The many deceptions of the Liberals’ gun ‘buyback’
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Summary
Canada's new so-called gun buyback program is it going to work, or is it a pipe dream from the Liberals to make it look like they're doing something? In this episode of the Full Comment Podcast, we discuss the audio of Public Safety Minister speaking with a gun owner, and whether or not it has any legal bearing.
Transcript
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canada's new so-called gun buyback program is it going to work or is this a pipe dream from
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the liberals let's just put there to make it look like they're doing something hello
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welcome to the full comment podcast my name is brian lily your host we've all heard by now the
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audio or at least some of the audio of public safety minister gary and de sangri speaking with
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a constituent someone who rents a property from minister and de sangri who is a gun owner and
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unbeknownst to minister gary he was being recorded as he talked about the program that he was about
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to roll out canada's gun buyback program more than five years after it was announced well what
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happened we heard and de sangri downplaying the program claiming it wouldn't work saying it was
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only for quebec and making comments that would make you think well the minister just doesn't
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actually believe in this you know what you're asking i know a lot more i'm not an expert on this
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right i'm not an expert quebec for example is in a very different place in ontario
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i get it quebec is in a different place than other parts of the country so what is going on here then
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is this all just political does this program have a chance of succeeding what will it mean for
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legal licensed firearms owner ian runkel is a lawyer based in edmonton alberta he is also a popular
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youtube host you can find him at runkel on the bailey and he comments often on these issues we
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had a conversation about what this program means what the penalties could be do people have legal
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recourse given what the minister has said to just ignore this and what is the cost going to be to
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canadian taxpayers so ian we've got a gun buyback program i put the air quotes around that because it's
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these are guns that the government never owned but they somehow feel like they can buy them back
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we've got a minister who doesn't believe in it and says it won't improve public safety
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from a legal perspective does the fact that the minister has publicly stated this won't work
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and he'll bail people out if they get arrested over it or he'll compensate them for it does that have
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any legal bearing because i've heard a lot of folks in the gun community saying well
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if i get charged i'll just point and say well minister andis angry doesn't believe in this
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why should you the thing is is that ultimately probably not although it may raise some issues
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with regards to the minister's fitness to practice law because he directly encouraged his constituent
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his tenant not to follow the law which he has since indicated will be enforced with amongst other
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things raids he he said that in an in an interview so it's it's kind of interesting that he's telling
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his tenant this law is bad i don't you know it's not how i would have done it but we're beholden to
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quebec you shouldn't follow it i'll bail you out if you get caught not following it but also the police
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are going to raid people if you know if they're not following it so that's striking like as a lawyer
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we've got ethical limitations we cannot advise people to commit crimes and that's what he's
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doing on that audio it's bizarre to me and he is our solicitor general i know we have restyled it as
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the public safety minister but legally officially he is the solicitor general yeah it's um so i wonder
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if like the law society of ontario is going to have an opinion on this but um we'll see it's
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it's quite stunning but it doesn't actually provide any real protection for the average
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citizen you're expected to follow the law even if the minister for public safety says ah go ahead
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ignore it so the courts aren't going to view that as a shield for any sort of ordinary canadian and
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certainly i wouldn't expect that the minister's offer to pay bail and to personally compensate
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extends to anyone other than his tenant we're talking to a lot of people on this podcast who
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are not gun owners who have never been around a gun have never shot a gun who don't know the legal
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process that is involved in getting one in canada so help me walk through this for the layman um my
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understanding is that everyone who has a gun license in the coming months after the uh the pilot project in
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cape breton that everyone who has a gun license will get a letter from the government saying
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please tell me all the illegal guns you have and then i'll consider we will consider whether to
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compensate you for them i is that a fair assessment am i oversimplifying things that's my takeaway from
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watching minister gary's news conference what they've told the public that they're going to do
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is essentially give us an opportunity to sign up you know with letters and announcements and so forth
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and the way that works is initially you contact them and you give them an inventory of all the
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prohibited firearms and then they've said okay if you have done that that's a necessary step for
