YUKON STRONG: The disgraceful state of the gun debate in Canada

Grab a coffee and buckle up because I’m going to try and give readers the state of the entire gun debate in Canada in one giant serving. It’s a lot to digest, but here’s a big dose of what I’m talking about to get you warmed up:

Now, what you just watched is a not a biased gun lobbyist pushing self-serving activism.

It was a forced response.I was forced to make that video against my will. I do not want to be writing this article. I do not want to engage in social media activism.

I want to go back to my quiet life. Hunt, fish and shoot in peace. But if I did not make that video, a continued fear-based narrative would be perpetuated by Canadian politicians and mainstream media across our country, unchecked.

A narrative that will ultimately jeopardize my way of life and the beliefs and activities I hold closest to my heart as a northern born Canadian.

I chose the AR-15 for that video because it is the singular most demonized firearm on the planet. The rifle is used to scare uninformed citizens daily. Yet the same rifle has never been used for murder by a legal gun owner in Canada.

In fact, it’s only been used for murder one time in our country over the last 50 years by a gang. A far cry from the narrative that “assault weapons” are lurking in every corner of Canadian society waiting to murder our children.

Justin Trudeau is claiming this firearm and others like it are so deadly, so dangerous, and so extreme that they must be confiscated from every licensed Canadian gun owner across the country. But with only one murder in 50 years, and the gun almost certainly still being the murderer’s hand regardless if there was a ban, the numbers simply don’t add up. In fact they barely register. Semi-auto rifles are extremely rare for use in Canadian gun homicide, have a look:

As you just saw, handguns are the firearm of choice for most shootings. Semi-autos only make up a small percentage of rifles and shotguns in our country. So how does this add up to a federal ban costing $600 million in taxpayer money?

Short answer: It doesn’t.

Canada has roughly 2.2 million licensed gun owners who are monitored DAILY by RCMP for red flags. Most people don’t know that. It’s called continuous eligibility screening. If you step out of the line with the law, the cops show up and take your guns.

Some further thoughts.

If only 5 percent of Canadian gun owners were out there shooting up the streets, we’d have 110,000 deaths on our hands annually. According to StatsCan, 2018 left Canada with 249 tragic gun murders. The vast majority were by gangs fighting over drugs in urban centers. Even if you were to incorrectly assume every one of those shootings was a legal gun owner and not a gang member (yeah right) it means 99.9998868% of us pose no threat to society. Can you think of another demographic with that kind of track record? I certainly can’t.

Now, the lives lost in those incidents are valuable. 249 Canadian families are feeling daily pain. Something needs to change. Gang warfare can’t go unchecked. But to punish millions of innocent Canadians who hold such an excellent track record will not help. There’s a very simple truth in all of this: Taking my firearms away in the Yukon will not prevent gang homicide in Toronto.

Furthermore, we as Canadians don’t discriminate against entire groups of people based on the actions of a few bad eggs. For instance, we don’t blame all Muslims in Canada for the actions of 9/11. How is it acceptable for Justin Trudeau to punish gun owners across Canada for gang violence?

Our politicians are in it for the long run

Here’s a young Justin Trudeau about ten years ago falsely claiming the Liberals didn’t want confiscate guns: “Nobody wants to take your guns, we just want you to register them”

Today he is literally pushing the largest, most authoritarian gun confiscation in Canadian history without even bothering to vote on it in the house of commons. You heard me right, he is going to circumvent our entire democracy to achieve this nonsense. He’s planning to enact the ban with an OIC. No debate. No vote. No consultation. Not even from the RCMP.

For those who don’t know what an OIC is, it’s an order in council. Essentially it bypasses both debate and consultation as well as the parliamentary vote to put legislation into effect immediately with absolutely no public or political recourse whatsoever. No debate. No vote. No consultation. Not even with RCMP.

For those of you out there who agree with an OIC gun ban, I’d ask you to consider the following.

Justin Trudeau will not be Prime Minister forever. His actions here completely open the door for all future governments ruling in the same manner. Sooner or later, a government you dislike is going to use an OIC to trample on your life too. Don’t believe me?

Consider this: the government is already cautious of gun owners. They have to be. We are armed. Furthermore, we are one group to ever force the government to back down from legislation (the federal long gun registry).

We did it through years of peaceful, passive non-compliance. I suspect similar non-compliance will unfold under a ban in 2020, just as it did in New Zealand last year.

The bottom line is that if the government is willing to try this kind of overreach on AR-15 owners, they won’t hesitate for a second to try it on you, the unarmed taxpayer and citizen. Still don’t believe me? Bill Blair, the architect behind this proposed gun ban played the starring role in one of Canada’s most infamous police brutality events: The G20 summit in Toronto.

I mean honestly, after watching this CBC documentary I find it hard to believe anyone would feel Public Safety Minister Bill Blair is a guy you want calling the shots in a country of unarmed citizens. He seems to be defending his officers for arresting and beating up a one-legged man. I can only imagine what he’d do to gun owners who say “no”, and where it could lead.

It’s not gun confiscation, it’s a “buyback”

Or at least that’s what the Liberals are claiming. Alright Justin, if that’s the case I respectfully choose not to sell. Thank you and good day.Joking aside, it’s actually a forced buyback.

Confiscation with a nicer name.

