Juno News - LAWTON： The Left wants your guns

00:00:00.240 Good afternoon, Canada. Welcome to another True North Report.

00:00:03.800 My name is Andrew Lawton, a fellow with True North here to talk about guns.

00:00:09.240 Yes, I know people are going to say that this isn't the most pressing concern facing Canada, and I agree.

00:00:15.360 I think there are a number of issues that we have going on in the country, issues that we have to deal with

00:00:19.900 and that our politicians need to deal with. 0.96

00:00:22.760 But I'm a firm believer, as I've said time and time again,

00:00:25.260 that we need to deal with government overreach when it happens.

00:00:30.140 Where it happens, even if it's not going to be the hill to die on for a lot of people,

00:00:35.540 because eventually you run out of hills.

00:00:37.520 And this is where we are right now.

00:00:39.520 I've talked about this a number of times in the past,

00:00:42.000 and I actually was feeling for a little while like, you know,

00:00:45.960 people might be getting a little bit sick of it, but a couple of things happen.

00:00:49.740 Number one, I see the response that I get to videos anytime I talk about firearms,

00:00:55.260 because there is a huge appetite out there.

00:00:57.500 But more importantly, I see the fact that government continues to give me reasons

00:01:04.700 to talk about what they're doing on guns and what they're doing on firearms policy,

00:01:09.120 and this week has been no exception to this.

00:01:11.440 So if you are a gun owner, do listen,

00:01:13.560 because I think you'll get a lot of material out of here that you can work with that's important.

00:01:17.060 If you are not a gun owner, and maybe you're not interested in firearms,

00:01:21.240 maybe you don't even like firearms,

00:01:22.560 I would still recommend you listen, because I think that you'll learn that a lot of the themes

00:01:28.200 that we see emerging in the gun debate are things that are really ubiquitous throughout other areas of politics.

00:01:34.640 I mean, when the government is prepared to use what is basically nonsense or dishonest rhetoric

00:01:42.700 to take away any group's rights, they could do it with any issue.

00:01:48.060 It doesn't have to remain confined to firearms.

00:01:50.660 So when you look at how the government is justifying trying to restrict firearms usage,

00:01:56.300 these are things that could happen to non-gun owners as well.

00:01:59.980 And I did a little video about this yesterday,

00:02:02.060 but there's a lot else that's happening that I wanted to expand on.

00:02:05.200 So welcome, I see a couple of people joining the chat.

00:02:07.820 Hello, Phil.

00:02:08.660 If you want to weigh in in the comments, anyone, do so.

00:02:11.040 We'll take some questions as the live stream goes on.

00:02:14.640 And if you have questions, again, you don't need to be an expert in guns.

00:02:17.680 You don't even need to have ever held one before.

00:02:20.340 This is ultimately a discussion about rights and about government overreach

00:02:24.960 more than it is about the specifics of the firearms hobby in Canada.

00:02:30.640 Though we will talk a fair bit about that as well.

00:02:32.580 So, you know, I want to start with how this really came about

00:02:36.440 because you had over the weekend in the U.S.

00:02:39.240 the horrific shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

00:02:43.640 And I think these were, just given the proximity of them to one another,

00:02:48.760 really, they were really difficult.

00:02:53.320 Because when you're talking about a matter of one day

00:02:55.960 and someone says, oh, wow, you know, that shooting is terrible,

00:02:58.120 and you have to say which one, it's a terrible sign of where things are

00:03:04.040 in society that this is happening.

00:03:06.180 And conversely, you also look at Canada

00:03:09.500 and see that Toronto had 14 different shootings in the same weekend

00:03:15.460 over a 72-hour period.

00:03:17.080 17 people shot over 14 separate shootings.

00:03:19.680 And this gets a fraction of the media coverage.

00:03:22.720 In fact, even Canadian media was focused more on the El Paso and Dayton shootings

00:03:27.100 than the Toronto shootings.

00:03:29.420 Now, there are a couple of reasons for this.

00:03:31.300 Number one, the U.S. shootings just had a greater death toll.

00:03:35.700 It's sad, it's tragic, but they did.

00:03:37.700 So people are more inclined to talk about wherever the death toll is the highest.

