Juno News - July 05, 2021


Episode 1： Controlling the Law Abiding ｜ Assaulted


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

145.50044

Word Count

1,979

Sentence Count

113


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 With the stroke of a pen on May 1st, 2020, the Trudeau government unilaterally banned more than
00:00:10.000 1,500 types of firearms. Justin Trudeau and his public safety minister Bill Blair pulled out all
00:00:16.020 of the cliches. It's about safety, we're going after the criminals, we're not going after law
00:00:21.520 abiding gun owners. But it was law abiding gun owners who were most affected by this sweeping
00:00:27.080 measure. There are 2.2 million lawful firearms owners in Canada, hunters, sport shooters, collectors,
00:00:33.780 entrepreneurs in the firearms industry. These people aren't criminals, but they felt increasingly
00:00:38.320 branded as such by the federal government. Take Bill Blair, for example, who linked firearms advocacy
00:00:44.200 with political extremism. You know, we're seeing ideologically motivated violent extremists who are
00:00:50.060 using online platforms to propagate and advocate for hatred and violence against women, against
00:00:55.940 religious minorities, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic and hateful speech and advocating violence. I will
00:01:02.340 tell you many of those extremists, they're not every person who's in the gun lobby is an extremist,
00:01:07.260 but everybody in the extremist is in the gun lobby. Gun owners are not extremists. They're ordinary
00:01:11.680 Canadians with a hobby and a passion and a lifestyle that's increasingly being vilified by the liberal
00:01:17.600 government. I set out to travel the country and tell their stories, the real victims of Justin Trudeau's
00:01:23.320 war on gun owners. This is Assaulted. We're just regular people that go out and have this as part
00:01:30.620 of our being. We are not the problem. The guns are not the problem, right? It's the public's perception
00:01:36.700 that has become the problem. On one hand, I'm literally, I'm going to the Olympics, I get to
00:01:41.680 represent Canada. It's one of the greatest privileges that I ever get to do, that I get to wear the maple leaf and
00:01:47.320 represent Canada. It is such a privilege. And on the other hand, I'm so devastated that I have no idea
00:01:53.360 if at some point I'm going to get thrown in jail because I've missed, I've missed something.
00:02:02.260 They feel absolutely violated. And why wouldn't they? They haven't done anything but comply with
00:02:07.460 the law every single day to the letter. They are heavily regulated. And, you know, there's a changing
00:02:13.760 government and that's it. Their lives are over. You know, they're sitting on, you know, tens of
00:02:18.920 thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, in some cases, millions of dollars of inventory
00:02:22.640 that they completely bought legally again, complying completely with the law. And now they're like,
00:02:29.620 I have a serious business problem that I can't solve at all because that business problem originates
00:02:35.560 from the government and all of the force that comes with government, all the force that government
00:02:41.040 is capable of. And so they can never overcome it. So, you know, we're reduced to throwing pots and
00:02:47.040 pans and making videos and trying to educate the public. And, you know, it's a terrible situation
00:02:53.120 to be in. And honestly, I don't think that anybody really believes that anyone in government cares.
00:02:58.360 That was Rod Giltaka, CEO of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, which is actually suing
00:03:03.700 the Justin Trudeau government in federal court over its sweeping gun control measures.
00:03:08.260 For Canadians who aren't gun owners, it's important to know how firearms ownership works in Canada
00:03:13.800 to understand why the Liberal government's measures to tackle gun violence are not actually
00:03:18.680 going to do anything. To buy and possess firearms in Canada, you need to go through a safety course
00:03:23.820 and certification process that includes a rigorous background check, even more so if you want to own
00:03:29.360 restricted firearms like handguns. Every gun owner has been vetted by the RCMP and is screened on
00:03:35.180 a daily basis. Ownership of firearms requires compliance with strict rules about storage,