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participating then later you can turn the guns in for compensation asterisk and the asterisk is that
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they've said that there are no guaranteed payouts and already since the announcement since they've
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published their list they've been revising the list of payouts so what you see as the payout for your gun
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today may not be the payout when you actually go but they've also said that there's a cap and that cap
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is 750 million in total project costs which includes the administration it includes security i'm told
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the administration is about two-thirds of that yep so there's a little tiny pool for money
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and when that is exhausted they will say well we never guaranteed you that you'd get any compensation
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in fact you know sorry uh we're taking your gun but you're not getting paid for it and if you say
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well no i'm not giving you the gun then they'll say it's illegal you've got to turn it over we'll arrest
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you if you don't have it we'll kick down your door and so it was actually really interesting
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because carney on the uh the house of commons floor was being asked about this and he used he
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made a little slip and people sort of jeered him for it but i think it was a freudian slip
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what he said is this is why we need this registry and the reason why i think he made that slip is that
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the initial phase of the buyback is essentially trying to create a registry of the prohibited
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firearms by getting people to sign up because that's really what they're missing here for this
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gun ban and it's it's interesting because for years critics of the long gun registry said listen
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this is just the only reason you have this is as a shopping list for future bans there is no public
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safety benefit it's not saving any lives and certainly they've never been able to point to like a life
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saved off this registry but now they're trying to desperately rebuild one to solve this problem
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so that seems to be what the project is i i've already heard from people who have been contacted
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by police in recent months saying we understand you have this firearm and yet they're not prohibited
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they're not restricted and there's no way that the government would know unless they maintained a copy of
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the registry which we believe that they did in quebec but that's only supposed to be used
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for issues in the province of quebec and and we know during the high river gun grab in 2014 that they
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clearly had a copy of the registry and went around into homes that were flooded raided them seized guns
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that were properly stored and and then said oh well too bad so sad so look that that is not going to
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create an awful lot of sympathy from the general public maybe among the gun owning community maybe
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amongst people like myself who see this as a civil liberties issue but
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this idea that we're going to create a registry of guns and that will keep us safe meanwhile the border
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is like a sieve makes no sense to me well the other thing we may see as a result of this is
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people who had a firearm that has now been prohibited when the registry existed getting targeted for guns
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they no longer have because they sold them because they whatever and so they may get a letter saying we
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think you've got this gun because they it's it's been made clear that there are copies of the registry
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notwithstanding the fact that it was supposed to be stamped out but what there isn't is a current up-to-date
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registry it's it's sort of frozen in time as of that uh moment it was 2011 2012 something i'd have to look
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it up so so it's more than a decade old and so there are going to be people whose names are on the
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registry for having some sort of prohibited firearm who sold it who you know whatever happened and who
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are going to get a letter saying we think you've got a prohibited firearm now what the government will
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say is if you don't have the prohibited firearm tell us who does and i suspect most gun owners would
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say listen that's none of your business i'm not required to tell you anything go away well and also
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you know you could have sold me a gun and then i could have sold it to a friend and they could have
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sold it to another friend in this time we're talking more than a dozen years yep 100 but you may see
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people raided over um outdated stale information and these raids are not gentle like the minister
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just casually said oh yeah you know we'll enforce it in various ways you know people will get caught
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transporting them or there'll be some other issue at their house or there may be raids but these raids
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you know they kick down people's doors they go in with guns drawn they pull people out of the house
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they put them you know on their front lawn face down you know often with a gun to the back of their
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head they're incredibly stressful people end up needing you know therapy and so forth to deal with
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the fact of the violence of the raid and you know it might be you've got somebody who's like 80 and gave
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all his guns to his kids because he's like ah you know i'm too old now i'm gonna pass them on to you
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you know my my kids my grandkids and if the kids have or grandkids have licenses that's completely