00:03:41.720 But also, they were conventional, or what we view as conventional shootings,

00:03:49.240 whereas it's a mass shooting.

00:03:51.320 It's not the typical gang violence that is so common in inner cities

00:03:55.920 that it doesn't even warrant a front page mention.

00:03:59.360 And this is where things just get so difficult

00:04:02.680 in that no one in Canada or in the U.S. wants to devote the same attention

00:04:07.160 to shootings that are happening in inner city Toronto,

00:04:10.480 that are happening in Chicago,

00:04:12.600 that are happening in Baltimore, Philadelphia,

00:04:15.600 that are happening in inner cities,

00:04:16.880 because it's a lot easier to focus on the mass shootings

00:04:21.020 where you can then politicize it to make it about gun control.

00:04:25.000 Whereas when you look at shootings that are happening in South Chicago

00:04:27.740 or in Toronto, no one is talking about gun control

00:04:31.020 because we're talking, by and large,

00:04:32.840 about gangs that are illegally using, illegally obtained firearms,

00:04:38.100 illegal guns used for illegal and illicit purposes.

00:04:41.800 So gun control is not going to do anything.

00:04:45.360 And that brings us back to where we are with the Toronto issues.

00:04:50.300 Because in Toronto, these shootings,

00:04:53.140 and we don't yet have the full breakdown of what happened where,

00:04:55.820 but you know from looking at the profile and the locations,

00:04:59.100 these are gang-related.

00:05:00.860 They just are.

00:05:02.840 I know that's uncomfortable for people to say,

00:05:05.660 and it's not that they're less significant.

00:05:07.600 It's that we're talking about a segment of the population

00:05:09.920 that doesn't quite care about gun laws or gun regulations

00:05:15.400 or safe transport guidelines

00:05:17.800 or the conditions attached to your possession and acquisition license.

00:05:21.100 We're talking about a demographic in, you know,

00:05:24.020 gang-connected people that doesn't care about that

00:05:28.300 because they've already broken.

00:05:30.520 And Brian Lilly referenced this in a column he wrote in The Sun.

00:05:33.800 And I actually want to read it because I've made the point before,

00:05:36.740 but he worded it in a very good way.

00:05:38.780 Those carrying illegal handguns are already in violation

00:05:41.720 of about a half dozen criminal code offenses,

00:05:44.480 including illegal possession of a firearm,

00:05:46.620 illegal transportation of a firearm, and more.

00:05:48.880 Yet suddenly, these criminal code violations,

00:05:53.160 which can lead to multi-year sentences,

00:05:55.500 will prompt criminals to drop their illegal guns

00:05:57.860 if we add a ban on top of everything.

00:06:00.480 It's absurd.

00:06:01.320 You can't just add one more ban, one more regulation,

00:06:04.220 and expect that people who have shown a profound disdain for the law

00:06:08.400 will start to follow the law.

00:06:10.860 But that's exactly what the gun grabbers like John Tory and the NDP

00:06:14.540 and the Globe and Mail editorial board are all pretending will happen.

00:06:19.360 So we're back to the question of how the rhetoric used in this debate

00:06:24.100 tends to obscure and muddle the debate.

00:06:28.200 And we saw this coming from Justin Trudeau.

00:06:30.740 We saw it coming from John Tory.

00:06:32.240 We see it coming from the media in Canada.

00:06:34.920 I want to read, and this was what I ultimately did the video on yesterday,

00:06:39.160 the words that were used in a Toronto Star article

00:06:43.340 that I think explain very much where the anti-gun community is coming here.

00:06:50.360 And I'm going to read two different versions of the story.

00:06:52.800 This was an article in the Toronto Sun that quoted Wendy Sukier.

00:06:57.240 Now, her name is spelled C-U-K-I-E-R.

00:07:00.180 It's not kookier.

00:07:01.980 It's Sukier.

00:07:03.160 So let's not go with the kookier pronunciation, apt as it may be. 0.99

00:07:07.940 The article writes this.

00:07:09.240 Asks for her thoughts on how Toronto could be experiencing a surge

00:07:12.520 in the number of shootings but a decline in gun-related deaths.

00:07:15.980 Sukier, the Coalition for Gun Control president,

00:07:20.020 said that legal gun owners tend to be more effective in killing people

00:07:24.500 because they spend time at target practice or hunting.

