Juno News - Trudeau continues ASSAULT on legal gun owners

00:00:00.000 Well, anytime there is a mass shooting in the United States or whenever the Ecole Polytechnique

00:00:08.140 shooting anniversary comes around, the Liberal government seizes the moment to ban more firearms

00:00:14.500 from legal gun owners in Canada. Despite the fact that 85% of guns involved in crime in this country

00:00:22.420 come to the United States, and despite the fact that a minuscule amount of crime is committed by

00:00:28.500 legal and licensed gun owners, the federal government just continues to ban firearms.

00:00:35.280 Well, that was exactly what happened earlier on in December when the federal government added

00:00:39.480 324 makes and models to the banned list of firearms, now making that list over 2,000.

00:00:47.980 These firearms that are now banned in Canada range from your 22 long rifles to your World

00:00:53.940 War II era anti-aircraft machine guns, which by the way, were already banned in this country,

00:00:59.820 but they went ahead and did it anyway.

00:01:01.500 Joining us now on the Faulkner show is Canadian criminal defense and firearms lawyer, Ian Runkle.

00:01:07.860 He's also the founder of the YouTube channel, Runkle of the Bailey. Let's just get right into

00:01:12.940 it. Ian, why does the Liberal government keep banning firearms?

00:01:18.260 I mean, my cynical answer is because their poll numbers are not great, but there's other reasons

00:01:24.960 they might have as well. They really don't like the sort of dynamic shooting sports, and this really

00:01:30.920 seems to be targeted at that. They say there's no sporting use for this, but it's very clear that they

00:01:36.380 actually paid attention to what sports people are engaged in and targeted the firearms that are used

00:01:42.880 in those sports. So when they say no sporting use, I think that is a little dishonest. So that's

00:01:50.860 really where this is aimed. And take us through some of this. The new ban is 324 makes and models of

00:01:58.300 what the government calls assault style firearms, right? But there is really no definition for what

00:02:05.260 assault style means. That's not actually a classification, but take us through the guns

00:02:09.800 that are now banned in Canada. Are these guns that Canadian firearms owners really own or are some of

00:02:16.720 them, some of them like novelty guns? It's all over the place. One thing that they said that they

00:02:22.300 newly banned, which was actually banned for forever, was the M3 aircraft, which is a heavy machine gun

00:02:33.140 designed to be mounted to aircraft. That was already banned because it's full auto and those have been

00:02:37.640 banned since the 70s. But there's also a lot of what we'd call sort of plinking guns, like .22 caliber

00:02:46.080 firearms. And a lot of these are things that are just basically fairly boring conventional firearms,

00:02:54.480 but some of them were sort of built to look like older firearms. So one of them, for instance,

00:03:00.960 is built to look like the old German MP40. It's not an MP40. Not at all. But because it looks like one,

00:03:10.260 they're like, we have to ban this. And that applies even to things that are .22 long rifle,

00:03:16.520 which is a very small, very inexpensive caliber that people typically use to hunt grouse or rabbits or

00:03:24.060 just target shooting. So a ton of these are just really target shooting kinds of guns. And a number of them

00:03:32.560 are things that when they announced the last ban, they said, we're not trying to shut down these sports.

00:03:38.500 People can buy alternative firearms. And so they then looked at what the alternative firearms people bought

00:03:45.220 in order to continue their shooting sports, as the government said they could. And then they turned and banned those as well.

00:03:52.300 So they've also admitted, you know, you mentioned that assault style is kind of meaningless. And

00:03:58.960 I use the example of saying, if you go to a restaurant and they have a beef style burger,

00:04:04.160 you know, it can contain all sorts of things, but it's not going to contain any beef.

00:04:09.180 Whereas they actually are in federal court in the federal court of appeal. They were just there this

00:04:16.120 last week. And they admitted that assault style is not a term that has any meaning. They admitted

00:04:22.720 in court that that was a meaningless term. And it's just one that they made up to describe the guns that

00:04:29.660 they banned. So if the meaning of assault style is the guns we banned, when they say we banned assault

00:04:36.500 style firearms, all that means is we banned the guns we decided to ban.

00:04:43.100 And our gun is gun crime, is any crime being committed with the guns that are now being

00:04:48.960 banned by the government? That's the question that I'm trying to figure out as well. Because

00:04:52.060 from what I can see, it doesn't appear that way.

00:04:54.220 These are not the guns that are typically implicated in crimes. What we usually see in sort of,

00:05:00.560 if you go to sort of the larger urban centers, you see handguns smuggled from the US.