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legal oh yeah 100 like nothing illegal happens in this scenario but you may still get grandpa getting
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raided and the the consequences of this ban including towards people who are completely you know
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innocent by every sense of the word are going to be felt for decades um carney is basically aiming
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the police at the general public people who have no criminal histories and who have been
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sort of functioning members of society for forever and he's like this is who we need to go to war with
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i kind of think maybe you should look at whose side he's on and maybe you should pick a side for
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canadians and not something else there are so many bad trudeau era policies that the government has
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decided to walk away from or quietly let slip away this should have been one of them we are
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financially in a horrible moment and this 742 million dollar expense and i expect it will go higher
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i don't believe the cap it always does i never do but you know they they could have said you know
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what we we're in a different place now uh we we are in a tough spot we believe that it would be
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better to focus on seizing illegal guns that are used in crime at the border rather than focusing on this
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list they could have done that and they chose not to and that is clearly a partisan political
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consideration because there's no public safety element here well and when they say oh this was
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a campaign promise they dropped electoral reform like it was a hot rock uh they they promised that
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they would keep up tariffs those are gone they promised that they would maintain the digital services tax
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and i mean it's a good idea to get rid of it but they certainly promised that that was going to be
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you know we're going to keep that that's gone so they've been shedding promises left right
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and center when they say oh we're keeping this one because it was a campaign promise well first they
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were pretty quiet about it on the campaign trail they made a couple of comments here and there
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mostly in quebec mostly in quebec and um and they also did the classic thing where they'd say
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they'd include the line en français and then leave it out of the english version of what they were saying
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but um why you know when they say oh this is a campaign promise it's clearly not that because
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they they have no problem dropping those it's clearly this is something ideological they want
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to punish a group of canadians who they see as voting for the other side and you know that isn't how
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that isn't how our country should work our politicians should not be identifying canadians into
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groups of supports us and opposes us to punish the groups that oppose us you know that's very much
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that's a dark path for a government to follow ian i i remember being up in the ottawa valley uh
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was up around deep river chalk river and that place had been liberal for decades until the gun
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registry came along and then in the 90s it switched to canadian alliance and then conservative
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um and and i remember talking to people i'm you know up visiting friends and this guy says do you
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want to see my never vote liberal again card and i said what's that he pulled out his gun registry
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card and and this was an area that was one of the most reliably liberal areas in eastern ontario and you
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can find these across the country and and they stopped voting liberal because the liberals decided well you're
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not worth it anymore but quebec is and so if we can talk about that i know you know you're approaching
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this from a legal point of view but you're also a gun owner you're also an advocate um how frustrating
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is it to hear minister and to sangri just openly say that they're doing this because of quebec well
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i'll actually say it was a bit of a relief to see him say something honest for once because since then
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you know he's been going on his media tour saying oh it was a joke um if you hear the audio it clearly
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was not a joke i've got the original audio and it clearly was not a joke you can find that on my
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channel um it's just it's it's plainly not um we're actually hearing what they really think about it
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and quite frankly it's it's nice that we finally get to see it you know delivered honestly but i don't
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think anybody would be voting for them if they had to be honest about what they were doing here
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like we have parceled out the voters and these voters are important and these other voters um
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they're kind of you know they're bad people and there's this cycle where they're like
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we're gonna punish gun owners for not voting for us and so gun owners don't vote for them and so then
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the liberals want to punish them even harder there's a lot of firearm owners who were saying hey you know
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no this government doesn't look so bad right up until this government was you know going full bore
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on gun bans and in fact um you know this probably isn't the end because poly who have been really
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driving the show here uh it's that is a um let's give the full name of the group uh policy event that's
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the yeah the group related to a coal poly technique it's a small group of people but they've got an
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incredible degree of power over this government over the liberal party and you know it's they're