00:07:28.580 Quote, one of the terrible ironies is that when you see the proliferation of guns

00:07:32.620 is often associated with gang violence, you have lots of shootings,

00:07:36.080 but fewer people are killed, perhaps because they don't spend hours and hours at the shooting range, she said.

00:07:42.580 So that's version one.

00:07:47.360 Fast forward, I think it was about 12 hours, and this is the version of the article that appears online.

00:07:53.100 Asked for her thoughts on how Toronto could be experiencing a surge in the number of shootings but a decline in gun-related deaths,

00:08:00.560 Sukier, the Coalition for Gun Control president, pointed to examples of fatal shootings involving legal gun owners,

00:08:07.940 such as the January 2017 Quebec City Moss shooting.

00:08:10.980 And in those cases, it could be that experience with guns led to a more lethal outcome, she said.

00:08:18.000 And then it's followed by the same quote.

00:08:21.200 So you have in the first version of this story a resolute and specific claim

00:08:26.360 that lawful, law-abiding gun owners are more effective at killing people than gang shooters are.

00:08:33.700 And then that switches to a story of, well, maybe law-abiding gun owners could be more effective at killing people

00:08:41.740 because they have more experience.

00:08:44.160 And I've reached out to the Toronto Star.

00:08:46.100 I've not yet received a response.

00:08:47.640 I reached out to an editor with a very specific question.

00:08:51.040 Was this change made because the reporter got it wrong in the first version,

00:08:55.080 or was it changed at the request of the source, of Wendy Sukier,

00:08:59.180 because she didn't like how it made her sound?

00:09:01.600 Okay.

00:09:04.220 Just reading – no, sorry.

00:09:06.600 I thought there was a line I missed there.

00:09:08.040 No, I read the whole thing.

00:09:09.180 So this is what we're up against right now.

00:09:12.000 And gun owners were very outraged about this.

00:09:14.200 I've seen Wendy Sukier's face memed by a lot of gun owners who are very frustrated in her claim, 1.00

00:09:22.980 making the baseless claim that law-abiding gun owners are more effective at killing people.

00:09:26.940 And even if this is true, because her point is that if you own a gun and you spend hours at the range,

00:09:31.920 you're better at using it and you've got better aim.

00:09:34.200 So if you were to use that to shoot a person, yes, you'd be more likely to get your target than someone else would be.

00:09:41.340 But it completely misses the point when she's conceding in that same quote that law-abiding gun owners aren't doing that.

00:09:47.960 You know, that's like saying, you know, yes, I could drive, you know, 250 kilometers an hour without batting an eye if I were in a Ferrari,

00:09:56.780 but I don't have a Ferrari, so it's a moot point.

00:09:58.620 Like, yes, I could do that if I had the means to do it.

00:10:02.480 And, you know, law-abiding gun owners with experience could, you know, kill someone if they were going to kill someone, but they aren't.

00:10:09.820 And the stats show that law-abiding gun owners are, by and large, and this is statistically proven, safer than even the general population.

00:10:18.420 By virtue of having a gun license, I am, I believe that the latest research from Gary Mauser says,

00:10:24.980 I am one-third as likely to commit murder as some random person who's not armed on the street or who's not lawfully armed on the street.

00:10:34.840 So this is what we're up against.

00:10:36.060 People trying to claim that law-abiding gun owners have to shoulder the brunt of gun violence when the stats say the complete opposite.

00:10:43.400 But unfortunately, if you start talking about handguns or assault weapons, and I've done videos in the past on why assault weapon is really a made-up term in the Canadian context.

00:10:55.340 An AR-15 is not a fully automatic rifle.

00:10:57.640 It's not an assault rifle.

00:10:59.100 But when you have the liberals and the Globe and Mail editorial board and the Toronto Star and the, you know, columnists and the activists

00:11:08.720 and all of these people saying we've got to ban handguns and ban assault rifles and all of this stuff,

00:11:14.780 what you see happening is a lot of Canadians who are not gun owners, and gun owners are a sizable group.

00:11:21.980 I think there are about 2.2 million licensed gun owners in Canada.

00:11:25.600 It's a sizable group, but it's still a statistical minority in Canada.

