the like, There are a lot of things that I
think public sentiment is counter to what our
politicians do, that our politicians just don't
let get raised to the issue of any kind of
debate because mm-hmm.
, it's been settled.
I mean, supply management is one.
Most Canadians don't like supply management.
It raises prices, you name it.
But it's just a non-starter for the ndp,
the liberals, and the conservatives because
those people that are involved in SP punishment
have effectively communicated their
interest to politicians.
And now the politicians have those interests in
their best heart too.
So, you know, we, we see a road there and it's
kind of, I guess I also must say perhaps there's
a bit of, um, unknown bias that I haven't
recognized before this.
But as a gun industry member, perhaps I simply
draw more parallels with the dairy industry than.
The ability to sway public
opinion . Sure, sure.
There's a couple aspects also that I think we
haven't mentioned yet that I, that I think
are worth mentioning, and one is that guns
are, uh, unfortunately a terrible political.
Um, thing like we don't align on gun ownership of
those 2.3 million voters.
There's, I suspect, as many who vote
NDP as liberal, as conservative as other
parties that I suspect the popularly the vote
distribution is roughly equal to party votes.
And there are lots of gun owners who voted
for the liberals three times in a row and even
after Trudo promised mass, confiscations voted
for them because guns are not their number
one voting interest.
So one is a lot of gun owners actually
vote liberal or for other prohibitionist.
The second thing is in terms of convincing I,
this is a, a complaint, uh, with a smile.
Forget about convincing Joe Voter.
We have gun owners who are in denial.
And the, the gun clubs, just, just an example
that was related to me in the spring, perhaps
a few weeks before the May 30th announcement,
uh, handgun Club near Toronto, the board is
coming up for election or planning the year
ahead, and they are in complete denial after the
Prime Minister has said repeatedly, repeatedly
for years, he wants to confiscate handguns.
This handgun club was not doing anything different.
Not stepping up.
Its recruiting efforts, not
budgeting differently.
Hey, what if we get shut down, no change.
Not talking about handguns, not promoting
handgun ownership or handgun sports.
Total denial.
Total head in the sand.
Total old school game of if we just keep quiet,
they'll leave us alone.
Doesn't work.
And here's again, it's find that
terribly frustrating.
Mm-hmm.
, real world examples of what Nick is
talking about.
You got two, let's say you're Joe Gun owner,
you got two options.
You belong to that Toronto Gun Club, right?
You can.
And again, I feel like I'm, I'm going to have
to take it easy cuz I'm beginning to preach.
But , we've done really well.
Preach.
You can try and convince the public and if you
do so, you'll probably turn to social media
cuz that's how most people broadcast right?
These days.
And you'll make your Facebook post and
you may, if you're a popular person,
get a couple hundred people interacting
with you, right?
Of those couple hundred, probably none
of them will actually communicate if they
have your concerns.
None of them will communicate that to
the legislator who's going to Ottawa, right?
They'll all just give their happy faces
and they'll say, this sucks, or That's too
bad, or you suck.
You name it.
Um, if you went to your gun club with
a hundred pieces of paper with letters
pre-printed to the MP of that gun club and you
just said, sign this, I'll mail it for you.
You just sign it.
That's it.
I'll put the gun club's return address
on it, so it's fine.
You just sign it there.
You're a constituent, you're good to go.
Now the MP of that area has a hundred
pieces of communication saying This law is bad.
What's the actual, what is more likely to
create the actual change we're looking for here?
Because ultimately you can say that the
end result of the social media campaign
is that those people have commented may
change their vote in the next election.
Maybe it's pretty tenuous because we interact
with social media a million times a day.
So no remembers it.
If you sign a letter, you remember it.
So even if you've got a gun owner, like Nick
said, that's maybe a little bit wishy-washy
and he walks into that gun club going,
well, we're just gonna approve the same budget
cause nothing changed.
Then you hold a letter up and they go, wow, like
you actually took the time to print a hundred.
This is a real thing.
Oh yeah.
Look at the law, you show them.
Well now you've got a hundred votes and letter.