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an unelected sort of pool that they just sort of threaten the government the government jumps but
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they've said we want the sks included in this ban we demand that and previously trudeau had said well
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we're going to grandfather in all these guns until police said well no we demand that they be destroyed
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and that's why they're on this course now because poly made that further demand and so for for people
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that don't know guns the sks is um an eastern european you know uh rifle it's a bolt action
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it's used by a lot of it's semi-automatic it's semi-automatic sorry yes yeah um but it's used by
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a lot of uh people who it's a cheap rifle to buy um it's basically a mostly failed world world war ii
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design yeah and but a lot it's used by a lot of people who are just getting into it uh into shooting
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or into hunting and and it's used in a lot of indigenous communities and that's why trudeau was
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reluctant to back away from it because the indigenous community said hey wait a minute
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don't you take that rifle away from us it's it's incredibly common in canada because they were
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available very inexpensively they're they're semi-automatic but they have a fixed magazine
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and those magazines in canada are pinned to five rounds and they they can be used to reliably hunt
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a deer or a moose or an elk they're not the best choice for it but they're an inexpensive choice
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which made them amongst other things incredibly popular on reserves where people may not have a
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a whole lot of money a few years ago they were going for 249 yeah now they go for like a thousand
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they're oh really their their prices have gone up and they're gonna go way up now because they're one
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of the few semi-automatic rifles still left but um they also have the advantage of functioning
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very well in cold temperatures cold weather like really cold like canada gets can actually be quite
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rough for a gun and one of the things that you'll see is metal parts bind to other metal parts
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so many bolt actions for instance you might go to cycle the action and find that it's just
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absolutely jammed shut so the um the canadian armed forces have had this problem with you know arctic
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firearms in that there's only so many guns out there that can actually function if you are say you know
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northern alberta well the sks reliably performs including in those circumstances and so it's become
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a very favored firearm for a lot of people in those circumstances where it's like we need something
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that works in the cold we need something that's been inexpensive developed by the russians who have
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siberia go figure yep exactly and so um in many ways it's canada's gun i'm actually you know sort of
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working on that as a thesis for a video but um there were sort of two firearms that um we got lots of
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at one point and that include that's the lee enfield and the sks and arguably the sks has
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had a much greater role including on reserves than the lee enfield ever did it's um it's a very popular
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firearm and there's just so many of them out there but if they ban that and if they say we're going to
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do this you know buyback they're going to be arresting indigenous people for the next 30 years over this
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ban so and jailing them let me ask you this because my understanding is the sks like so many of the
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firearms now banned was unrestricted and yeah so the government doesn't know who has those
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and that's why they have to send out a letter and say please tell us all the guns you have that are
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banned they really don't know what is out there do they i'd add an asterisk to the they don't know who
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has an sks because almost every licensed firearm owner in canada has an sks they're that common
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and when i say on sks it might be two or three they're just everywhere so if they go ahead and ban
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the sks that's going to be so many people including everybody who they you know there's the few people
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who they always find for a quote saying i'm fine with this ban well they're not going to be fine with
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it when they when their sks gets banned and the the expense just in terms of like even if they didn't
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pay a single dollar for the sks's even if they said we're not paying anything the expense of rounding
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up and dealing with all of them would be immense and most there's going to be
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like thousands and thousands of these that never get turned in i don't think for instance that uh
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you know the mohawk out near oka i don't think they're going to turn in their sks's they um
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they know that the their land out there really isn't a golf course precisely because they had firearms
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and it's um we're not going to see great turn up especially in indigenous communities both by
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because there's less um free flow of information but also i just think that there's going to be a
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lot of people who say we're not doing it we're just going to keep hunting with what we've always
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hunted with and the number of people who get jailed the um just the cost of imprisoning people for
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violating these bans over the years you you can't even put a dollar figure to it it's going to be
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absolutely insane in um before we take a break i want to ask you about the uh the idea that there