00:11:29.580 When you've got people saying, you know, guns are violent and we don't want guns,

00:11:32.720 there aren't enough people with experience in this area who can speak up and say,

00:11:37.800 well, hang on, I don't think that's right.

00:11:40.420 I don't think that's right that you would target this group of people who have done nothing wrong,

00:11:46.540 who are posing no threat, no risk, and no harm to anyone.

00:11:50.560 But that's, you know, what we see happening here.

00:11:52.820 And for the liberals, I've said in the past that it tends to be somewhat of a safe bet

00:11:58.900 if the liberals want to go after gun owners because, A, they're not alienating their own voters,

00:12:05.760 and, B, most people in cities don't even know how relatively common guns are in the first place.

00:12:12.600 So someone in a city is going to be like, yeah, why does anyone need a handgun?

00:12:16.520 Yeah, I'm going to vote for this.

00:12:17.520 The liberals don't want handguns, and the conservatives do, and the PPC do, and the NDP don't.

00:12:22.460 So I'll choose between the liberal and the NDP.

00:12:26.860 So we do need to speak out about the truth on this area.

00:12:31.480 And I'm a firm believer in the fact that the media should educate themselves on guns.

00:12:36.620 I think anyone who writes about crime stories, anyone who writes about guns,

00:12:40.400 should actually go and get their possession and acquisition license,

00:12:43.840 know what it is that goes into it, so that when a story does come along, you know,

00:12:48.340 okay, well, actually, I had to do this.

00:12:50.340 So this person that they're saying is a shooter probably hadn't done that

00:12:54.320 because otherwise this would have been revealed.

00:12:56.900 Indeed, I remind you that gun owners or licensed gun owners in Canada

00:13:01.280 are background checked every day.

00:13:03.400 You are subject to a warrantless home inspection

00:13:06.600 if the police just knock on your door and say,

00:13:08.940 hey, we need to make sure you're storing things properly.

00:13:11.040 And you can have your property seized at any point for even the slightest or unintentional of issues.

00:13:18.020 Michael writes, shared.

00:13:19.300 Thank you very much, Michael.

00:13:20.300 Really appreciate the support.

00:13:22.280 So all of this is to say that the debate right now is being had on facts that are not real facts.

00:13:30.480 But there is a little bit of an upside here.

00:13:32.880 There's a little bit of an upside.

00:13:34.180 And I'll share this with you because I think that as we near the election,

00:13:38.960 we run out of time for the government right now, the liberal government,

00:13:42.200 to do anything as a government.

00:13:44.280 All they can really do after a certain point is talk about things they'll do if they get reelected.

00:13:52.880 Let me just pull up this article here.

00:13:55.520 So this is from a CBC piece,

00:13:57.460 Why Ottawa is Hedging When It Comes to Handguns.

00:14:01.000 And it's from Jonathan Gatehouse who says government is weighing the results of last year's consultations

00:14:06.080 on tougher gun control measures.

00:14:09.000 Ralph Goodale, the public safety minister, did an interview on power and politics.

00:14:13.460 And he said, quote,

00:14:14.900 it's appropriate for the political parties to lay out for Canadians

00:14:18.140 where they would go with this particular issue,

00:14:22.080 noting that any legislative changes will have to wait for parliament's return.

00:14:27.380 So he's saying we are not doing anything as a government

00:14:30.880 we are going to put forward our vision as part of our platform in the next election.

00:14:36.000 And I think that the reason he's doing this is because the liberals have done their polling,

00:14:40.500 they've done their research, they've done all of this stuff.

00:14:43.100 And I think they've probably come to an understanding that it's not as politically safe as they think it is.

00:14:51.720 It's not as politically safe as they think it is,

00:14:56.340 which means that they have to really be very careful if they're going to put forward something

00:15:04.140 that risks threatening people's rights, people's property, whatever the case may be.

00:15:08.360 And that's what this is going to come down to. 0.99

00:15:11.400 The liberals, you can mock them all you want, but they're not stupid. 1.00

00:15:15.020 They want to stay in power. 0.98

00:15:16.020 They want to stay in office, which means that if there's something that's going to just profoundly blow up in their face,

00:15:21.360 they're going to try to avoid it.