00:05:05.280 And we know that they're smuggled from the US because these are almost always models that were

00:05:10.340 prohibited beforehand because they're short barrel lengths. People preferred to bring those in

00:05:16.600 because of course, they're criminals walking around a gun tucked in their pocket as they're

00:05:21.200 dealing drugs. They want something extremely concealable. If you go rural, what you're most

00:05:27.060 often seeing is actually just sawed off rifles or sawed off shotguns. And none of those

00:05:35.280 are the kinds of guns you see here. They're typically just sort of somebody's hunting

00:05:41.340 rifle or something like that that's been sawed down. But the use of what they're calling assault

00:05:48.560 style firearms in crime in Canada is actually really, really rare. These are things that were

00:05:54.000 used by hunters and sport shooters and not very popular in the criminal population.

00:06:00.980 That gets even more so when you look at the previous order in council, which also banned

00:06:06.480 the over 10,000 jewels category. Some of those guns have now showed up on the buyback with prices

00:06:14.360 of $50,000, $100,000. And that's actually a dramatic underpricing for those guns. But nobody is robbing

00:06:24.060 up there, you know, robbing their local convenience store with a $100,000 bespoke rifle. It's just not

00:06:31.920 happening. Because if you had the $100,000 rifle, you'd just sell that. It's and nobody is using,

00:06:40.240 you know, they say these, you know, large caliber rifles, these are used by sport shooters, but

00:06:45.400 nobody's using them to commit robberies because sometimes they're as tall as I am. And you're not

00:06:51.440 going to, you know, stand at the street corner peddling, you know, crack when you're also sitting

00:06:57.040 there with a gun that is as big as you are. It's just not going to work. So these are really

00:07:01.840 silly bans.

00:07:05.460 So I assume it follows then that if the guns that are being banned are not being used typically in gun

00:07:12.460 crime, then I'm assuming that legal firearms, licensed firearms owners are also not really that

00:07:19.720 involved in gun crime as well in this country. Is that right as well? I mean, the, when you see

00:07:24.480 the crimes that like gun owners get, get arrested for, it'll be something like careless storage,

00:07:30.700 because somebody, for instance, I had a case where somebody went to an airport and they didn't realize

00:07:36.700 they needed two locks instead of one lock. And so they, and that goes into the gun crime statistics

00:07:42.980 as you know, this is a licensed gun owner, but nobody really is worried about this guy because

00:07:49.520 I mean, a, the gun was locked. It was just whether it had a second lock on it and B, the guy's not

00:07:55.560 there to do violence. He's not there to stick up a plane. He's there to go to another country for a

00:08:01.560 shooting competition and he's no threat to anybody. Violence. Canada has a different sort of system

00:08:09.660 than the U S where we have firearms licenses. We can actually track crime by licensed fire, like people

00:08:16.620 with the firearms license versus not. And what we find is that people with the firearms license commit

00:08:21.940 violent crime at a rate that is vastly below the general population, not above.

00:08:27.780 Okay. So, I mean, that's hardly surprising. I think the majority of Canadians, even if they support

00:08:36.540 this, know that in the back of their heads, because they just look at this, they look at the

00:08:40.720 statistics, they look at the news, but let's just play this out. So how is this ban going to work?

00:08:46.420 Right. Um, there's obviously a gun buyback program, which I want to have you kind of discuss that I

00:08:51.660 gather there's been no guns collected since, but how does this work? So if you happen to own one of

00:08:57.520 these newly banned firearm models, are the police going to knock on your door and expect you to

00:09:03.560 hand over the gun? What, what is this going to, what is going to look like? They haven't said

00:09:06.780 exactly phase one, because they're right now they're trying to get past that, uh, the talking

00:09:12.020 point of not a single gun collected phase one is going to be aimed at retailers and retailers

00:09:17.100 are a lot easier to target. There's a limited number of them. They have to require, like maintain

00:09:22.320 an inventory. And so when they start talking about, we've collected X many guns, it's going

00:09:27.880 to be from businesses. Uh, but after that, they're going to move on to phase two. And we

00:09:34.840 don't know a whole lot about phase two, although they have hinted that they might actually be

00:09:39.160 going to people's houses in order to demand these firearms. This will be easier for the

00:09:44.280 ones that were formerly restricted, like the AR models, because then they'll have people's,

00:09:50.080 you know, addresses of where they were and so forth. But a lot of these firearms, tons

00:09:55.560 of these firearms, especially on the further list were non-restricted. And so there aren't

00:10:01.780 really records of who has them. And this is going to be a big issue, especially because

00:10:07.220 a lot of the people who might be covered by this may not even be aware of it. People, a

00:10:13.140 lot of people just don't follow the news. And a lot of people I've, I've seen gun owners

00:10:18.900 say, well, this doesn't affect me. And then when I asked them, well, what guns do you own?

