A tale of two different gun stories, and defense lawyer Ian Runkle joins the show to break it down. The Trudeau-Carney government's so-called assault-style firearm buyback is now projected to cost $342 million, and I don't like calling it a buyback because the government never owned these firearms in the first place. They were yours, and you legally acquired them. Meanwhile, actual violent criminals are still armed, still ignored, still caught and released. Which brings us to Ontario this week where a Lamborghini owner fired shots at a would-be carjacker.
00:03:45.340So what we just saw there was a clip of Ontario Premier Doug Ford remarking on the case of the Lamborghini owner defending his property against auto theft by using a firearm.
00:03:58.800But since Doug Ford made those remarks, more details have come out about the situation as that tends to happen.
00:04:09.160It's probably why people should reserve comment until all the facts are out.
00:04:16.260He's a criminal lawyer with a special interest in firearms law.
00:04:20.220And I saw his incredible video on his YouTube page just breaking down what we now know since Doug Ford indicated that he thinks Canadians should be able to defend their home and property using firearms.
00:04:35.780A statement I actually don't disagree with whatsoever.
00:04:39.100But Ian, thanks for coming on the show.
00:05:28.380And we have to assume, you know, everyone's innocent until, you know, until and unless proven guilty.
00:05:35.140But if you assume that the police had some basis to lay the charge, they've charged him with what they've described as discharging a firearm.
00:05:43.080Now, discharging a firearm is a problem because there's multiple discharging a firearm offenses.
00:05:49.040It could be discharging a firearm at a person if he was shooting at them.
00:05:53.300And that would put him, you know, pretty clearly outside the law because the law says you're allowed to use reasonable force.
00:06:00.640And the courts have been pretty unanimous in saying that it's not reasonable to kill somebody who's taking your property.
00:06:06.700Now, that's a, you know, people disagree with that.
00:06:10.740And that's sort of the established law.
00:06:12.620If you want to change that, that would require, you know, legislative amendments that we're probably not going to see from this government.
00:06:19.840And we'd have to have a serious discussion as to whether they were a good idea or not.
00:06:24.700But they could also be discharging a firearm recklessly, which could, for instance, be firing warning shots into the air.
00:06:31.960That would be ultimately something the court would have to decide if it was reckless.
00:06:35.720And one of the factors they'd consider is that this apparently happens in a city.
00:06:39.520And when you put lead into the air, it comes down.
00:06:43.680Now, we don't know anything about the type of gun that was used, except that it was a long gun.
00:06:50.320And there's all sorts of considerations there, too.
00:06:53.580Because if he fires a shotgun with shot into the air, it's not really going to cause any damage when it comes down, especially if it's something like birdshot.
00:07:04.560But so that would probably defeat the reckless discharge if it was into the air and if it was, you know, all of these things.
00:07:12.680But they've charged him as well with unauthorized possession of prohibited or restricted weapon.
00:07:18.020Now, a lot of people have said that this means that he's unlicensed, and that is a possibility.
00:08:32.920...which are largely things like, you know, taking them to a place to have them destroyed, etc., etc., etc.,
00:08:39.200then he'd be in violation of the law that says that he can't have this.
00:08:44.420And the amnesty provides them with a protection on this.
00:08:47.540I've already seen a number of people who've been charged for possessing a firearm.
00:08:53.140And this is even in situations where they were covered by the amnesty, because often what'll happen is, you know, you've got a gun, the police somehow catch wind of it.
00:09:27.380If the guy grabs his AR, if he grabs any of these banned guns, then that charge would also almost certainly be laid.
00:09:34.020And he might, in fact, be able to be convicted of it.
00:09:37.620They charged careless storage, I noticed, but they didn't report that they charged storage contrary to regulations.
00:09:43.460And so if we assume that that wasn't just an oversight, that suggests somebody who was storing it within the regulations.
00:09:49.860And we've seen this in the past, where somebody who's got it stored in a way that meets regulations, but ends up using a firearm for some sort of defensive purposes, either defensive self or property.
00:10:02.780And they say, because you could get to the gun, it must not have been stored legitimately.
00:10:08.820And the thing is, is that in the... it's actually not all that hard to get a gun that is properly stored and get it ready to operate and ready to use.
00:10:21.380And especially, I don't know how long these guys were at the Lambo, right?
00:10:24.780If they're sitting there and if they're spending five minutes trying to get into it, well, five minutes is a lot of time to, you know, to get into a gun safe and so forth.
00:10:34.020So he may well have been able to, in fact, you're probably more likely to be able to get into your safe to protect somebody stealing your car than you are for somebody who's like breaking in and attacking you.
00:10:47.140But my concern is, is that if this guy is a licensed firearm owner, that really, they probably should have exercised some discretion here and said, hey, now it depends.
00:10:59.040Like, if this guy is endangering people, then maybe the charges are legitimate and righteous and, you know, a good idea for society.
00:11:07.360You know, if he comes out with an AR and his warning shots are fired into another building, then that's not cool because somebody lives there and they don't want to get shot.
00:11:16.780And similarly, the law does not allow for lethal force in defense of property, but warning shots in defense of property have been supported by case law.
00:11:28.880Now, I don't recommend warning shots as a general principle, but if you're ever in a situation of firing a warning shot, make sure it's as safe as possible.
00:11:38.480Like, not into the air, into something that is a backstop.
00:11:43.440Because once, you know, both morally and legally, once you pull a trigger, you own that bullet and the consequences of it up until it stops somewhere.
00:11:53.760So, this applies even if you're hunting.
00:11:57.040If you are out there and you see, like, you know, a majestic buck and you've got your tag, you better be real sure of not just the buck, but also what's behind the buck.
00:12:08.140Because if there's unknown land out there, you really don't want to put a hole in some other hunter.
00:12:14.840You'd have both moral and legal responsibility for that.
00:12:18.440So, but we don't know any of this, right?
00:12:22.960The police in Canada tend to be very, very stingy with information and our courts are very stingy with information.
00:12:31.160If you compare with the U.S., in the United States, when they charge somebody, you get a whole charging document that lists a narrative of what the police think happened.
00:12:39.380In Canada, you can pull those charging documents and they're fundamentally useless for reporters or, you know, YouTubers or the like, because they'll just say, on or about the 16th day of whatever, you know, in the town of whatever did discharge a firearm.
00:13:00.760So, I really, and this also sort of plays into this, because the public looks at this and we can see these thieves and we want to know what's happening in terms of this guy as well.
00:13:16.320We don't, you know, I've got requests in myself as, you know, media going, you know, which count, like which charge of discharging a firearm is it?
00:13:37.900Yeah, there's very little context in all of this.
00:13:41.300But, and I think the reason people weighed in immediately on this, it seems to be this, uh, rising severity and boldness of criminals in this country.
00:13:53.860And the, the, the, I think police so often are overwhelmed, but then we sort of have a catch and release bail system in this country where bad guys are out committing crimes while they're on bail for other crimes.
00:14:10.480Um, and it feels as though people are left to take matters into their own hands.
00:14:17.180He talked, we talked before we started recording and I think he touched on it a little bit of the case of Ian Thompson.
00:14:24.560Um, but he's not alone in, you know, people who are confronted with home invaders who then have to act in defense of their own lives, be it by firing warning shots.
00:14:37.360Or in the case of, uh, at least two recent cases here in Alberta, uh, Eddie Maurice, and then an unnamed homeowner in Red Deer, Eddie Maurice fired a shot.
00:15:11.700He killed his home invader, but Ian Thompson wasn't quite so lucky, was he?
00:15:16.100He, uh, he did get charged and initially they charged him for, so the, for the people who don't sort of know his background, uh, some criminals, uh, attacked his home and they were firebombing it.
00:15:29.340He was a firearm instructor and managed to get into his safe, loaded a gun and exited the house and fired warning shots into the air.
00:15:38.380They initially charged him with like discharging the firearm and, you know, various other things.
00:15:42.920And then eventually they just boiled it down to charging him with careless storage because their theory was, is that if he could get to the gun before he burned to death, that that meant that he couldn't possibly have had the gun legitimately stored.
00:16:06.360Now, that was also a case that was marked in part by some very startling, um, misapprehensions of like fact by the, because there's a moment that happened in court where they thought he was, uh, picking up his brass to show that he had, um, you know, a consciousness of guilt because otherwise, why would you pick up the brass from outside?
00:16:28.860When it was actually revealed that what he was actually revealed that what he was actually revealed that what he was using was a revolver, which doesn't eject the brass, which, um, the people charging in these circumstances don't necessarily have a very thorough knowledge of firearms and that can lead them to make some serious, um, you know, assumptions.
00:16:48.120Ultimately, um, ultimately he was cleared.
00:16:51.420We have Peter Cahill, who was, um, convicted of, uh, manslaughter with respect to, um, confronting a, somebody who was stealing his vehicle.
00:17:01.560And this also indicates the dangers, right?
00:17:04.340You don't, um, you don't want to be in a situation where you're trying to defend a, cause the law allows for reasonable force, but they will never find reasonable force in defense of property.
00:17:20.620So that's the other thing, but the law in Cahill essentially changed such that the jury was able to say, um, that the defensive strategy he should have taken was just never to go out there in the first place.
00:17:34.980Like just let them steal your truck, which, um, is not a satisfying option for a lot of people.
00:17:41.880And we have a case just reported, I'm just seeing it was reported, um, June 18th.
00:17:48.380So yesterday is when this story, uh, dropped.
00:17:52.340Um, there was a guy in Barhead who went to check on his neighbor's property and he was armed with a phone.
00:18:02.860But, um, the people who were there breaking into the property, they took a shot at him with a rifle, which thankfully seems to have missed.
00:18:10.120They ran him over with their pickup truck.
00:18:25.300And I can tell you, like, if I'm out in one of these rural properties, you know, that when you call the police, the police are probably half an hour away.
00:19:07.280If somebody is going to start taking shots at me with a rifle, I don't want to, you know, I want my options to be more than just die.
00:19:14.480And, I mean, this guy's, you know, in the hospital, he's, you know, all of these things, and he wasn't charged because he didn't have a firearm.
00:19:23.120But I go, is this, um, is this the society we want?
00:19:29.080Numbers wise, things don't seem to be picking up that much.
00:19:32.960But the problem is that the numbers as reported seem to be concealing sort of an increase in severity in things.
00:19:40.320Because we see more people are willing to kick down doors or try to kick down doors while the homeowners are home, for example.
00:19:49.200And that's a, that's an inherently dangerous situation because at that point, you know, you're in a confrontation, you're in a dangerous situation, and those can go quite badly.
00:20:00.720Even simply, um, there was a case that was reported, and this was a US case, but a lot of the commentary online was people saying,
00:20:10.020this guy managed to get a gun and shot them rather than letting himself be tied up.
00:20:15.500And there were people saying, well, why not let yourself be tied up?
00:20:18.560You know, they'll tie you up, they'll take your stuff, and they'll go.
00:20:22.200Well, if they tie you up, then they can kill you fairly easily.
00:41:15.060You know, you know, most in like in most countries believe in Christianity, Catholic, Catholicism and like for CCP believe in none except for materialism.
00:41:25.920And that is the true evil because if you're if you don't believe in anything, you can't do anything.
00:41:33.060So this is this is a root cause of this issue.
00:41:36.660And I guess for for us, like we need to bring more like this in China, people don't know that.
00:41:44.040And because there's, you know, scrutiny over the Internet, like everything is under control.
00:41:50.160Like it's a it's a totalitarian state.
00:41:53.340So what we are doing here is like we need to bring up this attention to the Western world, to the media, like so that we can get to know like more people get to know like what we are like.
00:42:06.040We are suffering like many of us like we are like we can't really like in in Western world what we can do here.
00:42:13.760But in China, if you're doing this, you're like you will be imprisoned at once.
00:42:18.440Well, they'll be harvesting your organs if you protest it.
00:42:20.840I imagine the Chinese government, they just care for the practitioner for their organ.
00:42:28.040And even in the one week, you can get to the Sydney and whatever, you know, organs like that.
00:42:39.680As a former the officer, Ottawa officers called David Kirgo, you know, he said, you know, the organ harvesting in China, this is the this star.
00:42:58.640You never see that kind of crime, you know, so this is terrible.
00:43:03.280So many people died, you know, just because for a few people, they can pay a lot of money.
00:43:10.960You know, so this is something very, you know, terrible.
00:44:08.800So what would you tell Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney, what would you say that he needs to do to better recognize your fight?
00:44:16.880Yeah, I hope the new leader to, how do I say, hope them to stop the, to hyper us, you know, just stop the persecution on Falun Gong, not only on Falun Gong, for some, you know, Uyghurs, Christians.
00:44:39.880Yeah, this is a revival of, we hope there will be a revival of tradition and culture, truthful, like, because the Epoch Times, what we are doing is, is focused on truth and tradition.
00:44:53.920Are you guys with the Epoch Times as well?
00:46:19.260The People's Commute is pretty much run by the government, the community.
00:46:24.100And no private land or properties, like, you could, everything belongs to the government.
00:46:32.280And I've seen videos from China as well, where they have people within every community, and they kind of watch everyone else to make sure their, you know, social credit score is good.
00:46:41.120They're not doing things they shouldn't be doing.
00:46:43.320Like, in China, there's, you know, there's several, like, the power, the power hierarchy is like province.
00:46:54.100The city and county, and under that, there's, like, small groups in, like, villages, villages, and usually there's, like, 50, 60 people, and there will be a party leader, like, watching people's, like, actions, speech, like, even, you know, in companies, if you want to set up a company in China, like, if the company, like, I can't come up with the proper figure,
00:47:23.200but over 300 people, there will be a section from the, I think it's called the parties, like, they will send someone there to manage the company.
00:47:35.880Like, it's, like, it's, like, it's, like, it's pretty much a parallel system.
00:47:51.880So, if you are, if you have different idea, uh, from, uh, you know, uh, private media or what, you can, you know, if you do so, you will be, you know, the peer sometime.
00:48:04.880Yeah, there's no journalistic autonomy or press freedom in China.
00:48:24.880Again, I'm not sure he's alive, though.
00:48:26.880It's, and the problem is, like, in, in Western world, the media, the function of the media is to control, like, to watch the government, to make sure it's the voice of the people, to make sure that they're doing their job.
00:48:39.880But in China, no, there, it's the propaganda machine of the government.
00:48:42.880Well, I was gonna say, that's what it's supposed to be.
00:48:44.880But like I mentioned earlier, you know, we had to fight even to get our accreditation.
00:48:47.880Uh, and still, we need the Prime Minister's permission, uh, just to get into the press conferences to ask questions.
00:48:52.880Um, but I have a last question for you guys.
00:48:54.880Um, and that is, in Canada, we've seen recently that there are the Chinese police stations in Canada.
00:48:59.880Uh, and they're targeting, uh, Chinese, uh, Canadian citizens.
00:49:31.880When we had the, uh, you know, uh, forum for organ harvesting, a lot of people, you know, more than 200 people attended that meeting and see the TV.