00:15:23.300 And I think that when they look at the rural population, the urban-rural divide,

00:15:31.380 people outside of Toronto and outside of big cities, of which there are still millions in this country,

00:15:35.760 they must be aware that, okay, if we tell these groups we're going to take away your guns,

00:15:41.040 it's not going to look pretty for us.

00:15:42.820 And I think it was also Brian Lilly.

00:15:44.760 I know I'm quoting him a lot, but he's a great guy.

00:15:46.480 He's a good friend.

00:15:47.400 I think it was Brian Lilly who said,

00:15:48.520 you know that if the liberals who have been talking for years about wanting to do a handgun ban are not doing it right now,

00:15:54.960 they know how politically disadvantageous it would be.

00:15:57.980 If they thought there was even a percentage point they could go up in the polls by trying to ban handguns, they would.

00:16:05.620 So they are going to do it by virtue of running on it and then doing it if they win again.

00:16:12.340 But there also is another dimension to this,

00:16:14.780 which is what they're going to do about the so-called assault weapons issue.

00:16:18.520 And again, I've talked about this in the past.

00:16:20.580 We've got to have a bit of an honest look at what assault rifles are.

00:16:25.340 And what an assault rifle actually is, is already banned in Canada.

00:16:30.400 You can't have a fully automatic firearm in Canada unless you're one of a tiny, tiny, tiny number of people 1.00

00:16:36.500 that has a prohibited license and had it grandfathered in.

00:16:39.620 And we're talking about a minuscule number of these guns that would exist in Canada.

00:16:44.300 And no one else can.

00:16:45.560 They're prohibited.

00:16:46.480 They are absolutely prohibited.

00:16:47.960 So when people talk about assault rifles, what they're actually talking about typically are AR-15s,

00:16:54.040 variants of the civilian versions of military rifles that by their design are made to not be fully automatic,

00:17:03.120 to be semi-automatic, like a lot of non-restricted hunting rifles are.

00:17:07.240 And these things, again, because of a lack of understanding,

00:17:10.700 are very likely to be included in any sort of ban.

00:17:14.620 And the liberals have already talked about this, of wanting to ban what Bill Blair said are guns used to hunt people.

00:17:21.660 But the reason I go back to that quote, and I think I might have been alive when that happened some months ago,

00:17:27.320 things that are used to hunt people, is because it's very similar to the rhetoric we have from Wendy Soukye.

00:17:32.700 So just a couple of months ago, Bill Blair is on a question period with Evan Solomon.

00:17:38.780 And he says the government wants to restrict guns that are used to hunt people.

00:17:43.140 And then you fast forward to the Toronto Star on Tuesday of this week, or Tuesday night, Wednesday morning.

00:17:49.000 And Wendy Soukye of the Coalition for Gun Control is saying that gun owners,

00:17:53.900 legal gun owners, are more effective in killing people.

00:17:56.820 Because they spend time at target practice or hunting. 0.90

00:18:01.540 You cannot be a legal gun owner and be effective at killing people.

00:18:05.780 Because once you start to use your gun to kill people, shockingly, you're no longer a legal gun owner. 0.72

00:18:11.860 You aren't. You are no longer following the law.

00:18:13.960 You're no longer abiding by the law.

00:18:15.680 You're no longer behaving lawfully.

00:18:17.460 And these are not the people that are owning Canada's guns legally.

00:18:24.020 Now, what was interesting here, and we see this in the rhetoric coming from the Liberals now,

00:18:30.340 is that they've started to walk back because of, I think, a lot of the efforts from,

00:18:35.120 I don't want to sound too arrogant, but people like me and Brian Lilly, people like gun lobbyists,

00:18:39.320 people that have been unrelenting and wanting to talk about these issues over the last few months.

00:18:43.680 But you have them starting to realize that, okay, we can no longer blame crime guns on domestic,

00:18:52.240 legally owned firearms that then became crime guns.

00:18:56.300 We know that there is an issue in guns crossing the border.

00:19:00.480 There was a global news piece this week where Christian Luprecht from the Royal Military College was quoted on this.

00:19:06.880 And he said, look, we share a border with one of the largest gun-producing nations in the world.

00:19:13.260 It also happens to be the largest unprotected border in the world.