00:10:23.680 It turns out they are actually affected because there's a fair number of people who think, you

00:10:28.920 know, there's a ban on assault style firearms. They look at their collection. They say, well,

00:10:33.380 I'm just a hunter who occasionally goes and goes plinking in the woods. I shoot some cans

00:10:38.760 and there's no way they'd be coming after my guns because I'm not some, you know, I don't use

00:10:46.000 anything sort of scary. And when they don't realize that there's going to be decades of them

00:10:52.580 just finding some guy going out hunting in the woods and a fish and wildlife officer goes,

00:10:58.880 uh, I got a question about that gun. You've got this, this may be especially felt in, for instance,

00:11:07.380 indigenous communities, which, um, so I sort of cynically, this is going to put a lot of people

00:11:14.460 in jail who really have not committed any sort of moral wrong. It, this is going to be a disaster.

00:11:22.120 And they're proposing, they propose to use Canada Post. Canada Post wants nothing to do with this

00:11:28.440 because that makes them suddenly a huge target. If a Canada Post truck is driving around and people

00:11:37.640 think, oh, well, that's full of guns, then that might be a, that might be a really tempted,

00:11:44.160 tempting target. They'll have to worry about diversion internally. If some Canada Post employee decides,

00:11:50.220 you know what, maybe I'll take a few of these home. How do they prevent that? They'll also have

00:11:55.780 to deal with, um, people who don't want to, who want to sort of mess with the program. You may have

00:12:02.780 somebody who gets their, you know, special box to take home their, uh, or to send back their rifle

00:12:08.700 and decides to just put a brick in it. Well, as Canada Post, you know, they'll have to figure out

00:12:14.840 where that brick came in. Was it the guy who sent it? Was it somewhere along the lines of the, the

00:12:21.200 whole Canada Post chain? Did somebody cut into that and swap out a gun for a brick? This just creates

00:12:27.360 an incredible oversight problem and they want nothing to do with it. Police forces also don't want

00:12:33.940 anything to do with it because they're concerned for all sorts of reasons. And also, a lot of the

00:12:40.300 people targeted are police. The police are not super thrilled by this because like the handgun

00:12:46.360 transfer ban is a problem for a lot of police officers. They may want to practice at home with

00:12:53.560 a gun that's similar to what they use, um, on duty and they can't do it. Uh, same thing with the ban on

00:13:01.380 the AR-15. If you saw who did some of these dynamic competitions, you'd always find some police officers

00:13:08.080 there. It's, you know, asking the police to target the police is not really going to be a very winning

00:13:15.980 proposition. I don't think, you know, let's get into this indigenous angle because, um, well,

00:13:22.480 indigenous issues are very sensitive in this country, especially with this federal government.

00:13:26.000 They like to use the indigenous people and the, and indigenous causes to score their own political

00:13:30.200 points. But this is obviously going to impact indigenous communities. I gather that there's a

00:13:34.900 specific gun that is now in band. I believe it's the SKS, uh, something along those lines,

00:13:40.400 correct me if I'm wrong about that, but that indigenous hunters have been using for many years

00:13:46.200 now. And they, many of them maybe even rely on these guns for hunting. The S, uh, the SKS didn't

00:13:52.580 make the list this time, but they did float that they might add it in February because they've said,

00:13:57.660 we're going to ban more guns. And it is a very, uh, the SKS for the people who aren't familiar with

00:14:04.540 it, it's a semi-automatic, but it has a fixed magazine, although it can be modified to allow a

00:14:10.080 detachable magazine. But the SKS is, uh, it's old Soviet technology. It was basically designed to be

00:14:17.840 a semi-automatic firearm before the Soviet union realized that the AK 47 would be a better choice.

00:14:24.620 And they went in that direction. So essentially they made a whole bunch of these

00:14:27.980 on the notion that, um, Russian peasants would do better with semi-autos than with full auto

00:14:33.840 and then changed their mind. But, um, these ended up and they were very cheap on the surplus market

00:14:40.580 for a long time. And they're perfectly good for shooting deer. They're perfectly good for shooting

00:14:46.560 all sorts of things. And so they've become very popular on reserves and very popular just

00:14:54.380 in Canada. There's many, many gun owners own an SKS is in addition to other, uh, other things. So

00:15:01.820 if they say, if they do get around to banning the SKS, they're going to basically end up declaring war

00:15:09.300 on the indigenous population because they're going to be going, we need your hunting rifles.