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are no hunting rifles on here i got a an email from a reader howard who said that he owns a ruger number
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one chamber in the caliber 45 70 a cartridge which dates back to 1873 this is a single shot
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breech loading lever operated rifle produced by the u.s based firearms manufacturer stern ruger and
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company um it's a modern he has a modern reproduction of the the gun from the 1870s he describes how
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difficult it is to reload this gun and this is the type of gun that is favored by people who are
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hunting big game and believe that you should have one shot because by the time you chamber another bullet
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the animal's gone now or this is a classic bear gun too it might be gone or it might be on top of you
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might be on top of you um but what we're told by this government and the previous trudeau government
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is well these are weapons of war these are military style assault weapons i'm sorry but a single shot
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ruger number one is not a a weapon of war turns out there's a bunch of them that are chambered in
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lower uh uh you know you'll know the right term lower uh great cartridges yeah lower caliber
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cartridges um and they're going to be fine but because his is powerful gives over 10 000 joules
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it's going to be banned this is not a something that is going to be used in crime ever and yet the
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government is banning this and there are many examples like this so are they trying to gaslight us
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and saying there's no no hunting rifles on there no duck guns no you know but these are all weapons
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of war i i i've looked at the list and i don't think any army is going to want to go into battle
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with these maybe that's why ukraine said no thanks we don't want these after you collect them the vast
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majority of these guns are perfectly suitable for hunting and in fact this includes the firearms that
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for instance they give fish and wildlife to protect them from bears so you know if it's good enough
00:25:00.920
for fish and wildlife and when the government hires hunters to deal with problem deer they are equipped
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with items on this prohibited firearm list so when the government hires professional hunters
00:25:14.440
they're equipped with things that the government says are not suitable for hunting which is very strange
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um the ruger number one is a really interesting sort of case study because it's a bit of the government
00:25:26.360
playing fast and loose on that as well they've said well we've only banned the really high you know
00:25:34.280
the you know high caliber ones but the thing is is that those are very suitable for for instance bear
00:25:40.520
defense um polar bears are a thing in canada uh you know this kind of thing but the way the language is
00:25:47.880
written it actually defines the ruger number one as a firearm that is banned entirely so what i expect
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we'll see is that initially they'll say well we're only covering some models of the ruger number one
00:26:01.480
because right now they don't want the ruger being used as an example of them overstepping but later
00:26:08.280
we're going to see them saying well actually the text of the law is that all ruger number ones are banned
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and we're going to take your ruger number one chambered in 22 because you could have it re-chambered
00:26:21.560
into something bigger and so we're just going to take all of those and all of the people who are
00:26:26.440
affected by that later reclassification and if you say it could never happen it's happened repeatedly
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already where they've said that a gun that they considered legal they then change their mind and
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consider it to be prohibited um and that's without like a further ban that's just the rcmp changing
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its mind all of those people when they go and say well where's my compensation can i participate in the
00:26:52.120
buyback now they'll say no you missed your chance you were supposed to participate in the buyback
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back when we were telling you that your rifle is still legal but now that we're telling you that
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it's not and never has been since the ban you should have known we were wrong and you should
00:27:11.400
have participated in the buyback so it's unreal all right we do need to take a quick break in but
00:27:19.080
when we come back i want to ask you about grandfathering it's something that we used to do all the time
00:27:23.800
it's something that we were supposed to do on this one now we're not we'll talk about that back in moments
00:27:29.560
this is tristan hopper the host of canada did what where we unpack the biggest weirdest and
00:27:34.760
wildest political moments in canadian history you thought you knew and tell you what really happened
00:27:40.680
stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favorite episodes
00:27:45.000
if you don't want to stick around make sure you subscribe to canada did what everywhere you get
00:27:50.280
podcasts when we've banned guns in the past in canada ian going back to uh the banning of fully
00:27:58.120
automatic a lot of people might be surprised to learn it used to be legal to have a fully automatic
00:28:02.520
firearm in this country uh when we went banned a bunch of guns in the lead-up to the gun registry at
00:28:08.520
various times there have been grandfather clauses in the legislation and in fact it's still there and we've
00:28:16.360
just said okay uh you can't buy this anymore you can't sell it you can't give it to anyone but or in
00:28:23.160
some instances you could pass it on to someone else with a similar proper license but you couldn't
00:28:28.520
import anymore and if you didn't have one of these already you know you're not going down to the local
00:28:33.480
gun shop and buying them yeah initially in the may 2020 order in council essentially an executive order
00:28:44.760
justin trudeau was governing like donald trump off the desk with an executive order on that
00:28:49.400
it amounts to the same thing when trudeau did that initial order in council there was a grandfather
00:28:56.040
clause and then it was taken out why was it taken out and and why did we do this before and we aren't
00:29:02.200
doing it now so initially trudeau had floated you know we'll grandfather these in um and a grandfathering
00:29:10.120
is really just a slow ban but it does tend to diminish the sort of level of anger that we're seeing right now