00:03:41.140 transport, and where you can use them. This is for guns that you are legally authorized to own.
00:03:47.340 The May 1st Order and Council prohibited a number of non-restricted guns used for hunting, among other
00:03:53.000 applications, and also restricted firearms. Famously, the AR-15, a popular choice for sport shooters
00:03:59.620 because of its lightweight body and customizability. Gun owners are among the most rigorously vetted and
00:04:06.200 statistically the safest community in Canada, yet they bear the brunt of all of these restrictions
00:04:11.780 that are ostensibly targeting criminals. Earlier this year they introduced Bill C-21, a bill that would
00:04:18.340 even restrict some replica firearms and also allow municipal governments the right to ban lawfully owned
00:04:24.660 handguns by licensed vetted handgun owners. The Liberals' goal was clear. They didn't want to go after the
00:04:31.780 people who use these guns or any guns in crime, but the guns themselves.
00:04:37.380 We have since last spring banned assault style weapons in this country. 1500 different models that can now no longer
00:04:46.420 be used, shot in one's backyard, transported, sold, bequeathed, transferred. Since last spring,
00:04:58.420 these assault style weapons cannot be used in Canada. There is a buyback program so that Canadians who lawfully
00:05:07.540 purchase these weapons are treated fairly and respectfully. And now that they are next to useless
00:05:15.780 as weapons are able to obtain fair compensation for that. While Trudeau says these guns are now next
00:05:23.940 to useless, the experts say it's actually the Liberals' gun control plan that is useless. Jack Hundile is a
00:05:31.460 city councillor in Surrey and a retired RCMP officer. He's also a licensed gun owner and sports shooter
00:05:37.780 himself. Surrey, a suburb of Vancouver, has been confronted by a significant organized crime problem in
00:05:44.100 recent years. Which is perhaps why Surrey's mayor welcomed the ability to impose a handgun ban
00:05:49.780 municipally. But Councillor Hundile sees through it. Yeah, looking back at my own policing experience,
00:05:55.460 I can't recall one case where there was a legal handgun used in a gang type of violence. But the
00:06:04.420 practicality is that your law-abiding gun owners really have a hard time getting their head wrapped
00:06:11.700 up around this for an obvious reason. They've done all the good work. They've jumped through all the
00:06:16.100 hoops. You know, they understand the legislation. They're compliant. They've gone through this really
00:06:22.340 extra cost for this hobby. And now you're coming out and just saying we're banning it altogether with
00:06:27.620 really without doing the research in it. Hundile is not alone. Police chiefs have spoken out against
00:06:32.580 bans on legally owned guns for years, often noting that most guns used in violent crimes were always
00:06:38.900 illegal, with many smuggled into Canada from the United States. Last year, Canadian Association of
00:06:44.900 Chiefs of Police President Adam Palmer said you'd have to be naive to the reality of organized crime
00:06:50.260 to believe that gun bans are effective. So if it's not going to do anything about crime, what's the point?
00:06:57.140 Well, politics. Because gun owners are still a minority in Canada, most Canadians don't understand the
00:07:03.380 rigorous nature of Canada's firearms licensing and the intricate details of individual firearms.
00:07:09.620 What's more, the Liberals announced their sweeping ban last spring in the wake of a horrific massacre
00:07:14.980 in Portapique, Nova Scotia, using it as justification to ban firearms that had never and would never be
00:07:21.060 used in a crime. The Liberals omitted an inconvenient detail though, which is that none of the firearms used
00:07:26.980 in that massacre were legally owned or legally acquired. They were the byproduct of the same illegal
00:07:32.900 acquisition channels that organized crime uses, which relies heavily on smuggling across the Canada-US
00:07:39.460 border. This is a reality in all cities in Canada that grapple with firearms crime, but it's one that's
00:07:45.460 absent from the discourse from the gun control advocates. Brian Lilly is a columnist in Toronto,
00:07:51.300 which has seen a steady rise in gang violence over the last decade, prompting its mayor, John Tory,
