Sheila Gunn-Reed has been a pistol shooter in the U.S. Olympic team for the past four years, and she s the only American woman to have won a Gold medal in Pistol Shooting at the Olympics. She s also the president of the National Firearms Association and a leading gun rights advocate in the pro-Second Amendment movement.
00:00:08.180I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gun Show.
00:00:10.660I had a few questions about Olympic participation.
00:00:40.660So how many go to the Olympics with you when you go?
00:00:48.920So the last two Olympics, I was the only pistol shooter.
00:00:51.580So the last two years, I was the only pistol shooter.
00:01:09.580Previous to that in 2012, there was only one pistol shooter as well.
00:01:13.480I think that we've had a pistol shooter in the Olympics.
00:01:16.220Every Summer Olympics, I'm going to say since at least probably the early 80s when they kind of split off men and women's events.
00:01:28.260They've definitely had women in every event, I think, since 1984.
00:01:32.160There was even a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics in women's pistol shooting.
00:01:35.960There's also been a long history of male pistol shooters as well.
00:01:40.840We have, since they changed the rules for how we qualify, there's been smaller shooting teams.
00:01:45.980I think, since 1996, based on how qualifications work.
00:01:52.060But prior to that, there was significant shooting teams across the rifle, the pistol, and the shotgun disciplines that are available within the shooting sports.
00:02:01.060And I think I could be wrong, but we've been participating as Canada in shooting sports since the early 1900s for sure.
00:02:09.800The numbers I got were 16 in pistol shooting and 84 with long guns.
00:02:18.800So we're not talking about a lot of people here, but there is an exemption for elite Olympic shooters like yourself, is there not?
00:02:25.700Sure there is, but how do you become an elite pistol shooter without training?
00:02:30.320How do you become an elite pistol shooter?
00:02:32.300Do you just come off the street and say, you know what, I think I'm going to be an Olympic volleyball player today?
00:02:39.400It takes years of work and effort to put into it.
00:02:42.920There's the rule of about 10,000 hours to become an expert in anything.
00:02:46.640And yet, we're going to limit the people who are allowed to have an exemption to people who are already champions, who are already winning, who are already Olympians.
00:02:53.800That means that you get rid of the entire sport.
00:02:55.940How do you prove that you want to become a professional or Olympian in something before you actually can prove that you are?
00:03:02.420But what we're talking about is 16 people in the entire country.
00:03:19.860I have teammates that I train with all the time who have not made the Olympic level yet, but yet you're going to restrict their equipment to say that they can never achieve?
00:03:30.460It's like telling soccer players that you want to be a soccer player, but you have to be an Olympic soccer player before you can actually have a ball.
00:03:52.300Well, you just saw there is a clip from a SECU hearing.
00:03:56.460So SECU is shorthand for the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.
00:04:04.180And that was an Olympic sports shooter telling the liberals that your ban on handguns is going to destroy the sport for me, but basically outlaw the sport for any prospective Canadian going forward.
00:04:19.100Because how do they practice their sport?
00:04:23.060If the tool you need to do the sport no longer exists.
00:04:26.740And that was a liberal, Pam Danoff, having absolutely no idea how to respond to that because she hadn't even thought of that.
00:04:33.900Because I'm not sure she has even really thought about this issue at all beyond standard liberal talking points that say fewer guns means safer people.
00:04:44.480And we know that it's just not true because when the liberals say fewer guns, they don't really mean fewer guns.
00:04:50.360They mean fewer guns in the hands of the law abiding.
00:04:52.200They don't really seem to be all that focused on getting them out of the hands of the bad guys.
00:04:56.600Now, joining me today is Rick Igersich.
00:05:00.000He's the president of the National Firearms Association.
00:05:02.740And his team has been pushing back on this issue.
00:05:06.060Well, since always, it's why they exist.
00:05:08.020But really leading the charge at SECU.
00:05:14.480So joining me now is good friend of the show, Rick Igersich.
00:05:22.040He's the president of the National Firearms Association.
00:05:24.840And it's to my great embarrassment that it's been a while since Rick's been on the show.
00:05:28.980And I wanted to have him back on because things are changing with firearms legislation and firearms rights.
00:05:34.120It seems as though we had a bit of a win back in January as the public pushed back against the liberals' latest attempts to ban your lawfully obtained property.
00:05:44.480But again, the liberals, not ones to be deterred from their own bad ideas.
00:05:51.300They are still pushing headlong into the latest gun grab.