Like that's where it comes into the, we gotta
stop thinking about the public and stop thinking
about social media and the media to be quite
honest at large, and start thinking about
are there letters on my gun club counter?
Because if your gun club doesn't have three piles
of letters for people to take sign and mail in
with instructions printed right there saying you
don't need postage, hell, they should have a bin
right there where you just put the letter in,
they mail it for you.
Mm-hmm.
. If your gun club and your gun stores don't have
that, you shouldn't be posting anything about
guns on social media.
You should be taking letters to your gun
club and you should be telling em by envelopes
because in their best interests, like that's
the real change here.
Like that's, and and I'm starting to see it like,
to be clear, like I'm sounding about ranty, but
I'm starting to see it.
I go on Reddit, I see the big stacks and like,
to be very honest, I wanted a chance to say
like, as someone's in the industry whose entire
family, my livelihood is tied to this.
Like it's a huge.
Huge boost to see, to go on Reddit and see people
with stacks of letters.
Mm-hmm.
being like, I'm gonna go bomb the mailbox,
like 400 letters and it's mm-hmm , it's
the senates, the mps, and all proud of it.
Like it takes me right back to early long gun
registry days, like when we were effective
and it's awesome.
And I think that's where people gotta
like stop being distracted, you know?
It's great.
The carry price stands with us.
That's great.
Now go print a letter.
Like that's what it comes down to in politics,
they always talk about knock a door cuz door
knocking is the basic, fundamental, grassroots
political effort.
So the running joke is, that's a great idea.
Have you knocked a door?
Gun owners be the same thing.
It's a great idea.
Have you sent a letter?
It's free, it's a piece of freaking and paper.
Your boss won't miss it if you print
it off at work.
They'll never know.
Like, just print 'em off and get 'em in the mail.
Like, it's that simple.
You just, it's that easy, you know?
Um, and that's where the change comes in.
So I think that's, that's the big
thing is really I.
really impressing upon people that like, they
can change things.
They just gotta stop thinking about, you
know, just talking to social media and Facebook
posts and Twitter and all this and actually
talk like, there are only three, again,
there are 338 people who make these decisions.
There are 2.3 million of us like this.
Yeah.
This shouldn't be difficult.
This really shouldn't even be on the table if
we were at all effective as a lobbying entity.
When it's almost comical when these
anti-gun groups talk about the strength of
the pro gun lobby, cuz I mean, 2.3 billion.
Yeah.
It is comical.
Yeah.
What do, people are in the dairy industry,
how do you, how do you respond to the
people who say, and I I think it's legitimate.
I understand this, uh, this response.
I, I'm not, no one's getting my guns.
I don't wanna send a letter, I don't want
to go on the record as flagging myself
as being a concerned party or, you know,
that I own anything.
I just want, I'm just gonna go dark.
I'm just gonna quietly not comply.
What do you, uh, what's a good response to to,
to tell those people that you can quietly,
non comply and voice your concern mutually.
Like, they're not mutually exclusive
whatsoever.
There's no legal, like if you sign a letter,
if you write a letter to the Prime Minister
saying, I don't agree with this law, there's no
legal thing saying that you're in contravention
of it whatsoever.
Like, and, and moreover, like, I'd almost kind
of say like, that's a really weird moralistic
perspective to take.
Like, it's a very, like Anne Frank isn't
my daughter kind of perspective to take like,
like it's very like, but, but I understand
it because if they, if you don't trust the
government, if you think that this government, if
these, if this 300 they 30, they're making social
media post saying, I'm not sending a letter.
They.
Absolutely.
But so that, that's why they say
we're staying off.
So I guess, I guess I can understand it, people
who say that if you don't trust these politicians
and you believe that they are some
version of nefarious, malicious, evil, bad,
uh, disingenuous, dishonest, they're,
they're up to no good.
You're just gonna, quietly, you have a
bunch of non-restricted guns that are now
to be confiscated.
You're just gonna quietly do your thing
and, and not make, not essentially go dark,
not send a letter, not go on social media
and advertise the fact that you oppose this.
I, I, I understand it and I wish I
had a, a response.
And I agree with you.
You can still send a letter.
