Juno News - July 21, 2021


Episode 3： Targeting Sport Shooters ｜ Assaulted


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

159.24301

Word Count

2,760

Sentence Count

179


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 One of the biggest questions that gun owners and gun advocates get when they stand up and speak
00:00:10.040 out against gun control measures is, well, why do you need one? Rod Giltaka, the CEO of the Canadian
00:00:17.280 Coalition for Firearm Rights, has answered this question more times than he can count.
00:00:21.960 So you have guns for a variety of different purposes. You have target shooting, obviously,
00:00:26.700 sport shooting. You have hunting. You have collecting. A lot of people collect exotic
00:00:33.240 firearms or what have you. There's sentimental meaning. Sometimes people inherit guns from their
00:00:38.900 parents or their grandparents or family. And then on top of that, it's also a piece of property that
00:00:47.260 if you needed to, you could defend your life with it. So it's many different things to many different
00:00:55.320 people and multiple things to almost everyone. Right near the top of Rod's list was sports
00:01:00.620 shooting, one of the fastest growing sports in Canada and therefore one of the biggest drivers
00:01:05.880 for firearms ownership. Sports shooting is safe, legal and fun. And the Liberals said it would be
00:01:12.460 unaffected by their May order in council prohibiting more than 1,500 types of firearms and also by the
00:01:18.800 Firearms Regulation Bill C-21. We're not targeting law-abiding citizens who own guns to go hunting or
00:01:26.180 for sports shooting. The measures we're proposing are concrete and practical. As you're about to see,
00:01:32.600 that simply is not true. Sports shooting comes in many forms, from target shooting at a local range
00:01:39.040 to organized competitions like IPSC and 3GUN to the Olympics. Yes, shooting is an Olympic sport and one in
00:01:46.760 which Canada competes. The Tokyo Olympics kick off later this month and at them, Linda Keiko will be
00:01:53.040 wearing the Canadian flag. I'm actually a civil engineer in my day job. I'm a mom of three and a
00:02:00.980 wife and then I also get to shoot on the Olympic team. Like any Olympic sport, competitive shooting
00:02:07.660 requires discipline. It requires control and it requires practice. Practicing a sport that involves
00:02:14.640 a handgun, however, means it's mired in regulation and restrictions, different than what any other
00:02:19.400 sport would have to contend with. Under Bill C-21, any municipality could ban handguns. What's more,
00:02:27.300 the law doesn't actually give a framework for what this ban could look like. Would they ban ownership?
00:02:32.760 Would they ban transport? Would they ban storage? No one knows. This has cast a pall over competition
00:02:38.660 shooters like Linda Keiko, who could theoretically see her sport, the one she competes in on Canada's
00:02:44.640 behalf, effectively outlawed. That would be ugly. Super ugly. So not only does it not make sense
00:02:50.900 because I do, right now I do a lot of dry training at home. So I have young kids at home. Safety is
00:02:56.580 paramount for me. Absolutely. So I mean, I'm going to go through and I'm going to, you know, like unlock
00:03:02.760 them, take off the trigger locks and I'm going to do dry training and I'm going to, you know, just be
00:03:06.540 literally holding and squeezing the trigger as it goes click with like a safety in and I'm going to be
00:03:11.420 doing loads of that at home. How am I going to do that if I don't get to actually have it at home?
00:03:15.560 I'm literally going to have to keep, start going somewhere else. For me right now to be able to
00:03:19.880 even come to the shooting range, it's a minimum of a three hour time commitment that I have to be
00:03:23.840 away. And it's, there's very small windows in the day where I can get away that I have that kind of a
00:03:29.460 time commitment where, you know, someone's looking after my kids and someone's watching out for them.
00:03:32.800 And, you know, like there's no commitments where we have to pick one off or drop one off. So
00:03:36.860 like that's a, that's a big commitment for all of a sudden to have to downdo that where I'm normally