00:29:16.280
now but um then uh police suviens told trudeau we are super upset about the grandfathering we do not
00:29:25.240
approve and we will disinvite you from our sort of memorial events unless that's right they did
00:29:35.560
disinvite him one year they disinvited him and then they re-invited him because he said well we're
00:29:41.000
going to go back we're not going to grandfather and so um interestingly you know they basically
00:29:48.200
blackmailed our government and our government folded very quickly and said okay well we'll
00:29:55.800
i guess we'll you know we'll just turn around on this it's amazing just how much control this very
00:30:03.160
small you know special interest group has but um that's why we're not seeing here no no i've i've
00:30:10.920
i've read the media in this country ian i know the truth it's the gun lobby you guys you gun lobbyists
00:30:17.880
you have all the power well i'm not actually a lobbyist i'm a lawyer and i'm a guy who's got his own
00:30:24.280
opinions but um i'm you know that's it but it's um it's striking and you know so they initially had
00:30:33.320
it in there and then pulled it out the grandfathering clause they um they actually put in all
00:30:38.840
sorts of provisions to allow them to grandfather which they then pulled back on so um and they could
00:30:46.440
still go and say hey we're going to grandfather these they could still make that decision they just
00:30:51.960
have no actual interest in doing so at this stage so um they've made the decision that they want to
00:30:59.240
arrest people a reader who has been sending me note after note declaring that you don't know anything
00:31:07.080
about the the law on this none of the lawyers that you talk to know anything about this uh ian runkel
00:31:12.680
doesn't know solomon friedman doesn't know ed burlow tracy wilson rod giltaka tony tony bernardo
00:31:18.840
none of you know anything the grandfathering's there already we don't have to comply with it's
00:31:23.640
not in there no there is no grandfathering your reader is wrong they're pointing to the previous
00:31:29.800
legislation that has grandfathering clauses in the firearms act and claiming that this applies and
00:31:36.920
none of us know how to read now so what's your advice to someone who is believing this sort of thing
00:31:43.320
that is out there on on the internet if the legislation goes through if everything stays
00:31:48.520
as is um what's your advice to someone who would believe that uh do some more research and listen
00:31:55.720
to the subject matter experts on this one including like the government has been very clear that people
00:32:01.720
will be raided if they don't comply with this so um now the interesting thing is as you mentioned there
00:32:10.360
are people who are grandfathered in for including fully automatic firearms and that's not covered
00:32:15.560
by this there are people who have like full auto firearms that will continue to be able to have
00:32:21.480
those full auto firearms and in fact with a guy who's got an fn the the first first firearm i trained
00:32:28.760
on in the military i would love to go out and shoot it can't yep but he's grandfathered
00:32:33.320
and i mean interestingly because of some of the things i do i've got a business firearms license
00:32:40.040
that allows me to have prohibited firearms so there is the possibility if i decide to participate in the
00:32:46.920
buyback that some of that money might be used to buy like actual full auto like weapons of war and
00:32:55.400
that kind of thing but um you know for the average person who doesn't have that very unusual and
00:33:02.840
difficult to get license um they are covered by the bands they and even if they're grandfathered in
00:33:11.080
in other categories like even if you're allowed to keep the you know the fn the ak-47s whatever they
00:33:18.520
might be sitting on this new ban is not grandfathered there's no grandfathering in for that so um it might
00:33:27.800
be we'll have people in the very strange scenario of being told you can keep your ak-47 but you have
00:33:34.120
to give up your gsg-16 which is you know a semi-auto 22 long rifle firearm suitable for shooting rabbits
00:33:43.560
and grouse but nothing bigger than that tin cans um so
00:33:48.680
it's all very frustrating um if you don't comply my understanding is that you would face serious
00:33:59.160
penalties how serious are the penalties you know beyond the raids which as you've pointed out can
00:34:05.000
be traumatic can be awful what kind of time in jail are you facing for the you know if you just say you
00:34:12.920
know what i'm not going to comply and then you're caught well typically possession of a prohibited
00:34:18.440
firearm and ammunition because most of the owners will also have ammunition on hand um is measured in
00:34:25.160
years not days previously that used to be something that had a three-year mandatory minimum that was struck
00:34:32.280
down by the supreme court but the supreme court struck it down but they said in most cases the three
00:34:38.600
years will be appropriate and i don't know what how the courts will deal with this the courts may
00:34:45.560
say listen this is an unusual circumstance we're going to impose lesser penalties but
00:34:51.800
you don't necessarily know that the courts may look at this and say people knew this ban was coming
00:34:56.840
they chose to willfully defy the government and therefore higher bans are like higher penalties are
00:35:04.120
appropriate so i can actually see i can actually see the courts giving stiffer penalties for people
00:35:10.360
who defy the ban than the folks that are running around the streets of toronto where i'm sitting
00:35:15.560
right now with illegal guns and because at the toronto sun we're constantly reporting on people
00:35:21.960
getting very light sentences who are repeat violent offenders with gun crimes and you look at the sentence
00:35:28.200
and you say how is this feasible it's their third conviction and and they're putting public safety
00:35:33.960
at risk but i can see courts giving a a harsher sentence to someone who defies the government
00:35:39.800
on a ban than defies the government on the criminal code it's it's very much possible and you know you
00:35:46.120
see the um the government has been making some big asks for sentencing lately on people who are sort
00:35:53.480
of perceived as defying the government i don't know if they'll get it but they'll certainly uh they may
00:35:58.840
be going in saying we think this person is willfully defying the government and they may say compliance
00:36:05.640
with the ban has been low so therefore we need to impose stricter penalties in order to pressure
00:36:12.520
other people who haven't yet complied to get them into agreement so um that's um
00:36:20.440
um you know that's kind of the issue there so um yeah you talked about compliance tell me if you've
00:36:29.240
heard this the government made it clear that they're hoping to get about 200 firearms out of cape breton
00:36:36.680
um talking with some people who are much closer to this issue than i am who said well the actual
00:36:45.640
number is probably in the thousands but they're going to claim victory if they get 200 and they're
00:36:53.000
not really looking for high compliance they just want a political win have you heard that sort of
00:36:59.240
chatter as well that they're not really looking to seize everything they just want to be able to tick
00:37:04.040
off a box and say we did this the 200 they're basically doing as a little pilot project and they
00:37:10.920
intentionally set a number that is way below the number of firearms that exist in that community
00:37:18.280
and so basically what they're doing is they're setting it so low that if they get