If we live in a country where you cannot, where
you're too scared to send a letter to your
politician, then we are in deep trouble.
I don't think we're there yet.
I hope we never get there.
Um, but I just also know that when I
say that to people, they're not convinced.
They, yeah.
And I guess that's where you get into
the, like, you can't convince everyone, right?
I mean, and I think.
And I, Travis and I have talked about this
before in, in the past podcast of, of like
social media, is the tempest in a teapot,
like I keep saying it's 2.3 million licensed
gun owners out there.
There's 5 million gun owners in Canada, and
I'll say non-criminal gun owners is in
like, they've never committed an actual
crime in contravention the criminal code as
in like violence or injuring someone, but
they're in possession of a firearm illegally
because they got it back in the FAC days.
And I say it's 50% because the registry
only captured 50%.
So if you go with, well, let's go with even
4.5 million gun owners out there that aren't
committing crimes.
You know, it's just kinda like, I don't
know, like we know that statistically
speaking, they're older.
. Yep.
We know that the majority of 'em are over 45.
We know the majority of people on social
media are under 35.
We know the people over 55 spend like five,
two, and 5% of all social media traffic
is people over 55.
So the vast majority of our gun owners that
we're relying on to said letters and be
that grassroots are not on social media.
So when, when that one guy goes, well,
I'm not gonna send a letter, my response
is like, I don't care.
I got a hundred of 'em down at the gun shop.
Right?
I guarantee you they'll be gone.
So one guy, like, and, and again, this is kind
of the thing where gun owners have to get a bit
more, I don't know, I don't know if it's like
a business perspective or a capital's perspective
of think about where you're expending your
effort and your assets and your resources
and do it efficiently.
If some guy is, if you're spending four hours of
your day arguing, or God knows, two years
of your life, arguing with people on Twitter,
like various well known anti-gun Twitter
names, just block them.
It's a waste of your time.
Like literally.
Go whittle a canoe.
It's a better use of, don't do nothing about
guns, be a better child to your, or
father, your children.
Do anything other than argue with people
on social media.
The good news there, I think for I on Twitter,
I'm not on Facebook or Instagram, but, but
I think the good news there is that there's
very, like the Twitter is is, I'm gonna say
it's insignificant in terms of the gun debate.
It's, it's, it's, uh, when I look at the
retweets, likes follows, it's insignificant.
Yeah.
The numbers are just, the numbers
are insignificant.
Yeah.
It's, it's a very lively discussion.
I think that's, , it gets confused for the
actual discussion cuz there's a few people
that really, you know, it's a small community.
People like talking about it.
I like it.
But it's definitely, I'm, I'm there too.
But in terms of, I guess it, it's insignificant I
guess in terms of reach.
We're very smart people who are on Twitter
posting very infor important messages.
But we're, we're not reaching things and
that's where the Carrie Price thing comes in.
Why was Carrie Price so remarkable?
Because instead of reaching five or 50 or
500 people he reached, I don't know what
the numbers are now, but, but thousands
or tens of thousands.
So it's, and the media pick on it,
is it millions on his, oh, I think his
Instagram post, I think he's got millions of
followers on Instagram.
He's a popular guy.
Okay.
So he, he, he reached, he reached a lot of people.
That's why it's, that's why it's
quite significant.
But I can, I can, I guarantee you that nobody
in my own garage has ever heard of Carrie.
Well, my best friend would absolutely kill
for his autograph.
So Care, if you're listening, by all
means, you can sign a coffee of the menu.
. I had never heard of him before two days ago.
Um, well, he got flack for those that, again,
those that don't remember, he got flack
years ago for, uh, a picture he posted
on Instagram flying, tying a fly with his
daughter, uh, with Anfa flag in the background.
This would be four or five years ago.
Might longer, it was maybe even the Sean
Bevins days of the nfa.
But yeah, it was, he, he was quite outspoken then.
He took flack for it then, and he stuck.
He stood by it.
That's why I think this is an honest to God.
He, he he does believe this.
Yeah.