00:19:17.200 So you can't expect that we can manage our supply without having to deal with guns being imported illegally from the U.S.

00:19:25.600 But the thing is, you know, there's another point to this that I think is valuable.

00:19:30.360 And that is that I don't want the neighboring America thing to become too much of a focal point.

00:19:36.820 And the reason I say that is because Phelan McAleer and Anne McElhenney,

00:19:40.760 two very smart people that I think are just absolutely fantastic voices,

00:19:47.380 and they just launched a podcast out of the U.S.

00:19:50.040 They're Irish.

00:19:51.140 Well, actually, she's Irish. 0.96

00:19:52.360 He's Northern Irish.

00:19:53.420 They're a married couple who now lives in California.

00:19:55.580 And they're great conservative filmmakers, documentarians, and now podcast hosts.

00:20:01.080 And this week, it was yesterday, Phelan McAleer said on the podcast that he's from Northern Ireland,

00:20:06.620 which is an island off of an island off of an island, basically.

00:20:09.880 You know, it is entirely isolated in the sense of the easiest to secure.

00:20:15.060 And even Northern Ireland, which had among the strictest gun control in the world,

00:20:20.400 was a place where thousands of people, women and children even, were gunned down with illegal guns.

00:20:27.020 So even a literal island was not able to protect itself from illegal firearms.

00:20:33.000 And this is the case with Australia, whereas you have in Australia a literal island nation

00:20:40.240 that despite its gun grab has still seen firearms crime.

00:20:45.060 They've still seen firearms crime and not in insignificant numbers,

00:20:48.740 despite having a nationwide gun confiscation several years ago,

00:20:52.440 under, believe it or not, a conservative in John Howard.

00:20:55.240 I want to read a comment here from Lars, who writes,

00:20:59.860 When 60% of gun crimes in Canada involve handguns, I say get rid of them specifically now,

00:21:08.040 increase penalties for gun smuggling, and establish firm regulations on any type of weapon

00:21:13.080 that might be construed as an assault rifle.

00:21:16.240 So, first off, I appreciate you listening and watching, Lars, and I appreciate you commenting.

00:21:21.460 When you say get rid of them specifically now, what are you even talking about?

00:21:25.720 Why should I have to get rid of my handguns when my handguns and those owned by people like me,

00:21:32.060 who have gone through the background checks, they're registered, they're stored in a certain way,

00:21:36.080 when our guns are not the ones being used in gun crimes,

00:21:39.200 why should we have to get rid of them?

00:21:41.200 I agree with you on gun smuggling.

00:21:43.080 I think if anyone is illegally importing firearms into Canada, throw the book at them,

00:21:47.520 lock them up, deport them if that's what need be. 0.92

00:21:50.260 As far as regulations on guns that could be construed as an assault rifle,

00:21:54.520 we already have these.

00:21:55.560 We already have classifications.

00:21:57.740 The problem is that the media definition of an assault rifle

00:22:00.900 is different than the actual definition of an assault rifle.

00:22:05.200 The media definition, even Bill Blair's definition, now that he's a politician,

00:22:09.780 the Liberal Party's definition is different than the actual definition.

00:22:14.140 If we focus on the actual definition, boom, assault rifles are already banned.

00:22:18.440 The guns that are used in mass shootings are not going to matter

00:22:23.660 because if you ban one model, anyone who is prone to violence will use a different model.

00:22:29.920 And I did a video which was actually a very important video, and I'm glad I did it.

00:22:34.220 It was in defense of the AR-15, and I just bought one recently.

00:22:37.620 I haven't fired it yet, but I have it.

00:22:39.480 I own it.

00:22:40.380 And the AR-15 is one of the most popular guns because of it's fun to shoot,

00:22:46.780 it's easy to shoot, it's customizable, and you can do a lot with it.

00:22:51.300 The reason it's used in more mass shootings than anything else

00:22:54.220 is not because it's a more violent or deadly or lethal gun.

00:22:57.140 It's because it's a more popular gun.

00:22:58.820 And the comparison that I gave when I did that video is that

00:23:02.200 if, let's say, the Honda Civic is the most popular car on the road right now,

00:23:06.220 statistically, the Honda Civic is going to end up in far more car accidents

00:23:09.540 than the Maserati or the Porsche Cayenne or the Mazda 3.