00:15:14.860 Wow. And that's not going to go over well. It's no. So, so I also want to ask you this question,

00:15:24.140 right? There's a video that has been floating around of Justin Trudeau before he became prime

00:15:28.940 minister. He's speaking to reporters on the, on the Hill. I believe you may know the video I'm

00:15:32.740 talking about when Justin Trudeau talks about defending the rights of gun owners.

00:15:37.260 Where did Justin Trudeau suddenly decide to change his perspective on this issue? I mean,

00:15:43.000 it's a, it's a 180 of upper proportions. The thing is, is I would say, where did he decide,

00:15:48.420 but he's done so many 180s. It's kind of his thing. Right. So at this point, if he tells me that

00:15:55.220 he's not going to do something, I'm like, well, um, that might be happening. But I think largely it's

00:16:02.460 just, uh, raw cynicism. They seem to have decided that gun owners are an unpopular group and that by

00:16:10.180 dividing Canadians against Canadians, that he can bolster his political fortunes. The, you know,

00:16:17.960 a lot of people who are sort of, um, you know, urban and may not hunt, may not have any experience

00:16:23.360 with firearms, typically don't have a whole lot of sympathy. Even when you start talking about

00:16:29.200 somebody who, for instance, might be a subsistence hunter or might, you know, these might be family

00:16:35.340 heirlooms. I am, I end up dealing with lots of people who their grandfather dies and they want to

00:16:43.240 pass on some cherished family heirloom and they can't because it's a handgun. And so that becomes, uh,

00:16:52.340 a big issue. And I, I would like to see politicians who try to bring different groups of Canadians

00:17:01.540 together and get them to understand each other's, you know, issues. Rural Canadians need to understand

00:17:08.460 urban Canadians and vice versa. We need to have that. And ideally we should all be sort of working

00:17:16.240 together on the big problems rather than fighting each other, each other over hobbies. This is really

00:17:23.140 what it comes down to. I think everybody agrees that we want to stop crime, but this isn't going

00:17:29.620 to stop any crime. The usual line is if it saves one life, I don't think this is going to save any lives.

00:17:36.880 This is, this is kind of silly season here. It's just, um, so, but we see this pattern of when their

00:17:47.280 political numbers start falling, they announce a ban and it's, uh, well, even, you know, even, even more

00:17:57.680 unfortunate is, uh, it's not just when their poll numbers decline, sometimes that just coincides with

00:18:03.040 it. But I also noticed that they do this on the anniversary, typically of the, uh, a call poly

00:18:08.580 technique shooting. They also will make an announcement within a, within weeks of a mass

00:18:14.100 shooting in the United States to try to use that tragedy to advance their political agenda. I mean,

00:18:19.600 that to me is talk about sinister. Well, it's very clear that the may order in council, they had

00:18:26.260 ready to go because they announced it right after a shooting. And so it's like, this is something we

00:18:34.340 want to do, but we're waiting for the ideal moment to do it. And I think if you get to the point in

00:18:41.920 your life, when you're sitting there hoping for a mass shootings that you can advance your goals,

00:18:46.800 you should probably go, wait a minute. Am I doing something horrible? Like, is this something that I

00:18:53.400 should be hoping for? But, uh, uh, uh, police, uh, or police, uh, basically is continuing to say,

00:19:02.940 listen, if you want to show up at our sort of events, you need to do what we say. And so this

00:19:10.940 time around, they announced this is further round of bands. And then immediately thereafter,

00:19:16.080 notwithstanding that they had been threatening to prevent, uh, you know, Trudeau from appearing at

00:19:22.020 this, he gets his photo op at that, uh, you know, at that event it's we've taken this very small lobby

00:19:29.640 group and we've given them tremendous power. And maybe we should examine that because what they're

00:19:38.060 doing is not, uh, not fact-based, not evidence-based it's based on sort of antipathy towards a certain

00:19:45.880 segment of the Canadian population. Yeah, no, absolutely. Where does this leave the

00:19:51.740 sport shooting, uh, industry and a hobby? Is it, is it basically, is it basically almost gone now?