00:06:18.560Bill C-71, as most people know, it all started with the first reading of C-71, then finally it's in sec here right now.
00:06:29.560But Bill C-71, as most people know, is the complete ban on the movement of handguns in Canada.
00:06:35.940And that includes you can't air, you can't give away, you can't sell, you can't do anything with your handguns.
00:06:40.800Basically, it's yours till you pass away, then it goes back to the government for destruction.
00:06:46.260But with that bill, there's all kinds of other stuff going on.
00:06:50.280As the Liberals have been pushing, the big thing, I guess, we'll just cut to the chase.
00:06:56.220At the 11th hour, they decided to add a couple amendments to the bill.
00:07:00.380The first was G-4, which is what they call their evergreen amendment, which describes a so-called assault weapon basically by how it looks.
00:08:57.800They decided to attach the original order and counsel to G-46.
00:09:02.640Now, I believe the reason they did that, because when they first did the order and counsel, they were always talking about this buyout or buyback or compensation for your firearms.
00:09:16.840But I think in a real, they really tried to deceive us by attaching this to G-46, because when they did attach the original order of counsel, there was no mention of any sort of buyback or compensation.
00:09:32.100So it was a devious move on their part.
00:09:34.560Luckily, they were getting a lot of pressure from lobby groups like ours, indigenous people, hunters, hunters.
00:09:47.640A lot of pressure was coming in from hunters.
00:09:50.500And even some of the liberals in the liberal writings were getting immense pressure from gun owners in their writings.
00:09:58.280So basically, at the end of the day, they withdrew those two amendments.
00:10:03.480But that's just a false olive branch, because I'm sure those amendments will be back in the next little while.
00:10:11.680I was talking to our lobbyists today, and all SECU meetings, like I mentioned earlier, SECU meetings are canceled for this week.
00:10:20.280I think there's a lot of reasons, and I think the biggest one right now is that they don't know where to go.
00:10:27.680They've been interviewing a ton of witnesses.
00:10:30.180Our people have been providing a lot of witnesses, and they're basically unchallenged.
00:12:49.800I said to you off camera, it's like people who've never even seen a car, let alone driven a car in their lives, making the rules of the road.
00:12:56.820And that's what we've got as firearms owners in this country.
00:12:59.940When we're dealing with the liberals trying to write gun control legislation, they have no idea even what the existing legislation is.
00:13:08.660I mean, basically, they're saying that this is the last generation of Olympic sports shooters.
00:13:15.560I wanted to ask you, we touched, you mentioned very briefly on the cost of the buyback program.
00:13:22.440The liberals are saying it's $200 million to buy back, which I think is a bad way to describe them confiscating and compensating the victims of the confiscation because they never owned these things in the first place.
00:13:35.200The parliamentary budget officer says it's going to be close to $800 million if history repeats itself.
00:14:27.380No, my opinion is they just pulled it out of the air.
00:14:30.920Number one, you know, with this, you know, going back to the original order and counsel that's up over 1,800 types of firearms, types and variants of firearms right now.
00:14:41.820Number one, the only ones they have on the record are the AR-15s.
00:14:46.680They're the only ones that were registered.
00:14:49.740In my humble opinion, they don't even know how many of these other firearms are out there.
00:14:54.860So how can you come up with a number when you, number one, you don't know how many of these firearms you're buying.
00:15:01.880You know, if, if, if everybody, if everybody complies with the law and decides to turn this in, there, there could be hundreds of thousands.
00:15:07.620If, if tens of thousands of these firearms show up that they, they don't even know that are in the country right now and who's in possession.
00:15:14.800That's such a good point because these guys are banning the SKS.
00:15:19.540They have no idea how many of those are in the country.
00:15:22.880They've moved things from completely just go to the gun store, buy one, go to a gun show, buy one to, you can't own them anymore.
00:15:32.560How the hell are they ever going to find them?
00:15:35.040And as you say, they're banning things that they don't even realize they're banning like airsoft guns.
00:15:40.540So how do you, how are you compensating people for, how are you able to measure the value of the compensation program when you don't even know what you've banned to be compensating people for?
00:15:50.820Well, you know, and, and, and, and that's a, that's a great point with the SKS.
00:15:54.620You know, I, you know, we, we, we spoke about this before you and I, and you were, you were under the impression there's about 200,000.
00:16:38.220The money, these people and the money they put back into the economy is, is, is crazy.