00:37:22.760
minimal compliance they'll be able to say this is a rousing success we got 200 guns
00:37:29.000
it's like if you decided to ban honda civics and you said we will consider it a great success if we
00:37:34.440
get 10 honda civics turned in well there's 10 honda civics in my building yeah and so this is the thing
00:37:42.040
right they can say we've you know we ex you know we sold out of our 200 slots um they're gonna they're
00:37:49.640
gonna pitch it like it's a concert you know sold out in like two weeks or whatever and but it's still
00:37:57.880
it's a way to sort of polish minimal compliance in ways that um you know that um are interesting there
00:38:07.560
so yeah so in terms of enforcement um you know we we've got the government of alberta saying
00:38:18.200
no our police are not participating uh you've got the government of saskatchewan saying the same thing
00:38:24.280
um in ontario they haven't been as forthright but you know the opp has said we're not really
00:38:32.360
participating in this the ford government hasn't really stepped forward to say much
00:38:37.000
uh the rcmp nationally you know in most communities that they're in they're in contract policing and so
00:38:44.280
if the governments in alberta or saskatchewan say don't do this um you know this is not one of our
00:38:49.640
priorities they're not going to do it not in any significant way and and you've got you know peel
00:38:55.720
police major urban or suburban uh police force in ontario saying we don't have the resources so this
00:39:03.800
is not a you know a priority for us is there really any ability to enforce compliance on this if the
00:39:13.160
cops aren't buying in if the provincial governments are saying no is this just a political exercise
00:39:20.600
at that point well interestingly the cape breton police union has said wait you didn't could you
00:39:27.320
know you didn't actually consult us we're opposed to our participation in this you know buyback and one
00:39:35.320
of the groups that's targeted by this you know buyback is actually police because when you think
00:39:42.440
about who was buying ars a lot of them were either canadian military or canadian police wanting
00:39:50.120
something similar but not the same as what they use on duty so that they could practice off duty
00:39:57.320
and so that they could train with it there's a lot of police who own ars just a ton of them and so the
00:40:04.280
question is is are the police going to be enforcing this against the police are the police going to be
00:40:11.160
enforcing this against the military like is the are these the groups that we really want to be going
00:40:17.640
after right now in times of stress and turmoil do we really want to be picking a fight with the
00:40:24.120
canadian military and the canadian police and you might say well they don't all own these things the
00:40:29.720
problem is is if you raid one canadian armed forces member right and you go and you kick down their
00:40:37.160
door you take their ar-15 you put them up for discipline you've just made enemies with like
00:40:44.040
50 people for that one guy because his friends are not going to approve their friends are not going to
00:40:50.360
approve it's this giant bizarre fiasco it's this weird fight that they that they're insisting on
00:40:57.640
picking for like no reason well okay first off for anyone that doubts you that you know it's kicking in
00:41:06.200
doors um that is exactly what will happen it it's a kicking in of doors it is you know the the big heavy
00:41:13.800
hammer that goes through and and knocks the door over but um in in terms of ars correct me if i'm wrong but
00:41:22.680
i can remember two instances of significance of that firearm being used in crime in canada one
00:41:30.360
was a botched mob hit here in the toronto area years ago and that was an illegal ar-15 brought
00:41:36.840
in from the united states and the other one is the nova scotia mass casualty and gabriel fortman brought
00:41:42.840
in his ar illegally from the united states he had been reported for having illegal guns many times and
00:41:48.680
the rcmp did nothing so you know we've got two instances of the ar-15 being used in crime in
00:41:55.720
canada both of them illegally smuggled in and yet that is the focus of this ban because well it's used
00:42:03.400
a lot in mass shootings in the states where it's the most common gun perhaps in the united states
00:42:09.960
everything about this from beginning to end was all about optics and politics and emotion and importing
00:42:17.320
american storylines into canada to yeah feed a particular political narrative i feel like a lot
00:42:23.800
of these people really like often when i say i like firearms they'll say oh why don't you go to the us
00:42:30.840
but i feel like a lot of these people really wish they could go to the us and fight the us's problems
00:42:37.000
because these have not been canadian problems uh when we look at the two instances of an ar-15 being
00:42:45.160
used in a homicide in canada neither of them were legally owned as you mentioned one of them was
00:42:50.440
literally like organized crime and if you don't think organized crime can get access to contraband
00:42:55.960
i don't know what to tell you but the other one was an individual who had no firearms license and the
00:43:01.480
police got repeated notices like this guy and he had a ban on owning guns and they they police got
00:43:09.480
repeatedly told this guy is dangerous this guy has a bunch of illegal firearms you need to go deal with
00:43:15.400
this guy and they sat there and they did nothing and they did nothing and they did nothing and so we
00:43:23.080
get this ban largely it appears to cover for the police having failed to act in critical ways because
00:43:31.720
as a gun owner like if i go and start posting things about like you know whatever um they can
00:43:39.000
actually go and ban me from having guns they can say we're taking your license away for that
00:43:43.960
it happens if you're posting photos on social media of you acting like a gangster with your guns
00:43:51.640
you're probably going to lose them if someone reports you i've seen people get firearm revocation notices
00:43:58.040
because they were a law-abiding gun owner but they went to vegas and they shot at a vegas range and
00:44:04.440
they shot full auto and they took video of themselves doing it and posted it to their facebook
00:44:10.200
and somebody reported this guy's got full auto and they get you know they get raided because they
00:44:16.680
went to a range in vegas um you know so there was no investigation no hey what were you doing buddy before
00:44:24.360
they well they don't want to send them a hey what were you doing buddy like phone call because then
00:44:30.280
the person might you know get advance notice they specifically want to make sure this person gets
00:44:35.000
no advance notice so they don't send out a letter they just go and you know they just go and raid to
00:44:42.840
take like to find this thing and then later go oh maybe we're wrong people get posts like stuff posted
00:44:49.240
for um you know not even threats like not even criminal offenses but you'll get people who have
00:44:55.880
a tense motion or tense moment when they are um you know doing a handoff of their kids right they'll
00:45:04.840
get people who get um you know who get fired at work and storm out and find that their guns are taken
00:45:13.560
away um all of these things can result in firearms licenses being taken away any mental health issue
00:45:20.600
right can and the liberal parties made it even easier such that if you confess you know any sort
00:45:27.160