And I think, I mean, I, and to, to correct what
I just said, I, I have heard his name before,
but I'm not, uh, I'm not a hockey guy, so I
don't, uh, he's maybe the only hockey player that
I could name now, Sid.
I've heard of him too.
Yeah.
Now you got two, you go two now you got two.
So, and if you're from Vancouver, everyone
knows Pav and, and Wayne Gretzky.
And, I mean, you know, I've, I've heard
of Wayne Gretzky.
So, so let's just name hockey players for the
rest of the podcast.
. There'll be a lot.
So we've gone through a number of
different things.
Um, we've put the question out through
social media.
A number of the questions that have been asked
have been answered throughout this podcast.
There is one here from Brock Fisher.
He says, what will be involved in amending this
bill or dissolving it if conservatives get in?
So what, let's say they get in politically,
everyone's on the side of getting rid of it.
What would that look like?
Probably not something that happens overnight.
Not overnight, but they would need a major.
The conservatives would need a majority.
And I would say that's, that's perhaps a hope
that pr pev, I've, I think there's an
incredible political movement around him.
I'm gonna mark that.
Okay.
So coming back to that one would need a majority
to be able to undo legislation and, and,
and certainly not a, not a short term thing, but
also I'm not, I'm not, um, I don't have much
hope in the political process because whether
this thing goes through or not, the liberals
have shown their hands, and, and Daniel has said,
uh, publicly, on, on, in an interview with me a
few months ago, we're, we're some number of
election cycles away from mass confiscations and
perhaps an irrevocable end to mainstream
firearm ownership in this country.
Uh, that was at the time.
Maybe things have changed dramatically now, but
I think we know where this thing is headed
without a major cultural, political, social change.
We know where this gay ends and it's
not good for us.
Now, I said there was a bookmark.
And I agree with everything Nick's saying.
So not, not disputing cuz again, we all
get along famously
Um, we actually do, that's not actually,
that sounded like sarcasm and we actually do
get along really well.
You said it man.
You said I'm stealing your words.
We get along great and agree on pretty
much everything.
Yeah.
Um, what I think is really interesting
though is to game out.
Cause I agree it needs a majority, like
conventional thinking Absolutely needs a
majority to, to rescind.
Um, it'll take a full legislative act.
This is one of the interesting things
is, um, some of the previous stuff, littles
did C 71, you name it, rescinded cuz people have
forgotten, took away the ability for the governor
in council to declare a firearm non-restricted.
So we're can o I see things.
So it's a one way trip.
So effectively the liberals have almost
forced pr poly's hands into a full firearms
act rewrite because if he comes into office
buoyed by a bunch of people going, well
this act is bad and we want this rescinded.
The only way to really give us back these guns,
the, to be quite honest, the easiest way to give
us back these guns at this point, because
the law has been so, it's like a broken down
car that people have fixed on the road and
rolls into the service station with 14 different
brands of parts on it.
And the mechanic goes, this is gonna take
a significant work.
You should just buy a new car.
Um, that's what Poly's walking into at the
Firearms Act is this Jap of a broken down junker.
And his easiest solution is to blow
it all up and go, no, we're just gonna start
from scratch and we're gonna get definitions.
We're gonna throw this variant crap out.
We're getting rid of this F frt, we're
starting from scratch.
Um, so I think it's interesting liberals
of force hand's more interesting to me and
again, why I've been so on gun owners to
get involved in the party politics side.
If you have any inclination to join
the ndp, do so because we're probably looking
at a spring election, that's the common rumor.
Spring 2023.
And what I'm about to say holds true regardless of
when the election occurs.
But for the reason of the conversation's, the
easiest to have a time.
Let's say an election happens in March of 2023.
We don't know the outcome of that.
Election.
Polls will have all kinds of things, whatever.
What we do know after that election is it
is very unlikely that the next liberal and
NDP mandates end with the same leader that
they currently have is very unlikely that no
matter if the NDP or the liberals, if the
NDP won even, I mean, if they won Jag Med,
probably stay, but that'd be the only way.
Even if the liberals win, it's highly
likely the Trudeau will probably step down.
He's kind of intimated.
This is the last one he runs in.
You name it.