00:07:56.660 to call for a handgun ban. Nothing in the bill will actually reduce the gun crime that we're seeing
00:08:02.980 in Toronto. Toronto Police Service has a Twitter account where every week they post, here are the
00:08:09.140 guns we seized off the streets. Go through it. Look, how many are actually guns that would be legal
00:08:16.180 right now for a licensed firearm owner, someone with an RPAL, to go out and buy? Very, very few.
00:08:23.940 They're often prohibited. Guns that were never legal in Canada, smuggled in from the states.
00:08:30.180 Those are the types of guns that are being used to shoot up the streets. And to turn around and say,
00:08:36.660 well, taking away my friend Glock is going to make the streets safer because he can no longer go to the
00:08:42.900 range, makes no sense. But it does if you look at it from pure politics, and that's what it is.
00:08:49.940 The sad reality for a lot of Canadian gun owners is that those politics actually work. Despite the
00:08:56.020 stats about where crime guns originate and what the experts in law enforcement are saying, a lot of
00:09:01.460 Canadians seem to believe that a line can be drawn between the measures Justin Trudeau's government
00:09:06.500 has implemented and tackling real gun crime in Canadian cities. This divide between gun owners and
00:09:13.300 non-gun owners in Canada has become a significant issue, according to Scott Carpenter, the owner of
00:09:18.660 International Shooting Supplies in Surrey, British Columbia. These are not complicated machines.
00:09:24.100 Owning and operating a firearm is far less complicated than driving a car.
00:09:27.860 Okay. And we train everybody to drive cars. So a little bit of education and a little bit of myth
00:09:33.380 busting goes a long ways to making sure that whoever's using these is using them safely. And so the reality
00:09:39.700 is that as long as they're in the hands of people who've been trained a little bit and they're law
00:09:43.700 abiding citizens in our system, make sure it checks us every day. We get checked as PAL holders to make
00:09:49.060 sure that we're not engaged in unlawful activity, right? So the RCMP running checks on us constantly.
00:09:54.900 So can you imagine another segment of society that has that done to it? That's us. So we are not the
00:10:01.060 problem. The guns are not the problem, right? It's the public's perception that has become the problem.
00:10:06.660 So we are actually the safest demographic in terms of criminal activity in the entire country.
00:10:12.900 And that's that's reality. Turning a group of law abiding and statistically safe individuals into
00:10:18.660 a political punching bag has not happened without a cause. There's been a financial toll,
00:10:23.860 as we'll explore in a future episode, but also a profound demoralizing effect,
00:10:28.900 Rod Giltaka says on Canadian gun owners. I think you have this group of people that are sitting there
00:10:34.020 saying, so my life isn't even worth considering. And I have to watch the Minister of Public Safety say,
00:10:40.500 nothing we've done negatively affects the lives of sport shooters and hunters, when in fact it's
00:10:47.140 decimating people's lives and their identity and their culture. And that in itself, it's not only that
00:10:53.220 they've done that, but they're slapping you in the face telling you, you don't even count. Whoever votes
00:10:57.940 for us are the people that count. You people, you wouldn't vote for us anyway, so who cares?
00:11:02.980 That's a real problem.
00:11:04.420 Because these measures do nothing to deal with gun crime and the thugs and criminals and gang members
00:11:10.340 who get their hands on illegal firearms, they target the law abiding. People that have a willingness to
00:11:16.180 obey the law and a respect for the law. Gun ownership is not a homogenous group. Within it,
00:11:22.580 you have people who hunt, you have sport shooters, you have competitive shooters, people who represent
00:11:27.380 Canada abroad in shooting competitions, people who use the firearms business to feed their families
00:11:33.620 and stimulate their local economies. All of these people's stories have been absent from the Liberal
00:11:38.820 government's narrative and discussion about firearms. We're telling their stories. This is
00:11:43.380 Assaulted Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.
00:12:13.380 Assaulted Justin Trudeau
00:12:36.100 We'll be right back.
00:13:06.100 We'll be right back.