of mental health concerns to your doctor your doctor is able to report those and have your firearms
00:45:33.880
license taken away and which i think is kind of counterproductive it'll make people less willing to
00:45:39.960
seek help but that's its own point um i actually think that if the you know if workman had been a
00:45:48.200
licensed firearm owner they probably would have taken his guns away but because he wasn't a licensed gun
00:45:55.720
owner they didn't take those steps and that like this should be the the message there is that they already
00:46:05.800
had the tools to prevent this they didn't use them but of course the blame can never fall on inadequate
00:46:11.880
policing the blame has always got to be on you know on the people who didn't do anything so
00:46:20.040
but they very much want to solve u.s problems they see a shooting in the u.s and they say oh well you
00:46:25.720
know we got to prevent that from happening here it's not happening here it's never been the canadian problem
00:46:31.800
we we have a very different gun culture we have very different gun regulations storage laws all of
00:46:37.800
that and and most of those laws by the way um the canadian gun owning community is fine with
00:46:44.680
i'm sure there are some things on on the margins they'd like to change they definitely don't like
00:46:48.600
the current ban or the quote-unquote buyback but you know most of the the rules were were were not
00:46:57.160
things that people were complaining about um they were okay fine yeah i'll comply with this
00:47:04.280
and yet you're right we we seem to have a political class that wants to solve american problems in canada
00:47:11.480
well and some of these things may end up causing bigger problems here um they've imported some u.s
00:47:18.280
style systems that have been problematic in the u.s like red flag laws and the red flag laws are
00:47:25.080
right for abuse i mean because to a degree we already had them as you say if you you you could
00:47:31.960
lose your firearms over you know several different uh uh reasons and courses we did but this is
00:47:38.680
expanding further the police used to have to be involved in the system and so um as an example there is an
00:47:46.840
individual who has recently been um declared vexatious um and the police know him to be vexatious but also
00:47:56.120
the police believe that he wants to kill me like they gave me a duty to warn letter as a result of that
00:48:02.840
now if he goes into a courthouse and they don't recognize him they don't know who he is
00:48:09.000
if he ex parte decides to bring an application to have me prohibited from having firearms and the court
00:48:14.280
doesn't figure out who that is that comes with a police raid so anybody who has a grudge and is
00:48:21.320
willing to lie in court can theoretically go into a court and swat any other canadian just by going
00:48:30.040
in and and making up a story and before the police had to be involved in that process so the police had
00:48:37.720
to be the ones initiating it and so before you'd go to the police and you'd say i have these concerns
00:48:44.920
and the police could investigate them the police could say and for instance the police could look
00:48:50.600
at the person who is bringing those concerns and say this person has a record for assaulting the person
00:48:58.760
they're targeting this person has a record for stalking you know this person has several different
00:49:04.760
things the court won't see your criminal record if you go in the court won't see that you are
00:49:11.640
um you know a person who makes false police complaints every 10 minutes they won't know
00:49:16.200
any of that because they don't have access to those databases it's very much um ripe for abuse and
00:49:26.680
you know these are the kinds of things they're putting in without thinking about it
00:49:30.680
by looking at like what does the u.s have in some states the most restrictive states and we'll just
00:49:37.480
do that here without actually looking and saying has this gotten people killed in the u.s and the
00:49:43.240
answer to that is yes it has and it will here too at some point it's funny just the other day in response
00:49:49.640
to a question on bail reform from peer polyev uh mark carney accused the conservatives of trying to import
00:49:56.520
american style justice and bail reform when in reality the 2019 bill reforms that made release
00:50:04.680
default was an american import brought about by left-wing academia and it it caused it was implemented
00:50:13.960
at the same time in the u.s new york state walked away from it other democrat states walked away from it
00:50:19.960
and we've held on to it so yeah the the the uh the liberals love to you know throw that around there
00:50:26.360
you're importing american things but they love to do it themselves ian uh it's been a great conversation
00:50:31.640
as always uh people can check out your youtube channel uh runkel on the bailey uh just google uh
00:50:38.040
ian runkel look up what he is saying if you want to get educated on this issue thanks for the time
00:50:43.560
thank you so much for having me all right full comment is a post media podcast my name is brian
00:50:48.680
lily your host this episode was produced by andre prue theme music by bryce hall kevin libban is the
00:50:54.360
executive producer please hit subscribe and leave a comment review help us out share this on social
00:51:00.200
media thanks for listening until next time i'm brian lily here's that clip from canada did what i promised
00:51:09.560
castro would end up occupying a space in the trudeau family similar to that of a beloved uncle
00:51:19.400
they went diving they smoked cigars together they gathered sea urchins for beach cookouts
00:51:25.720
informal talks at an island hideaway intensified their respect for each other and their mutual
00:51:31.960
enjoyment of skin diving added to the rapport in addition to a well publicized 1976 summit meeting
00:51:38.920
trudeau took three separate vacations to visit castro after his time in politics had ended i can
00:51:44.760
make you know you know just one uh reference to uh pure trudeau's sons uh to show the closeness of
00:51:54.360
the relationship the nickname that that the trudeau's sons had for fidel castro was papa fidel
00:52:00.840
so that gives you an indication of of the closeness of the bond that existed between
00:52:07.160
a communist dictator you know thorn in the side of every american administration for the past 50 years
00:52:15.080
and pure trudeau when trudeau's youngest son michelle died in an avalanche in 1998 castro called the family
00:52:22.200
in tears to express his condolences as an eight-year-old michelle had referred to fidel castro
00:52:28.520
as his best friend when pierre died fidel declared three days of mourning in cuba
00:52:33.880
and flew to montreal to act as an honorary pallbearer every time trudeau went down to cuba
00:52:40.600
um all the people in south florida the the you know the exiles were thinking why is this western
00:52:46.120
leader giving comfort uh to a murderous dictator you know who is oppressing their people in cuba and
00:52:53.720
saying you know good things about about fidel castro and as i've mentioned to have him in
00:52:59.400
the pew at trudeau's funeral in the front row um as as a as a as a dignified person when he had been
00:53:08.280
um he'd been such a a brutal leader says more about pure trudeau than it does about fidel castro here's
00:53:17.160
where we should probably touch on what castro had done and what he was continuing to do while going on
00:53:22.680
beach vacations with the trudeau family if you want to hear the rest of the story make sure you
00:53:29.080
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