Much like when Harper left the conservative.
Trudeau will leave the liberals effectively
rudderless when he steps down because it's
not the liberal party that we all have known
through our childhood.
It is the Trudeau party at this point.
It is much like the conservative party
was the Harper party.
It took on the personality leader.
There's gonna be a massive change when
a new leader steps in and that massive
change brings with it massive opportunity.
And I think both within the liberal party and
the NDP gun owners would be very well to both
communicate with if they have a liberal and NDP
MP to communicate with them that no matter
what happens in the next election, they're
going to be facing an internal party election.
And where they come down on this issue
may be very important.
Because if you are a member, again, I know
I'm kind of spiraling here a bit, but the NDP
does not have a large.
So as gun owners, if you were to join the
ndp, you could have a massively outsized
impact on NDP policy.
Like literally 10,000 gun owners could dictate NDP
policy to the NDP because they're very small.
Just like a hundred gun owners could
dictate policy to a municipal election.
It's very, everything changes.
Mm-hmm.
gun owners gotta think about this.
Think not about the election's.
Very important.
We should all work very hard to make sure we
get a majority, but also keep in mind that there
is a goal beyond this election, and the goal
beyond the selection is to take guns out of
the political hands.
And the only way to do that start interacting.
And as the leaders of Jag Meat and Trudeau
step down, these parties are going to
be doing some serious internal reflection.
And I think when you say a majority, I think there
is an opportunity here to get the NDP at least
back to a gun agnostic, or perhaps even pro
gun side, because they are the party of blue
collar union workers.
This policy wastes a ton of money that would be
better spent on numerous.
Social supports that the NDP would
otherwise support.
I mean a billion dollars towards this
gun ban goes a long way towards expanding
that dental program.
Yeah, these are very real points that people can
be making and I think if gun owners think about,
okay, the election is the next big thing, but
there's going to be party elections after and start
thinking about the role that cuz this election
and the roll guns play in it will have a way
bigger impact on how the parties shape up for
the next four years than it probably actually
will on the election.
And what I mean by that, it'll have a larger
impact on whether or not the NDP and the block K
back are, the liberals are anti-gun program,
the degree to which their anti-gun or program.
Cuz we might see a liberal party come
out this next election that is not the
Trudeau urban centric, efficient Toronto.
And they, they go, yeah, you know, we're,
we're not really, we got creamed on, we're
stepping back from.
You know, we, we don't think, we don't have a
lot of gun homicides.
The liberals could entirely, it's within
the realm of possibility.
Dare I say, it's more realistic than changing
50% of Canadian's minds.
Mm-hmm.
, it would be nice.
And we are going to be confronting
the opportunity for that within the next
year, realistically.
And that's what I think we need to start working
around now, is the election's one thing,
but that, that's the larger issue, is to
start recognizing that.
Nicholas, you have anything to add?
Uh, that message gives me hope, actually.
The, it makes, it, it's, I agree.
It's, it's plausible, it's possible.
It's, I don't know if it's probable, but it
gives me hope that, uh, change is possible.
If we don't have anything else to add, we've been
at this for a little bit of time, I'm sure
there'll probably be more questions that
come down the pipe after this podcast
and we can probably address 'em through
social media or perhaps through, uh, future
podcasts like this.
If we don't have anything else to add, perhaps
we, uh, wrap it up here.
What do you say to Travis?
Thank you very much for, for organizing
this, for what you do and for having
me on as your guest.
I would agree with Nick as always.
With everything he says, I am in agreement.
Uh, cause he got a lot cause we get along.
It's been a great, it's been a great podcast.
I've really enjoyed, um, always great with
you Travis and it's fun to have, uh, Nick as
well cuz I like talking with both of you guys.
So having both you on one is, it's like a, it's
like a threesome that I've always dreamed of.
. Well, I don't know if I'd phrase it
quiet like that.
One note, I, I do always enjoy speaking with
you, your perspectives.
Both of you are fantastic.
I, and.
Nicholas, I mirror your sentiments on
what Dan said there.
It leaves me with some optimism and there
is some direction that we can go.
Thank you very much.