00:03:41.480 training dry fire, you know, up to six days a week. All of a sudden that now exponentially increases
00:03:48.560 the amount of time that I now have to waste by traveling somewhere to be able to go and pick
00:03:53.260 up my gun wherever I then have to store it. Like it doesn't make any sense. Requiring centralized
00:03:58.420 storage is really just one possibility. Bill C-21 doesn't rein in what municipal governments can do
00:04:04.940 to law-abiding handgun owners. Linda's pistol is a restricted firearm. Like any handgun owner,
00:04:11.640 she's had to be rigorously vetted and is subject to daily security screenings by the RCMP. Her gun
00:04:18.600 travels the world, helping her win medals for Canada, like at the 2015 Pan Am Games where she
00:04:24.200 took home the gold. But the government still sees her and her gun as threats. I've been in shooting
00:04:29.740 sports now for not quite 30 years, aging myself. My gun has never shot a shot that I haven't been in
00:04:40.340 control of. My gun has never squeezed its own trigger. It has never loaded itself. It has never
00:04:46.560 shot itself. It doesn't do anything that I don't tell it to. And I think that that's the most important
00:04:52.160 thing for people to understand. Guns are not dangerous unless they're put into somebody's hand
00:04:56.220 that is dangerous. I know you obviously, as a diligent, good citizen, want to follow the
00:05:01.580 regulations and follow the laws and you roll with the punches in that way. But do you feel
00:05:05.560 personally targeted by some of the restrictions that we see? Absolutely. I mean, I was on the
00:05:10.420 federal advisory committee and I felt like I was going to make a positive impact probably until C-71
00:05:18.680 came out. I was like, I don't think that was quite what we had discussed or advised. And it was
00:05:25.420 very disheartening to kind of see that come out. And I think it's unfortunate. I mean,
00:05:30.180 having someone look you in the eye and say, we don't want to impact law abiding citizens.
00:05:34.160 So we're going to make a new law. What? Like it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense.
00:05:40.660 And it was, it's pretty frustrating to, on one hand, I'm literally, I'm going to the Olympics.
00:05:45.840 I get to represent Canada. It is one of the greatest privileges that I ever get to do,
00:05:51.460 that I get to wear the maple leaf and represent Canada. It is such a privilege. And on the other
00:05:56.000 hand, I'm so devastated that I have no idea if at some point I'm going to get thrown in jail because
00:06:02.120 I've missed, I've missed something because I haven't been notified. I'm still, I'm still waiting
00:06:08.320 to get, you know, any sort of a notification about like the ordering council that was sent out last
00:06:12.200 year because I didn't, I didn't get mailed a notice. It would have been nice as a firearms owner,
00:06:17.620 as a licensed firearms owner, restricted owner, that maybe, maybe I would have gotten a notice
00:06:20.520 just saying, Hey, there's a new regulation that just got put out. You should check to see if
00:06:23.780 anything impacts you. I'm still waiting. Some people are surprised to learn that pistol
00:06:29.360 shooting is an Olympic sport. It's not all that surprising when you see what goes into it.
00:06:34.800 Linda let us sit in on a training session. She locks her feet in often for as long as 25 minutes.
00:06:41.400 She has to reset her aim on every shot, and she only has three seconds between shots to do it.
00:06:53.680 Linda warned us before the target came back that she hadn't been to the range in a while,
00:06:58.440 but the warning wasn't necessary. That's actually pretty good.
00:07:02.700 Alan Harding is another competitive shooter on Canada's national team. He competed in the 2015
00:07:08.300 Pan Am Games in Toronto and has partaken in a number of competitions around the world. He lives
00:07:14.200 on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast. It's a beautiful spot. That's where I visited with him
00:07:19.060 and actually went out to the range with him. He's had to rearrange his life to get around some of the
00:07:24.760 regulations that he sees are inevitable in his sport.
00:07:28.500 This is a restricted handgun. Okay. Yeah. So it falls under all of the, any sort of potential
