When people find out that I am a gun owner, their reaction goes one of three ways. They wonder why the heck I need guns, they nod their heads in approval or they look at me in awe, wishing they could be so lucky.

You should note here that I don’t call them firearms or weapons, but simply guns. A bit of background is in order. The Canadian Firearms Act (CFA) defines any barrelled device capable of firing a projectile a firearm. And in that same act a firearm is defined as a weapon by default. It doesn’t matter if it is granddad’s old Winchester .30-30 lever action bush rifle that comes out of the cabinet once a year to take a deer or two for sustenance. It is by law defined as a weapon. Hence by way of the Canadian Criminal Code (CCC), possession of a weapon (of intent), and therefore firearm is prohibited. So to own a firearm is now prohibited. How do we even get to “own” firearms then? By way of a firearms licence. Known in Canada as a PAL or Possession and Acquisition Licence, it is in essence a pardon from a crime as to possess firearms in Canada is by default a criminal act. It’s convoluted I know, but that is the way of Canadian law. The term “gun” is not defined nor does it even appear in the CFA or CCC. So I have guns.

A PAL comes in two categories. The basic PAL (non-restricted only) or the RPAL, “R” meaning restricted. With this one can now possess and acquire restricted firearms which include handguns and certain long guns which in their wisdom, or lack thereof, the RCMP feel look too much like military firearms which are weapons because they are in fact used to kill people. As an aside, some rifles come in two configurations. The first looks just like and is in fact a legal hunting rifle. Wooden stock, semi-automatic action (one pull, one bullet at a time), scope. It is allowed in Canada and is a non-restricted firearm. The second configuration is identical other than the fact that the wooden furniture has been replaced with a composite stock, adjustable butt, accessory rail for things like secondary scopes or lights and is black. You can’t do anything different with this rifle than the first. Yet it is classified as restricted or even prohibited. Why? Because it looks like a military weapon. That is the only reason. The sight of it might scare some poor liberal soul…

As the holder of an RPAL, I am by default a criminal in the eyes of the CCC, and every single day, every-single-day, the RCMP does a complete and thorough background check on me to make sure that I have not become a risk to society. Because of the fact that I own guns. Now, I don’t really own guns. I am not allowed to own guns. I can only possess them. They can be taken away from me in an instant if a neighbour were to complain that I carried my hunting rifle out to my car and they didn’t like it until a thorough investigation was completed. Even though I did nothing wrong or illegal. And in the meantime, my guns may just very well disappear completely once confiscated. Yup. This is fact. In Canada, despite the fact that you own something, anything, it can be taken away as we do not have any property rights. Period.

Okay, back to terminology. My guns are most definitely NOT weapons. They are tools. I use them for shooting paper targets at a certified gun range, making lots of noise and honing eye to hand coordination. And they are fun. But, you say, aren’t they dangerous? Everything in this world is dangerous if not used properly. Take your car for instance. Vehicles are the single largest cause of the loss of human life and of human carnage in Canada. Because they are not used with common sense or safely. Common sense is the operative word here. Yet there is no call to ban cars.

Most importantly though, and to answer the question asked by the title of this writing, I choose to own guns because “they” would prefer that I do not own guns. It’s really just that simple…

I am most definitely a person who goes against the grain, who does not like to be told what I can and cannot do and despises authoritarianism. I am a reactionary. I am a peaceful person, do not pick fights, obey the law, wouldn’t behave any differently should certain laws not be in force and yet I am sequestered by a burden of laws and restrictions placed on society. I am controlled. So I choose to push and even breach the bounds whenever I can.

Politically I am right of centre. Some probably consider me to be bouncing off the wall right and a raving heretic, but right now we live in a country and even a world that is largely ruled by the extreme far left. A faction that rules by totalitarianism. If you watch the news, one of the prominent things seen are the peaceful right wing rallies and protests being met with violent opposition by the left. In Alberta the government has banned rallies organized by right leaning groups to avoid the left-instigated violence when opposing the them. Yet they still issue permits for left wing rallies because the peaceful right does not violently oppose them. But if they do peacefully oppose them, the left becomes violent. It seems that freedom of expression in the world has come down to the fact that only the left can express themselves and don’t want the right to express themselves.   My feeling is that you have to fight extremism with extremism in order to come out somewhere close to the middle ground which is where we should be. The problem with the right is that they are already centrist while the left is extreme far left. The left is winning because of this fact. Andrew Scheer based his election platform on vowing to fight a federal carbon tax and bad immigration policy. Once elected he flipped one hundred and eighty degrees and stood up to support a federal carbon tax and a motion to quell freedom of expression by those opposing bad immigration policy. He blatantly lied just like the current Prime Minister for one purpose. Power.