00:16:43.520And the, if they ban these airsoft rifle, there's no mention of compensation for airsoft anywhere.
00:16:50.200Actually, like I said earlier with, if they, if they attach the OIC to, to one of their amendments on C21, I realistically believe that they're trying to get around this whole buyback thing.
00:17:02.840You know, I don't, I don't think they want to pay any compensation.
00:17:05.540Number one, like you mentioned, they don't even have a clue on how many of these rifles are out there.
00:17:10.740And, you know, this could lead to the millions and billions of dollars.
00:17:13.860You know, how do you put an estimate on something like that?
00:17:15.920Sheila, I have, you know, it just, it's, it's, it's the, it goes back to the same old liberal thing.
00:17:22.800You know what, we'll, we'll, we'll make up a bunch of numbers.
00:17:25.040We'll make up a bunch of, well, the bureaucrats and the politicians will make up a bunch of rules and we'll apply them.
00:17:31.720And, and Canadians, Canadians will go for it just, just because that's what Canadians do.
00:17:37.140Well, I think they're seeing a little shift in that now, you know, with what's been going on in the last couple of years.
00:17:42.720You know, it's not just the firearms or the airsoft for that matter.
00:17:47.480It's the businesses that are being destroyed by this too.
00:17:50.040You know, Wolverine Arms is a great example of this.
00:17:54.040You know, they make one variant or a couple of variants and they're both outlawed.
00:18:45.360You know, four provinces have already said they're not going to use police resources, police resources to start going around and start confiscating these guns.
00:18:57.320Unfortunately, Ontario, Doug Ford, Ontario hasn't jumped on board yet.
00:19:00.220I don't know why, but I've got my ideas.
00:19:03.160I, you know, it's all about federal funding and stuff, but it just the resources this is going to take.
00:19:09.940I don't think I don't think they took into account anything more than let's let's let's have another political wedge issue and use firearms.
00:19:19.800I think I think that's what they jumped into and without thinking anything out, in my opinion.
00:19:25.360You're telling me the liberals didn't think anything out in advance.
00:19:33.160I live in one of those provinces where our premier is standing up to the feds on this issue and saying, like, look, we in our communities, we have real problems, opioids, crime that, you know, we can't be wasting strained police resources on going after people.
00:19:49.140Who weren't criminals yesterday and confiscating their property.
00:19:52.560And it puts the police, especially in rural communities, in a very, very difficult position because, you know, many of them are sports shooters and hunters just like us.
00:20:04.000You don't get into policing, I think, by and large to go around hassling the law abiding.
00:20:10.160You want to put dirt bags behind bars.
00:20:12.040And I think it's so demoralizing to good cops to have to be faced with with doing these sorts of things to their neighbors.
00:20:21.940You know, and the thing is, you know, you're talking about the West and Saskatchewan and Alberta, the rural areas, you know, sometimes from what I've been hearing from my people is sometimes, you know, you have you have to call the police.
00:20:33.340So they don't show up for two or three hours or the next day.
00:20:35.600So they don't even have the resources to go out where there's a real crime being committed.
00:20:40.180So how are they going to go out and go from, you know, basically it's going to be have to be door to door because unless it's a registered firearm.
00:20:48.380How do they, how do they know what you have?
00:20:50.300You know, they're, they're counting on Canadians to, you know, just to bow down and just, and, you know, just give everything back.
00:20:58.720But even the people that decide to do that, how are they going to, how are they going to, you know, what there's nothing in place that they could go to collect all these firearms.
00:21:09.680Like, like we talked about earlier about SKS is I'm sure that most rural people in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba and, and the territories and the Yukon, I'm sure every, I'm sure every second or third household has an SKS.
00:21:26.200So how do you go out and ban, how do you, how do you go out and seize that?
00:21:29.220I have, you know, it just, the whole, when you look at it, you know, somebody looking from the outside of the big picture of this, it just, it just, it's a, it's a big mess that nobody,
00:21:38.580they don't know what direction anything's going to go, but they're just guessing at everything.
00:21:44.100Well, and, you know, it was really a solution in search of a problem.
00:21:47.980When you look at the people that the liberals were consulting with versus the people they weren't consulting with on their gun control legislation,
00:21:54.460they weren't consulting with sports shooters, hunters, Olympians, the trappers, the Fur Institute of Canada, indigenous groups.
00:22:05.840They didn't really consult with any of them.
00:22:07.500They were consulting with liberal academics and busybodies, feminist groups, lawyers in urban municipalities,