00:23:13.660 So that doesn't mean Honda Civics are more fatal.

00:23:16.740 It means that Honda Civics you see in larger numbers,

00:23:19.440 ergo, it's going to be more represented in negative things that happen on the road.

00:23:24.220 And that's true of the AR-15s.

00:23:27.440 So we don't need to re-regulate or further regulate assault rifles.

00:23:32.160 And more importantly, just because 60% of gun crimes involve handguns,

00:23:35.960 we don't need to get rid of the legal handguns, the lawfully owned handguns,

00:23:41.340 which just simply are not ending up used as parts of crime.

00:23:46.860 And there's no way about it.

00:23:48.580 So this is not a necessary concession.

00:23:50.840 More importantly, it's a dangerous concession because it allows the gun grabbers 0.71

00:23:55.340 to incrementally move further and further towards nationwide disarmament,

00:24:01.280 which benefits absolutely no one except the government,

00:24:05.140 except the elites that don't want anyone to own firearms.

00:24:09.680 And I must say again, because people always bring up the question of,

00:24:13.420 well, who needs it?

00:24:14.560 We are not a nation of needs.

00:24:16.180 We are not a society of needs.

00:24:17.760 Most people don't need a four-bedroom house.

00:24:19.500 Most people don't need two cars in their household.

00:24:22.040 Most people don't need to buy a brand name tomato sauce instead of no-name tomato sauce.

00:24:27.420 Most people don't need a Mac instead of a computer.

00:24:29.640 Most people don't need a cell phone.

00:24:30.940 I mean, the fact is we do not define what we are allowed to own in a free country

00:24:36.680 by what we need.

00:24:38.820 We define it by what we want and what does not interfere with the rights of others.

00:24:43.500 And me owning a gun when I've gone through all of these different steps and stages

00:24:48.200 threatens no one's rights, no one's right to life, no one's right to safety.

00:24:53.320 But disarming me or any other gun owner would threaten our rights.

00:24:57.920 It's that simple.

00:24:58.960 It is that simple.

00:25:00.720 And when people try to use El Paso and Dayton and other horrific shootings for which I genuinely

00:25:08.400 offer my thoughts and prayers, even though this has become a line that people mock, when

00:25:13.520 people try to use these incidents and import that baggage into Canada to change our gun laws,

00:25:21.880 this is where I go back to people needing to understand how our gun laws work in Canada.

00:25:27.300 We already quite effectively managed to keep guns out of the hands of mass shooters.

00:25:33.100 We have a much better system for mental health care.

00:25:35.740 We have a much better system for background checks, reference checks.

00:25:39.060 I do think that there are some areas where what we have is too restrictive, but our gun

00:25:43.600 regime in Canada is apples to oranges when stacked up against the gun regime in the U.S.,

00:25:50.260 which is why you see things happening in greater numbers there that don't happen in Canada,

00:25:54.440 despite how many millions of firearms there are in circulation.

00:25:58.480 I know at one time I heard this.

00:26:00.520 I don't know if it's still true, but at one point we had more long guns per capita than

00:26:05.120 anywhere else in the world, even more than the U.S., and that was referring to mainly

00:26:09.040 hunting rifles and stuff.

00:26:10.560 And I mean, the U.S. certainly takes the cake as far as civilian ownership of handguns

00:26:14.780 is concerned.

00:26:15.980 And like I said, I don't know if that number is still valid, but I do know that it's very

00:26:20.120 high, the amount of guns that exist in Canada that are in, I don't know if circulation is

00:26:25.840 the right word, but that exist in civilian homes, trucks, hunting cabins, whatever.

00:26:31.140 And the fact that we have this without having a country that seems like it is unsafe or at

00:26:37.160 risk of excessive gun violence everywhere says that what we do is working.

00:26:42.100 And because of what we're doing is so effective, why do we need to disarm anyone?

00:26:50.040 When you look at Toronto having rapidly increasing rates of shootings, this is not something that

00:26:56.500 has ever changed when any gun control measures have been changed.

00:26:59.580 When Stephen Harper, put it this way, when Stephen Harper loosened the gun control regulations,

00:27:04.020 the Toronto gun crime rate didn't change.