My blog today was inspired by what I read in TheGunBlog.ca and their interview of the publisher of a Canadian gun newsletter out of Whitehorse.  https://thegunblog.ca/2017/09/02/guns-are-a-symbol-of-freedom-qa-with-paul-rogan-in-yukon/ What he said just gelled all of my thoughts on the topic of gun ownership and liberalism in Canada and the world. Paul Rogan is the founding editor of Canadian Access to Firearms and he had this to say about gun ownership and liberalism:

“All my research and all my travels tell me that the left is wrong. It’s a con job. The left will never be able to offer a solution to humanity, because it starts from a false premise: equality. No two people have ever been equal.”

So true! What I have personally seen with respect to the liberal view on equality is that you take away, ban anything that not everybody can have, leaving only what is available or what they say is available to both. This is forced equality, totalitarianism and serves only to eliminate free will.

What Paul goes on to say about gun ownership mirrors my own previously stated thoughts on the matter.

“Guns are a symbol of freedom. A society that respects you as a citizen with full rights cannot deny you the right to own guns. It’s the basis of the Second Amendment.”

“When people ask why you need an AR-15 to hunt rabbits, they’re missing the point. It has nothing to do with hunting rabbits. It has to do with politics and politicians.”

“You cannot ask a human being to give up their right to protect their existence. It’s not possible to give someone else the right to decide your right to exist.”

Right on! The Canadian government has always had a very liberal view on the right to self-protection. Even Conservative governments who have in reality been “neo-conservative” or very left of centre leaning right. Self-protection is a natural right that no government has the right to take away. Yet they would try to. A natural right. This would be akin to say for example a moose in the wild not being allowed to use its antlers to fend off an attacking wolf. The fact that the moose had antlers would be interpreted as intent. The right to self-defence is written right into the British North American Act which for those who don’t know is still in full force as well as the Canadian Bill of Rights and Freedoms.  However, governments over time have written laws to diminish and even trump its power including the natural right to self- protection. Pierre Elliot Trudeau saw to that when his government re-wrote the Canadian Constitution on our behalf… A woman in Canada is not allowed to carry or use pepper spray or dog spray against a rapist. Doing so (carrying) would be considered intent as there is no crime unless the rape is committed. The use of the pepper spray prevents the rape. However, the self-protection then becomes the crime as it is treated as an assault against the perpetrator of the rape crime.   This is how Canadian law works. Admittedly, things have improved when it comes to self- protection/preservation in the case of home invasions under the last Conservative government, but overall this natural right seems to be frowned upon.

There is, however, a growing trend in Canada and the world against this liberal view on how we as a free people should live. Paul sums it up very well in his description of the subscribers to his newsletter:

“We have two trends among our subscribers at the moment. The first group is loyal supporters, mainly older guys who have lived their whole lives with a lot more freedom and liberty than what we have now. They tend to keep quiet, they don’t go to public meetings, but they don’t like what’s happening. The second group is younger guys who are just discovering that they’re missing something. Society hasn’t given them what they need. They are missing the whole idea that being a human being, you have natural rights.”

The old guard has always been aware. And, as in my case being a member of that faction, have been able to show their kids what has been and is going on, teaching them what they need to do to survive it. Unfortunately, however, the youngest generations are in schools learning to listen and obey, being taught that independent thought is wrong, to learn that good feelings, fashion sense, fitting in and absolute gender neutrality are the basis of today’s society. In essence to become a generation of non-productive whiners. Rachel Notley’s government has been trying its best to defund private schools and even stop home schooling so that these children are forced to learn the same doctrines. In British Columbia a law was passed that if a child comes to school and complains of something a parent tried to teach them that goes against “doctrine”, the Province can forcefully make them a ward of the state, denying the parents access.

I doth protest.   I choose to own guns…