00:19:57.940 It really depends on what sport you're, you're doing. If you are an Olympic shooter, well,

00:20:03.860 it depends. If you're shooting Olympic handgun, how do you get into that sport now? If you are

00:20:08.920 somebody who wants to one day be an Olympian, you already need to be an Olympian to, to get a new

00:20:15.520 handgun. That's a problem. So we're going to take out, you know, all of the handgun sports if you

00:20:22.060 want. And that includes things like cowboy action shooting. Cowboy action shooting is people who dress

00:20:28.040 up in cowboy outfits and shoot with sort of old timey guns. They're shooting with lever actions

00:20:34.240 and break action shotguns and single action revolvers. And I'm thinking these are not the

00:20:41.540 guns that are showing up on, you know, in crime scenes. Uh, if you're talking about the shooting

00:20:47.600 sports that are most popular now in other countries, uh, like three gun, you basically

00:20:53.900 can't do three gun anymore. The handguns, you can't, you can't acquire all of the long guns that

00:21:00.460 were used in it. They're banning and they're specifically targeting the ones that appear to be

00:21:04.880 popular with three gun. So there are some sports left, but they tend to be very niche sports. They

00:21:13.780 weren't very popular. And this is really intended, I think, to try to try to damage and try to shrink

00:21:23.500 the, um, the culture of gun owners in Canada and try to eliminate shooting sports as much as they can.

00:21:30.880 No, it's a real shame. You know, let's, let's end it on a positive note. And I want to ask you,

00:21:36.520 what are the guns? What are the firearms that licensed gun owners who just say have a non-restricted

00:21:42.640 firearms license? What can they buy now? I mean, surely the list is getting quite small, right?

00:21:47.660 It's getting small. I mean, depends on what kind of shooting you want to do. I don't want to name any,

00:21:53.500 um, I don't really want to name any models as encouragement because I'm worried that they'll add

00:21:58.040 it to the next list. But, uh, I'm, I'm worried that if I like name my hunting rifle, they're going to put

00:22:04.460 that on the list. And so hunting rifles, shotguns, like some hunting rifles are still, are still

00:22:12.000 obviously legal shotguns. Mostly what you can still get are like bolt action rifles. And, you know,

00:22:19.060 people say, why, why don't, you know, why would you need a semi-automatic for hunting?

00:22:23.660 And the, the reasons are, is a semi-automatic use, like it sort of consumes a lot of the recoil.

00:22:30.300 So there's less felt recoil, which makes it a much better target for people like me with a small build

00:22:36.740 or women who same thing, small build. Um, and sometimes you may need a follow-up shot,

00:22:43.800 no matter how good of a hunter you are, eventually you may have a moment where you shoot an animal and

00:22:50.220 it just doesn't, you know, sort of immediately lie down. And then you might need a follow-up shot to

00:22:56.900 avoid having to chase the animal. And if you're able to do that quickly, great. If not, you might

00:23:03.080 be spending the entire day trying to pursue something to make sure that it's, you know,

00:23:07.740 sort of humanely killed, but, uh, they're really cracking down on that. So there's very few semi-automatic,

00:23:14.020 um, semi-automatic center fires left. There's a few semi-automatic, uh, rim fire firearms left,

00:23:20.380 which are much smaller. And again, sort of, you'd use those for grouse or rabbit or the like,

00:23:26.660 but, um, this is going to also put a tremendous damper on gun stores because, and these are mostly,

00:23:35.460 you know, small, like in some cases, literally mom and pop businesses. Uh, I was just up in a small,

00:23:42.760 they can barely sell any weapons. They can barely sell any guns. It's crazy. Yeah. And I was just

00:23:47.320 up in a small town and I go into the local gun store and the guy is there, he's got tables out.

00:23:53.440 It's a community sort of place where everybody sort of goes to have a, um, to socialize.

00:24:01.660 And if he can't stay in business, then that little community network dies out and it's, it's tragic.

00:24:08.640 It is. And, and I think, you know, the reality is because the government sees the gun community as,

00:24:16.320 uh, as you know, not, not important to them that, that they can use the gun community to

00:24:21.680 score political points off of, uh, this may just continue to get worse and the industry may continue

00:24:27.640 to shrink if it does. And if there are new announcements, we hope to have you back, Ian,

00:24:31.620 thank you very much for joining us on the show today. Where can Canadians find your work and interact

00:24:36.640 with you more on social media? Uh, mostly on YouTube at Runkle of the Bailey, if that's the

00:24:41.220 best place to track me down. Perfect. We'll put a link to your channel in the description of this

00:24:46.060 video. Ian Runkle, thank you very much once again for joining us on the show. Thank you for having me.

Juno News - December 24, 2024

Trudeau continues ASSAULT on legal gun owners

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