Canada’s ongoing war against legal gun owners (ft. Tracey Wilson)
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Summary
Tracy Wilson is the Vice President of Public Relations for the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights (CCFR), a group dedicated to protecting the rights of gun owners across the country. In this episode, she talks about the ongoing federal government's assault on gun owners, and how the CCFR is fighting back.
Transcript
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And joining me is Tracy Wilson, the Vice President of Public Relations for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights,
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a group that's always been a great supporter of True North, and I've always been a great supporter and member of them.
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Look, I think it's not really breaking news to say that gun owners have been under assault with Justin Trudeau's government.
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We've had the Order in Council Bill, C-21, a number of reforms and regulations.
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And even just as we were chatting a moment ago, how do you even as a gun owner begin to tackle all of these things?
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Because it really is a battle on many fronts that the government's waging.
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It absolutely is. And in fact, to me, as a gun owner, I've been a gun owner for 27 years.
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I'm a mom, I'm a grandma. I want to save her country too.
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And I know it's not my community committing the violence.
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So for me, the problem is, is it's sort of a breach of the social contract that I made with the government
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where they said, here's the regulations in order to be a gun owner.
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Here's what you can have. Here's what you can do.
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And I said, OK. And I complied with them, regardless of how ridiculous some of them are.
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They just are still coming at us, still trying to confiscate our legally acquired property,
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And it's incredibly frustrating. So frustrating that, yeah, we're taking them to court.
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We've seen a little bit of optimism, I'd say, in the last few months, not from the federal government,
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but from provinces. I think Alberta really started this off.
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They appointed a very firearms-focused, firearms-owners-focused CFO, Terry Bryan.
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They've also now, under Danielle Smith, really said,
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we're not playing ball with the federal government's gun confiscation.
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Has this been an area where there's a bit of hope that you can lobby provincial governments
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in a way that might not have been top of mind for your agenda?
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Yeah. Well, in fact, when the CCFR first launched our federal court action back in 2020,
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immediately after the big sweeping gun ban, we had written to the different provinces,
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to the attorney generals of each province, asking them to intervene on our court challenge.
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And then after Danielle Smith took over, we heard back from them,
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they've actually intervened on our—they filed an application to intervene on our court challenge,
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and it was approved by the Associate Chief Justice of the federal court.
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So Alberta's all in. Saskatchewan's right behind them.
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Manitoba, Yukon, and New Brunswick have all been very vocal against this.
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We're still waiting for—well, that's the thing with Doug, right?
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I think he's perfectly comfortable where he is, and he doesn't like to rock the boat either way.
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At the same time, I've known Doug Ford a long time, and I know he doesn't support the war on gun owners.
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He knows that the problem is crime violence and gun smuggling.
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A lot of—I mean, you mentioned this a moment ago.
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A lot of people might not realize, because gun owners probably seem a bit rebellious to the Canadian culture,
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but they're very compliant, by definition, individuals.
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You know, we get the paperwork, we get the forms, we, you know, make sure that this is locked and this is locked.
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And at a certain point, you reach a breaking point, I think, where gun owners are saying,
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it's just not worth being in this hobby anymore.
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Are you seeing that, or are they really digging their heels in and saying,
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no, I'm fighting for this right to keep my property?
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Number one, people just giving up, getting rid of their stuff, and abandoning our community altogether.
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Because it's—to the people who participate, it's incredibly important.
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The other thing I'm afraid of is—is non-compliance, and I'll tell you why.
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I know—I know a lot of people sort of promote that idea, but here's the thing.
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In any functioning civil society and democracy, you don't want people willingly breaking the law.
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But when you force people to that edge, when they've complied with every law and every regulation you've put before them,
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and then you still come at them, and the idea is you're coming to kick in their doors and take their stuff,
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I am sick and tired of complying because it hasn't paid off for me.
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So I think those are the two things that frighten me most.
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And thirdly, the fact that all the effort, resources, and focus is on legal gun owners.
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And meanwhile, we've got crime blowing up out of control all across the country,
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and especially in places like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
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Yeah, and gun owners are actually the toughest people in terms of wanting to go after gun crime.
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The issue is just the Liberals have a very broad definition of what a gun criminal is,
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and they basically think a gun owner is inherently a bad person
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that needs all of these regulations heaped upon them.
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Either that, or they at least want the public to think that,
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because it's very politically expedient to beat up the opposition
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they're going to make assault weapons legal again, or scary things like that.
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He's a Crown prosecutor in his previous business life.
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They've got Bill Blair, who was Chief of Police in Toronto.
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These people know full well what they're doing.
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isn't going to have a demonstrable public safety benefit,
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but they know it's going to have an actual political impact,
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and that's why they do it, which is horrible, and it's un-Canadian.
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Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
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Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.