But a buyback implies our guns were government-owned firearms to begin with. They were not.

Furthermore, it seems they are offering substandard prices. We know this because reports are claiming it will cost $600 million to pay for the buyback.

However, the amount of firearms Trudeau is talking about banning may number in the millions. To me this looks like Canadians can expect a couple of hundred bucks at best, for firearms that may cost upwards of $4,000.

Another elephant in the room, the government will be paying gun owners with their own money (income tax).

Seriously, who would sell a home or car by personally financing the buyer with their own funds? On what planet is that a reasonable “sale” or “transaction” by any definition?

Why can’t we just use the $600 million to arrest and track the gang criminals?

There is also an emotional factor at play here, too. Many of these firearms are family heirlooms. Extreme sentimental value. I myself own a firearm that was gift from my late step father. There is no amount of money the government could pay me for it.

It’s the last remaining connection to him I have on earth. Our government has not considered this scenario. At the very least there should be exemptions for Canadians in these cases. It’s not an unreasonable ask in the slightest.

Yet, Trudeau’s Liberals have repeatedly claimed this is what Canadians are “asking for”.

If Justin is so confident this is what Canadians want, why won’t he put it to a vote in the house of commons? Why circumvent democracy with an OIC? I suspect it’s because he knows they will lose the debate.

Law enforcement is not in favour of the ban. Listen to the strong rejection yourself.

Statscan does not support the claims of an increased firearms threat.

Internationally, gun bans have failed to reduce homicide. Just look at Office for National Statistics from the UK.

Brenda Lucki, commissioner of the RCMP does not support the ban, as stated in her latest annual firearms report, “There are no reasons why the country’s 2.2 million men and women with a gun license shouldn’t have firearms.”

Public Safety was engaged on this issue. The results were overwhelmingly against a ban.

It seems to me the Liberals are choosing to move forward with an OIC because there is a very real risk any sort of debate will blow up in their face and trigger another election. It’s also possible Trudeau may not have the votes in his own party. MPs in the Liberal ranks are also questioning the ban. Marcus Powlowski MP for Thunder Bay–Rainy River sent a letter to Bill Blair on Jan. 16.

I think at this point you are starting to get the picture. It’s pretty clear both the evidence and support for this ban are simply not there. Millions of people are against the ban. Petition E-2341 sponsored by conservative MP Glen Motz against the proposed OIC is currently the number one petition in the House of Commons, with over 100,000 signatures after only being up six weeks. This kind of support cannot be ignored.

In 2020 gun owners simply want to be left alone

Unfortunately, this is too much to ask for Wendy Cukier, one of Canada’s highest profile anti-gun lobbyists. She recently resorted to outright demonizing legal gun owners in an attempt to further her crusade. She recently testified on camera at Toronto city council, squarely putting Toronto’s gang homicides on the shoulders of legal gun owners.

It’s discriminatory. No other demographic in our country would suffer such public insult as this. For instance,Don Cherry was famously fired for saying “you people” yet here she is directly identifying gun owners as would-be murderers. Have a look:

Her implication is not only irresponsible and unfair, it’s also completely wrong. She has no evidence to support her claims. The last 20 years of StatsCan easily debunk her assertion. There is an irrefutable statistical link  between gang activity and handguns, which result in the lion’s share of gun murder in our country. The trend is undeniable.

So why isn’t mainstream media reporting all this info? Checking theseStatsCan numbers?  Why does it fall to me, some random citizen fact checking theclaimsTrudeau and the anti-gun lobby are putting out in the mainstreammedia? It’s outright dishonesty. For example,Justin Trudeau famously tweeted Canadiansdon’t need a license to purchase a firearm in Canada:

Yet RCMP just recently arrested a Cardston shop owner for doing precisely that.

Either Justin lied, or was simply ignorant of the truth.

Serious damage is done by tweets like this. Millions of Canadians are willing to believe our prime minister at his word. He is wildly popular. Now because of these irresponsible actions, many Canadians may thinkunvetted criminalsare running around Canada buying “assault weapons” without a license.

It’s a frightening thought for the uninformed, based purely on fantasy. Mainstream outlets add fuel to this fire too. Global news, CTV, CBC, even the National Post and other respected outlets have been forced to print retractions after outraged gun owners forced them to respond to the misinformation. It’s hard to say if these incidents are deliberate, but there sure seems to be a pattern forming. For instance, a recent claim that over 50 percent of guns committing crime are sourced domestically made national headlines. It’s a complete lie.

Thank you for finally getting it right National Post, but like I said: the damage is done.

Another example was Reuters recently went as far as to label hero Jack Wilson as a murderer. Jack stopped a madman in a Texas Church. It’s unbelievable. They labelled the guy who stopped psychopath as the killer. The Post Millennial thankfully reported the truth on this incident.

Which finally brings us to the heart of the gun debate in Canada: If you set the topic itself aside (firearms), what we have on our hands here is outright media bias misinforming the public and an administration using this dynamic to pass highly authoritarian legislation under false pretenses… without even bothering to vote on it. I think it’s safe to say that’s not the Canada we want to live in. Justin Trudeau claims this is about “making Canadians safer”. Does anyone honestly see a safer society forming since he took over? I see division, fracture and growing hate. Taking away this Yukoner’s guns won’t fix that.