00:07:35.020 handgun band type thing. Okay. And this one looks a little bit more like a normal handgun,
00:07:39.620 but same deal? Same deal. Yeah. This one takes five shots though. Trigger weight is a little bit
00:07:44.720 higher, but yeah, it's for Olympic 25 meter pistol. So if your municipality were to put a handgun
00:07:51.660 restriction in, you would not be allowed to conceivably take these to the range to train?
00:07:55.560 That is correct. Or even take them to competitions. Yeah. You're actually representing
00:07:59.920 Canada at these competitions and now there's some uncertainty on how you'll be able to train.
00:08:04.940 And I have a lot of layovers in Toronto. Pretty much going into, yeah, anytime I go to Europe,
00:08:10.200 a lot of the times I stop in Toronto. Yeah. I still don't even know what's going to happen if
00:08:14.300 even just as a, on layover, just transient, whether those same restrictions would apply, right?
00:08:21.900 So how do you feel when you're, you're representing Canada, you're bringing home awards for Canada
00:08:26.520 and the government is now making it. So you don't even know how you're going to be able to train
00:08:30.960 in a year's time. I don't feel good. It's, um, I, to me it's just, it's, it's, it's heartbreaking
00:08:38.900 and it just doesn't make any sense. We already have like really restrict, like restricted laws and that
00:08:43.020 kind of thing to, to get, um, firearms. So to just like then go after sport shooters and, um, it doesn't make
00:08:51.700 any sense to me. Alan's concerns about transiting through Toronto are well-placed. Toronto Mayor John Tory
00:08:58.020 has been one of the most enthusiastic municipal leaders about banning handguns. If the Liberals' bill
00:09:03.540 C-21 passes, municipalities would have carte blanche to impose whatever restrictions they want.
00:09:09.520 This is particularly ironic from Toronto given its perpetual ambition of being an Olympic host city
00:09:15.360 and the fact that some restricted handguns are pieces of Olympic sporting equipment.
00:09:20.520 I was able to gain a newfound appreciation for the skill and dedication required to be an athlete
00:09:25.760 at this level by watching Alan at work.
00:09:28.180 As with Linda Keiko, Alan was a bit modest about his performance, but it looked good to me.
00:09:50.680 I sat down with Alan later on and asked him if he thought the politicization of guns would turn
00:09:55.640 people away from sports shooting. I was shocked to learn how he's had to literally rearrange his life
00:10:01.580 simply to ensure he's able to continue to practice and compete as he always has.
00:10:06.560 It, absolutely. It's already really difficult, right? I mean, I've, I've had to move outside of
00:10:10.960 the city just to be able to train and, and it's, it's, it's difficult. I don't know how people can
00:10:16.700 really get exposed to the sport and to, uh, to be able to, um, go through all of the development,
00:10:22.380 you know, long-term to get to, to, to any sort of level.
00:10:24.980 While the difficulty in taking up competitive shooting may be increasing,
00:10:29.380 it hasn't completely turned away new folks from joining the hobby.
00:10:33.760 Amanda Fisher lives out in Alberta. She decided a couple of years ago after being anti-gun her entire life
00:10:40.220 to shoot a pistol. Then she decided for fun to join a competition and the rest, as they say, is history.
00:10:46.900 I was anti-gun my whole life. I wasn't grown up around them. I grew up in a rougher part of, um, Halifax. So,
00:10:56.500 uh, Dartmouth really. And, um, so I didn't really understand guns and because I wasn't around them,
00:11:03.460 I didn't feel safe around them. Um, so in order for me to feel safe, I took my PAL course. Um, my husband shoots,
00:11:13.380 he hunts. And so I thought it would be best if I took my PAL course so I could understand what is in
00:11:18.980 my home. Just get that education. Um, and so I bought my first pistol and I did have my education,
00:11:25.140 but I just wanted to be more comfortable with it. So I took my black badge course and with that is
00:11:31.460 the prerequisite for IPSC. My plan was not to shoot IPSC though. It was just to get the, the experience,