00:27:06.080 When the Liberals strengthened it, Toronto gun crime has actually gone up this year.

00:27:10.000 I'm not saying it's related, but it certainly hasn't dented it.

00:27:12.880 So the things that governments are doing on this are having no frontline impact on the

00:27:19.980 realities that are facing gang-related crimes in Toronto and other cities.

00:27:25.280 And that's because these things are existing on a parallel track, irrespective of the law.

00:27:31.000 And you cannot legislate away these problems.

00:27:33.920 You just can't.

00:27:34.960 And you shouldn't even try because you basically prey on people being conciliatory.

00:27:39.520 And feeling a level of collective responsibility when a shooting happens.

00:27:44.760 And this is not solving any problems.

00:27:48.780 It is not solving any problems.

00:27:51.780 And again, I mean, these mass shootings are used to make it very difficult for someone to

00:27:58.020 stand up and defend guns because it looks like you're being callous.

00:28:00.820 It looks like you're being insensitive.

00:28:02.720 Whereas I say no, because I know that legal gun ownership has nothing to do with these

00:28:08.440 horrific killings, certainly not in Canada.

00:28:10.480 So while I will mourn and pray and be sad about these things, I'm not going to shoulder any

00:28:16.020 guilt for it.

00:28:16.800 And I don't think any other Canadian should have to.

00:28:19.360 So I fundamentally reject that premise that's tried to, that is attempted to be rammed down

00:28:27.040 our throats by the left in Canada.

00:28:28.840 The left does not want us to have guns.

00:28:30.900 And they're going to use any excuse to justify putting a ban or a restriction in place.

00:28:35.920 And I would pay very close attention to how that will be manifesting itself during the

00:28:41.640 election campaign.

00:28:42.420 Because the liberals have decided they'll kick the can then, but if they win another

00:28:46.120 term, we know we're going to be stuck with it because it may not be possible to stop

00:28:50.760 them, especially if they get a majority.

00:28:53.100 Now we'll have lots of opportunities between now and the election to predict the numbers.

00:28:57.220 I don't want to get into that now, but I do want to, from a firearms ownership perspective,

00:29:01.040 talk about what the stakes of these things really are.

00:29:03.880 So I'm glad to spend a bit of time doing that.

00:29:06.620 I do want to make somewhat of a personal appeal though, if I can here, because, you know,

00:29:11.660 I just laid out in this broadcast a few examples of where the media is not on side with firearms

00:29:18.720 ownership, the liberal parties are not, the NDP is not, the left culturally is not, there's

00:29:25.620 an activist community that the media flocks to that is trying to take away gun ownership

00:29:30.500 rights.

00:29:31.260 And it does sometimes feel very lonely in this fight.

00:29:34.900 There is a gun lobby, yes, but I'm not a gun lobby.

00:29:37.360 I'm a journalist.

00:29:38.020 I'm a commentator.

00:29:39.160 And we cannot do this.

00:29:40.700 We cannot advocate for you without your support because we don't get the billions of dollars

00:29:45.820 or hundreds of millions of dollars that CBC gets, that mainstream media outlets in Canada

00:29:50.700 get.

00:29:51.100 Every dollar we get comes from you, comes from people that support the work that we're

00:29:54.600 doing.

00:29:55.160 It is tax deductible.

00:29:56.400 So please, please do give us either a one-time contribution or join my heritage club, which

00:30:01.580 comes with some benefits.

00:30:02.880 There's a little description box in the corner there on Facebook, or if you're watching on

00:30:06.760 YouTube, it's below, it's somewhere.

00:30:09.700 Do click the link there to my heritage club and join.

00:30:12.700 We can't do this alone.

00:30:14.220 And I know that a lot of people talk about these issues, but we really need people that

00:30:17.480 are prepared to go to the next level.

00:30:19.420 So I'm asking you, conservative to conservative in Canada, but freedom-loving person to freedom-loving

00:30:24.560 person.

00:30:25.440 And I use conservative with a small C there.

00:30:28.180 You know, please do support us if you can.

00:30:30.200 My name is Andrew Lawton for True North.

00:30:31.920 Thanks very much.

00:30:32.920 God bless, and good day, Canada.

Juno News - August 08, 2019

LAWTON： The Left wants your guns

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript