Western Standard - Carney promises to seize Canadians’ guns

00:00:00.000 China's killing our canola.

00:00:05.340 $45 billion gone.

00:00:08.480 Western farmers bleed.

00:00:10.980 Mark Carney?

00:00:12.720 Silent.

00:00:14.260 Made millions off Beijing's dime.

00:00:17.300 He won't fight.

00:00:18.840 He's Beijing's banker, not our prime minister.

00:00:30.000 I'm Derek Vildebrand, publisher of the Western Standard.

00:00:54.980 Today, Liberal Leader and Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that he was going to reinvigorate Justin Trudeau's gun grab, seizing hundreds of thousands of firearms that were otherwise purchased legally by Canadian firearms owners across Canada.

00:01:13.300 gun owners and non-gun owners alike should be deeply concerned to talk about it i've brought

00:01:20.040 in our uh friend of the western standard uh president of the canadian shooting sports uh no

00:01:25.860 sorry executive director of the canadian shooting sports association tony bernardo uh thank you for

00:01:30.940 joining today tony well thank you derek it's nice to be here well no because we're always talking

00:01:36.480 about bad news we never have good things to talk about it's always bad news i i don't like talking

00:01:40.500 to you for that reason. I understand that. And with a little bit of luck in the grace of God,

00:01:46.700 we'll have a poly of government and then we can talk about all the good things.

00:01:50.680 Well, we'll see. I mean, liberals are leading right now, so we have to take it seriously when

00:01:55.120 they say this stuff. So I guess we'll just start with the background here. Over the course of the

00:02:02.040 Trudeau's three terms, he announced, you know, we won't get into every part. There's just too

00:02:09.260 many gun bans and restrictions to to be able to get into in background here but you know uh banned

00:02:15.500 the sale of handguns uh which triggered the biggest run on handgun sales in canadian history

00:02:21.340 i remember as soon as the announcement came through i went down to like there was this lines

00:02:25.060 up out the door at cabela's people were just buying literally everything they could get their

00:02:28.500 hands on um but he uh you know the liberals really cracked down on the so-called military assault

00:02:35.140 style, uh, rifles, um, banning them, reclassifying them from non-restricted to prohibited and from

00:02:42.400 restricted to prohibited, but they never actually really got around to collecting any of them,

00:02:47.640 really. Uh, because, you know, they figured out that as soon as they actually start going around

00:02:52.720 stealing people's guns, people are going to, uh, lose them. I should be careful what I say,

00:02:57.040 because I might lose my guns if, uh, you know, the government starts collecting them. This will

00:03:01.040 This right here is going to be used as Exhibit A against me.

00:03:04.280 This is going to be hilarious getting played back in court one day.

00:03:07.120 But so today, Mark Carney said that a Mark Carney liberal government will take responsible action to keep assault style guns off our streets while respecting the longstanding traditions of hunting and sport shooting in Canada.

00:03:21.600 To do that, they will reinvigorate the implementation of the recent gun buyback program for assault style firearms.

00:03:30.320 Tony, how many assault-style firearms are currently circulating among very dangerous Canadian civilians?

00:03:39.040 I honestly have no idea, nor does anybody else, because those firearms are never made apparent until they're actually used.

00:03:47.620 And it's very, very rare that those types of firearms get used.

00:03:52.660 I can tell you that the only assault-style firearms that I know of on the street

00:03:57.820 are the ones that are in the hands of police officers,

00:04:01.700 and I'm not really terribly worried about them.

00:04:05.020 Crime gangs, it's very rare for those types of firearms to be used.

00:04:09.760 They're almost exclusively handguns.

00:04:12.940 So he says he wants to reinvigorate the implementation

00:04:16.740 of an efficient gun buyback program for assault-style firearms.

00:04:20.720 so we could

00:04:22.880 perhaps we can only speculate what he means

00:04:25.120 by this the Trudeau government's been trying

00:04:27.140 for 8 of the 9 years

00:04:29.140 they were in power to do this they even made an

00:04:31.000 announcement

00:04:31.400 I think last summer or last fall was

00:04:35.080 the most recent one where they

00:04:36.140 banned a bunch of new ones

00:04:38.260 as a part of the so called I love how they call it

00:04:41.060 buy back as if the government owned it

00:04:42.520 to buy it back the government must have owned it at some point

00:04:44.980 and buying implies it's consensual

00:04:46.940 not forcible which is stealing

00:04:48.700 but

00:04:49.580 But what could he possibly mean by this?

00:04:52.980 Because the Liberals have been trying to implement their so-called buyback program for the last eight of nine years they've been in power.

00:04:59.360 And they've not succeeded in really seizing a single firearm from legal Canadians because they know it's going to be so damn difficult.

00:05:07.640 What could he possibly mean by this?

00:05:09.980 Well, I think that they're going to force our CMP to do it during the press conference. Carney specifically mentioned Canada Post and using the post office and he specifically mentioned our CMP.

00:05:28.680 But that leaves, like, huge gaping voids in this entire process.

00:05:35.840 Now, for example, several provincial governments have said they're not going to dedicate a single dollar to the collection of firearms.

00:05:44.640 Now, does that mean that the government of Canada has to have a contract with the Chordité de Québec or with the Ontario Provincial Police to go around and collect these?

00:05:58.100 because in those two provinces, especially those two provinces,

00:06:02.620 the RCMP are very rare.

00:06:05.080 Like, they basically police the airports and not much else.

00:06:08.900 Yeah, they're not, you know, like in the western provinces,

00:06:11.720 the RCMP are the rural police force.

00:06:14.000 We have our municipal police forces.

00:06:15.940 So obviously the Calgary Police Service is not going to be used

00:06:18.580 to go around door-to-door in Calgary.

00:06:20.700 The RCMP is in rural Alberta but does not have jurisdiction in the cities.

00:06:25.160 But it is there.

00:06:26.640 But it's been Alberta and Saskatchewan, who have taken control of their own chief firearms officers, they've not only said they won't dedicate any money, they've passed legislation making it illegal for federal officials to go and collect firearms.

00:06:40.460 uh so even if the feds found a way around the alberta and saskatchewan fire arms protection

00:06:47.220 legislation would they essentially take centrally controlled rcmp officers

00:06:52.820 deploy them and go door to door across all of canada because yeah there's this canada posting

00:06:59.920 where we're all expected like lemmings to go and drop our guns off a canada post because you know

00:07:04.740 that's obviously a safe and secure place to leave your guns um but assuming as i am that the most

00:07:12.240 firearms owners do not just take their guns and drop them off like good little liberals uh

00:07:18.620 they does that just leave then door-to-door raids of homes i i don't see how it could be anything

00:07:25.780 else and when you've got 2.4 million gun owners in canada right now you've got an awful lot of

00:07:33.080 rage are going to have to do. And of course, the second the first raid happens, everything else

00:07:38.040 just simply vanishes off the planet. And, you know, the Canada Post thing, Canada Post has

00:07:44.180 made it very, very apparent that they do not have the ability to do this. They don't have the

00:07:50.600 security to do this, and they don't have the will to do this. The RCMP police union said they don't

00:07:57.220 want to do it. They don't want to be cast as the bad guy. I mean, even as recently as a day before

00:08:02.900 yesterday, Durham Region Police put out an endorsement of Pierre Polyev and clearly state

00:08:09.180 in it that gun bans and buyback programs don't work. Nobody wants to play. I don't know how

00:08:16.660 they're going to reinvigorate this in any way, aside from maybe just, I don't know, hiring

00:08:23.740 private security people and somehow empowering them to go door to door. But I mean, this is a

00:08:30.900 recipe for disaster i mean something will happen and it's not going to be good you know one of the 1.00

00:08:37.660 saving graces of the trudeau government was that he was so stupid he he cared about the announcements 0.98

00:08:42.700 i am banning assaults military assault style weapons and we're going to have a buyback program 0.99

00:08:48.980 and trudeau was satisfied with the you know a lot of it's a common criticism of the liberals from

00:08:54.920 the left and right was that the announcement was the objective not announcing something to achieve

00:09:00.680 something that was a saving grace they were too incompetent and too concerned with the political

00:09:05.780 aesthetics of things to actually follow through and steal people's guns they just wanted to announce

00:09:09.440 they were stealing if they could have found a way that was easy yeah they sure they would have but

00:09:13.500 they ran into these very practical problems uh there is no large-scale rcmp in ontario and

00:09:20.580 quebec and i think newfoundland and i'm not sure about the other atlantic provinces but big big

00:09:25.320 sections of canada with no direct major rcmp uh the canada post thing is not going to work people

00:09:32.760 aren't going to comply with it the enforce the actual enforcement of this is nightmarish in

00:09:38.400 proportions with an uncooperative gun owning community uh carney strikes me if if you know

00:09:47.040 if he is elected and the term is prime minister here he strikes me as someone who is unfortunately

00:09:53.440 more intelligent than Justin Trudeau.

00:09:56.340 His incompetence was damaging the country in many ways,

00:09:58.660 but in many ways it was our saving grace. 1.00

00:10:00.160 He was too dumb to actually do what he wanted to do. 1.00

00:10:03.200 Carney is not stupid, 1.00

00:10:04.320 and he probably would want to actually follow through 0.99

00:10:07.360 on this beyond just announcing it.

00:10:09.960 Are you more concerned that Carney would actually succeed

00:10:13.060 in stealing guns than Trudeau on that account?

00:10:16.540 I am to a degree, but bearing in mind, of course,

00:10:19.440 He's still got 87% of his cabinet as recycled Trudeau ministers, and they're just as incompetent as they were last year.

00:10:29.100 So I don't really see, I mean, Carney in and of himself is not going to be able to do the strategy and the logistics needed to make this thing happen.

00:10:42.240 And I really still, to this day, do not understand how they're going to make this work under any circumstances.

00:10:50.260 We're not talking about, you know, one or two guns.

00:10:54.260 We're talking hundreds of thousands of them and their rifles.

00:10:58.060 They're big. There's no place to put them.

00:11:01.440 You know, the police stations, they don't have room for them.

00:11:04.260 What are they going to do? Hire secure warehouse facilities that have to be manned 24 hours a day in order to store these prohibited weapons?

00:11:15.760 I mean, the money simply isn't there to do this. And we're talking gigantic sums.

00:11:22.560 It's beyond the scope of what most people think it is.

00:11:26.720 It's not simply go ahead and collect 10 guns and put them in a room with a lock on it.

00:11:32.260 you know that this is going to be in in areas of population for you know calgary edmonton

00:11:39.460 of course you know that they're going to have to have warehouse facilities

00:11:43.420 and they have to be secure 24 hours a day and manned uh well you know be great the government

00:11:50.640 can steal your weapons and they're too incompetent to protect them so you can go steal them back

00:11:54.360 that'd be great the government steals them in the morning you go steal them back in the afternoon

00:11:59.120 I don't think it's stealing to take back what is already yours.

00:12:01.780 I like the way you think, Derek.

00:12:04.620 Not that I'm encouraging raids on government warehouses.

00:12:07.420 I would not do that, for the record, officially.

00:12:11.700 I'm not laughing because of it either, that's it.

00:12:14.740 No, no, no, that was something else.

00:12:18.720 Let's go through some other parts in Carney's announcement today.

00:12:21.980 Automatically revoke gun licenses for individuals convicted of violent offenses,

00:12:26.980 particularly those convicted of intimate partner violence uh you know i don't see it necessarily a

00:12:32.900 huge problem there uh i mean it depends what we're talking violence like is it uh super minor like

00:12:38.840 you and i had an argument and i shoved you in the shoulder and there was an assault for that i'm not

00:12:45.480 sure that should maybe count but certainly major you know aggravated assault and stuff you know

00:12:51.920 things like that spousal uh violence i mean he's probably got a point there i think the conservatives

00:12:56.520 have had similar proposals on that.

00:12:59.940 They've been doing this for years, for decades.

00:13:03.860 You know, if you commit an assault,

00:13:05.800 they take your guns.

00:13:06.680 This is not new.

00:13:09.180 And, you know, within the original Firearms Act,

00:13:11.980 the provisos were in there to do that.

00:13:14.420 Yeah, I just don't think

00:13:16.040 it's necessarily automatic right now.

00:13:17.740 It is often the case

00:13:19.240 where the prosecution will say,

00:13:20.660 this is a violent crime.

00:13:22.740 We want their gun license suspended

00:13:24.960 for five, revoked for five years or something like that.

00:13:28.660 That's pretty common already.

00:13:30.040 I'm not sure it's automatic, though.

00:13:32.420 No, it's not automatic because doing so might prevent police officers from perhaps laying

00:13:41.500 a charge on for something that might be minor, i.e.

00:13:44.440 you push me on the shoulder and now all of a sudden you've lost all your firearms.

00:13:50.260 They just don't lay the charge.

00:13:52.260 That's how they deal with it now.

00:13:54.740 And so I really don't see a lot of change in that.

00:13:58.900 That's not the part that got me.

00:14:01.620 The part was when Carney said that for some provisions,

00:14:05.860 they're going to remove the innocent until proven guilty

00:14:09.940 and go to a reverse onus where you have to prove your innocence.

00:14:15.520 Well, talk a bit more about that.

00:14:17.360 There's no way that would stand up for 30 seconds in a court constitutionally.

00:14:21.940 That's the most basic part of our legal tradition, as long as we've had one, is that you're innocent until proven guilty.

00:14:31.240 Is it because the feds consider firearms themselves to be a privilege, not a right?

00:14:39.200 The liberals have used this language.

00:14:40.380 Firearms are a privilege, not a right.

00:14:42.420 And therefore, because it's not a right, it doesn't stand up to the same burden of proof in a court?

00:14:48.700 Maybe.

00:14:49.140 But I think that perhaps we would hope that we haven't descended far enough into a socialist society that the right to innocence, presumed innocence, would still maintain.

00:15:09.140 maintain. Um, I don't trust the, the Trudeau, uh, liberals. I don't trust the Carney liberals

00:15:18.120 and they're all the same thing, of course, but I don't trust what they've done with courtrooms

00:15:23.880 either because we we've seen some terrible, uh, travesties of justice in courtrooms and you don't

00:15:31.540 have to look too far to see those. Right. Let's, uh, well, this flows from it. He says he wants

00:15:38.680 the toughen oversight of firearms licensing and strengthen the enforcement of yellow and red flag

00:15:43.900 requirements. Those are kind of two different pieces. Maybe let's talk about the second part

00:15:48.340 first, yellow and red flag requirements. You might face completely erroneous bullshit charges for 0.92

00:15:57.740 something. I've previously been open to the idea of yellow or red flag laws, at least depending on

00:16:06.220 the severity of the charge they're facing you know if you're facing a murder charge

00:16:10.480 okay maybe it's unfair but when you're facing charges you already do have restrictions placed

00:16:17.260 on your freedom even though it's not proved in court i i i'm sympathetic to the idea of it for

00:16:22.860 serious charges i was i'm sympathetic for in general before uh you know i i faced uh some

00:16:29.620 bullshit thing myself that got laughed out of a court but in the meantime i i had a flag on my 0.73

00:16:34.340 license it's taken off now because it's been completely defeated um but it was a very minor 0.95

00:16:39.400 charge and i and i couldn't legally go shoot at the range in the meantime my gun i still had my

00:16:44.380 guns but i couldn't take them to the range uh my guns weren't seized but that that made me a bit

00:16:50.700 more suspect of these kinds of laws uh you know where where do you stand uh is there a place for

00:16:57.000 some flag laws for maybe very serious crimes uh where someone's still pending charges you know

00:17:01.640 has charges pending a trial uh or do you think it's just too open to abuse at all well it is

00:17:08.360 open to abuse when they start saying we need more and more and more of it but we've had red and

00:17:12.680 yellow flag laws for 30 years this isn't new you know if you you commit an assault expect to lose

00:17:21.480 your firearms even if it's temporary you know that's that's not new and so when they say they're

00:17:28.680 going to strengthen them i don't know what else they can do except maybe go with just a basic

00:17:36.600 allegation of wrongdoing it warrants a a no-knock raid and your stuff is stolen from you which you

00:17:46.600 never get back easily you know we we've had lots of experience with people

00:17:51.640 who've had firearms seized for one reason or another and sometimes it takes years to get the

00:17:57.480 the property back even if the person's acquitted. All right, well, the last one I want to get into

00:18:05.480 here is he says he wants a legislative requirement for the RCMP to classify new firearms models

00:18:10.420 entering the market instead of the gun industry. What implications would that have? Because the

00:18:15.940 RCMP already has the right to classify guns however they like, however arbitrarily they like.

00:18:21.120 It's very, it's very arbitrary, obviously, if it's, you know, if it's got a, you know, if it's got a, you know, if the stock isn't wood and the gun is, you know, like black and looks scary, they say, oh, it's an assault rifle meant for war.

00:18:35.920 So it's pretty arbitrary already.

00:18:37.540 But what impact would this have having the RCMP classified new firearms models entering new, new firearms entering the market rather than the industry?

00:18:46.080 Well, for the vast majority of firearms imported into Canada, the classification of the firearm is readily apparent.

00:18:56.100 You know, if it's a handgun, for example, that does not meet the specifications of a 12-6 prohibited handgun, then it's automatically restricted.

00:19:05.680 If it's a long gun and it meets the criteria for a non-restricted firearm, that is also readily apparent.

00:19:14.440 Yeah, but they arbitrarily pick all the time. I mean, we could talk. I mean, the well, you know, what's funny is the SKS is the only gun in mass circulation in Canada that is issued to militaries for war. And that is the one that is not not that they should, but it's not banned for certain demographic political reasons that we both know, but won't we won't get into.

00:19:38.880 Maybe it's a little spicy, but it's used by, you know, groups that might vote liberal, whereas other guns are used by groups that would never vote liberal.

00:19:47.020 It's extremely, you know, you think of the Ruger Mini.

00:19:49.760 That is very obviously should be a non-restricted long gun rifle.

00:19:55.820 Very obviously.

00:19:57.340 Yeah, but it's just been arbitrarily declared to be prohibited now, whereas it was non-restricted.

00:20:05.860 It wasn't even a restricted gun before.

00:20:07.400 So, yeah, there are clear reasons for the classification, but they arbitrarily override it all the time.

00:20:13.680 So what would be the difference?

00:20:15.620 Well, I have no idea.

00:20:17.460 I mean, really, it's always a crackerjack surprise when you open the box.

00:20:23.560 The firearms you're talking about right now, there's one called the crypto, and it was just prohibited a couple of weeks ago.

00:20:31.780 When the Feds put in the descriptive of what is a so-called assault-style weapon, the company that makes the crypto, which is Canadian, specifically designed the gun so it did not meet any of the criteria, and the RCMP banned it anyway.

00:20:56.900 So, I mean, the goalposts are shifting all the time.

00:21:00.040 They're totally arbitrary, despite the fact that there is a definition now in law.

00:21:06.680 The RCMP still has the ability to ban anything they don't like.

00:21:10.780 And they've been doing this a long time.

00:21:12.700 This is not a new thing.

00:21:15.280 They've been doing this a long time.

00:21:17.140 And so I don't really see how that changes a lot.

00:21:22.360 It certainly is another ugly facet to this whole thing.

00:21:27.340 because I don't believe the police

00:21:30.040 should ever be in the position of making

00:21:31.940 laws. I think that's just

00:21:33.600 contrary to how our society

00:21:36.100 should run.

00:21:37.940 But there it is.

00:21:40.980 Well, let's just

00:21:41.360 flip to the other side here.

00:21:44.800 In the conservative

00:21:45.840 platform,

00:21:48.820 is there anything

00:21:49.940 encouraging in the conservative platform on

00:21:51.840 firearms? Or is there anything

00:21:53.980 bad in the conservative platform, maybe to begin with,

00:21:55.900 on firearms that would continue to move in the liberal direction.

00:21:59.040 And on the other side, have they made any commitments that meets with approval of you

00:22:04.000 and the Canadian Shooting Sports Association?

00:22:06.660 Oh, absolutely.

00:22:08.960 Mr. Polyev has been very thoughtful in the way he's approached this whole thing.

00:22:17.660 He's vowed to put together a firearms advisory committee of actual experts rather than,

00:22:25.220 victims. It's always been a belief of ours that just because you've been run over doesn't mean

00:22:31.940 you're an expert on cars. So they're going to actually do this. And with the intent of

00:22:42.580 streamlining the laws so that they're effective and not quite as onerous in terms of paperwork.

00:22:49.200 He's also said he'll immediately repeal the bans that the liberals have put in since 2020.

00:22:55.220 and uh all of them all of them yeah including the ban on handgun sales that's what he says

00:23:02.000 yeah i mean that's gutsy i mean it's obviously excellent policy uh it didn't get a single

00:23:08.800 illegal handgun off the street from criminals but uh you know i think non-gun-owning canadians

00:23:16.020 have most not all but non-handgun-owning canadians you know have a soft spot for

00:23:22.860 the mythical canadian hunter who's in the woods you know shooting a moose or something it's a

00:23:29.480 very canadian thing to do uh but then you know you want to go target shooting they're like oh

00:23:34.440 that's a little odd well how do you practice for shooting the moose but then uh you know you you

00:23:39.280 want to be in the sport shooting with handguns and whatnot and people say well only weirdos would

00:23:42.920 want that uh no people who aren't in it just don't understand it and uh you know so it's tougher

00:23:49.720 political ground to fight on handguns than for, you know, a hunting rifle. Yeah, indeed it is.

00:23:55.300 But the fact remains that hundreds of thousands of Canadians lawfully enjoy this as a sport.

00:24:01.440 And since their firearms are not the ones that are ever used in the commission of crimes,

00:24:08.020 it really makes no sense to restrict people from enjoying the sport. It's a time-honoured sport.

00:24:15.180 it's been in the Olympics since the beginning, and it should remain so. The government says,

00:24:22.780 you know, they'll put in exemptions for things like Olympic shooting. Well, what they did was

00:24:29.100 they put in exemptions not for Olympic shooting and the training for that. They put in exemptions

00:24:35.340 for the type of handguns. Now, within the actual Olympics, the type of handgun that you can use

00:24:43.980 is designated by whether or not it fits in a certain size box.

00:24:49.400 That's it.

00:24:50.380 But the government of Canada doesn't seem to see it that way.

00:24:54.700 So they've come up with their own list of what is permissible and what is not.

00:24:59.880 And then you have to go through more rigmarole to buy one of these 22 pistols

00:25:04.820 than you would ever believe in affidavits, all kinds of nonsense.

00:25:10.980 We're dealing here with hundreds of thousands of people who lawfully recreate with handguns.

00:25:17.280 This is totally uncalled for.

00:25:19.340 And, you know, you will hear occasionally that 85 percent of the guns that the police sees in the Commission of Crimes are smuggled in across the border.

00:25:30.280 And people would say, well, what about the other 15 percent?

00:25:33.220 Well, what they don't tell you is that most of that 15% are firearms that are lost and stolen from the police and from the military.

00:25:43.280 They don't tell you that part.

00:25:45.220 Almost never are they stolen from lawful citizens because we respect the laws.

00:25:50.480 We lock our stuff up.

00:25:52.880 Indeed.

00:25:53.760 All right.

00:25:54.400 Well, Tony, where can people find you and find out more about the CSSA?

00:25:59.220 Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

00:26:01.820 We've got a great website, all kinds of information there, www.cssa-cila.org.

00:26:11.260 When we ran sponsorships for you, I always found that such a tongue twister.

00:26:16.440 You've got to get a better website.

00:26:18.660 A good website, but the URL, I'm telling you, I love your organization.

00:26:24.460 Don't like your URL.

00:26:25.720 You've got to work on that one.

00:26:27.200 There you go.

00:26:28.320 All right, Tony, always a pleasure.

00:26:29.680 Thank you very much for joining us today.

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Western Standard - April 11, 2025

Carney promises to seize Canadians’ guns

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