00:11:39.300 the live fire training and the holster training. Um, so that way when I go to the range, I could feel
00:11:45.780 more safe. Um, so I did that. And, um, my friend that I did it with, he's like, let's just shoot one
00:11:52.580 match, just shoot one match. So that way you can get your pin and your certificate. I'm like, okay,
00:11:58.340 I'll shoot one match. So we went, we shot our first match in Edmonton and we, we were both hooked.
00:12:04.980 It was, it was amazing. One of Amanda's shooting sports is called three gun, a fast paced event
00:12:11.860 involving, as the name suggests, three guns, a shotgun, a rifle along the lines of an AR-15
00:12:18.180 and a handgun. At least two of those three are in the Liberal government's crosshairs.
00:12:23.220 But now with the OIC, I'm unable to shoot three gun because I am unable to use my Daniel defense AR-15.
00:12:29.380 Um, so that has killed that sport for me. Um, I don't have another gun that I can replace that
00:12:37.940 with. So that's quite unfortunate. So how do you feel when the government says we're not going after
00:12:44.660 sport shooters? Well, they most definitely are. They may say that they're not, but I lost the sport.
00:12:51.060 And now potentially this sport, which is my main sport, could be taken away because I won't be
00:12:57.540 able to have access to my pistol. Like that doesn't make sense. Why, why would you take,
00:13:03.860 why would you take it away? You say you're not going to take it away, but you're taking it away.
00:13:07.940 Could I use an alternative? Cause that's what they, that's what they've been saying for three gun.
00:13:12.340 You can use an alternative for a pistol shooting competition. If you take the pistols away,
00:13:18.180 the most I can do is use my finger and point. Like, well, that might also be banned before long.
00:13:24.580 Who knows? Even if Amanda were to seek out alternatives, she would not only be starting
00:13:30.100 from scratch with her training, having to learn a new platform and a new style of firearm,
00:13:35.060 but she would also face the potential of future prohibitions.
00:13:38.740 There are a few variants that I could get, but it's not, it's not the same. It acts differently.
00:13:50.420 The, all of the mechanisms are in different places. So it's, yeah, it's, it's a challenge.
00:13:57.300 And then there's the uncertainty of what happens if you embrace a new one and then
00:14:00.980 six months down the road, that one's gone too.
00:14:02.740 I know. Like, do I look on the list every time I go to the range to see if something
00:14:07.700 else popped up on that list? We didn't have a full course set up,
00:14:11.540 but Amanda was still able to demonstrate the speed and excitement present in her competitions.
00:14:25.380 And like a true ambassador to the sport, Amanda thought the day
00:14:28.580 wouldn't be complete if I didn't give it a go myself.
00:14:38.420 I won't show you my target to keep some level of dignity, but I had fun
00:14:42.340 and everyone was safe, which is business as usual for Canadian sports shooters.
00:14:47.300 Isn't that fun?
00:14:48.260 How are any of these athletes expected to compete at the national level,
00:14:51.860 at the international level, when their hobby in some jurisdictions will be criminalized?
00:14:57.700 The government's not been answering that question.
00:15:00.260 More importantly, the government has not even been asking that question.
00:15:04.500 Linda and Alan say there's been no consultation with them about the impact of these.
00:15:08.580 And this is even after Linda sat on the government's firearms advisory committee,
00:15:13.220 a committee whose recommendations went unnoticed and unacknowledged
00:15:17.140 by the government that struck the committee.
00:15:20.020 These competitors have decided to embrace a sport for whatever reason that they're good at,
00:15:24.660 that they enjoy, and that gives Canada something to celebrate, athletes to celebrate.
00:15:29.940 There are other people who embrace firearms not by choice,
00:15:33.140 but because they need to, because it's a way of life for them.
00:15:37.140 We'll tell their stories next.
00:15:39.140 This is Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.
00:15:51.220 Liavatore, Justin Trudeau,
00:15:58.500 Tony Trudeau,
00:16:19.940 We'll be right back.
00:16:49.940 We'll be right back.