Liberty Free Press, July 15, 2000. Reproduced in Canadian Access to Firearms, September 2000, p.17
Three Scenarios for a So-called Law
by
Pierre Lemieux
As the saying goes, prediction is difficult, especially with regard to the future. Yet, it is pretty straightforward to build a narrow range of possible scenarios for the Firearms Act (Bill C-68) adopted in 1995.
The Firearms Act is not only about registering all firearm owners who were not already registered after the 1977 Bill C-91. It is not only about making firearm ownership more onerous and risky than what the 1991 Bill C-17 had already done. It is not only about creating a central and permanent registry which will, for instance, force every hunter to notify the police when he changes his residence. It is also about increasing government and police powers, and creating new excuses for warrantless searches. It is also about making it easier for the government to eventually seize private firearms, like they did in Australia.
The Firerams Act can't be a real law, or else the term "law" has no meaning that distinguishes it from a mafia diktat.
No wonder that a revolution seems to be brewing out in the West, and even among hunters in the East. Bruce Hutton, founder of the Alberta based Law-abiding Firearms Association (LUFA) and a former RCMP officer, declares that he will not register his arms. "I am going to jail first," said Mr. Hutton. "I am not a criminal and I refuse to have the government treat me like one."
According to government figures and estimates by MP Garry Breitkreuz, at most 20% of Canadians who own firearms have obtained the licence required before January 1, 2001, subject to a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail. This include individuals who already had a valid Firearm Acquisition Certificate (FAC) under previous law. And not more than 4% of individual firearms have been registered, as the law (so-called) requires before the end of 2002, again under penalty of 10 years in jail.
On firearms application forms since the early 90s, Canadians have been telling police about their "divorces, separations, or breakdowns of significant relationships", and most people find this normal.
The first scenario is a simple continuation of the major trend of the last decades: quiet resignation. The government will meet minor, instinctive resistance with kindness: "We are here to help." Deadlines will be carefully postponed, amnesties will be offered, and most people will finally fall in line. The others, a small minority, will hide their guns, like children. Sometimes, they will bury them, using surgical gloves so to leave no fingerprint or DNA trace. In one or two generations, few honest citizens will have guns. Of course, real criminals will be heavily armed. So will be nice government agents. Welcome to the New Age and the Brave New World!
The second scenario would be triggered by a more or less random event. It is not impossible that an angry man will blow a fuse and that, perhaps with the gun they wanted to take away from him, will shoot at everything that moves. Like many such crazies, he may even target completely innocent, and powerless, victims. Public opinion will be in an uproar, Romanian-miner types of intellectuals will climb out from all the politically correct holes of the country, and Government-the-Savior will take a major and hasty step towards prohibition of civilian firearms ownership.
The playing may get much rougher than what self-righteous busybodies now imagine. Perhaps, indeed, Bruce Hutton, and others like him, will be arrested. But, if the statist system is efficient (God forbids!), not as heros. The deviants will not be prosecuted for their unregistered firearms, but for some made up, dirty offense like, say, tax evasion or sexual harassment twenty years ago. Those who think this is impossible in Canada haven't noticed that this country is not the same as the one they were born in. Or else, they have been born with a licence application form in their mouths.
The third scenario is the least likely but, because of the continued action of real patriots (if this word has any meaning), it is not totally unrealistic. Suppose a large number of Canadians who own firearms purchased before 1978, or who have let their FACs lapse, continue to flout the December 31, 2000 deadline for the new possession (or acquisition) licence. Or perhaps Canadians don't register their long guns before January 1, 2003, or they only register a small proportion of them. (Handguns, of course, have been registered since 1934.)
When the government realizes that one or two million Canadians have become paper criminals overnight, the administrative tyranny begins to unravel.. Sensible policemen refuse to enforce the so-called law. Crown prosecutors and judges start having doubts. The Department of "Justice" throws in amnesty programs, but with little response. Politicians wake up to the infamous decree they have so blindly and sheepishly voted. The Canadian Firearms Centre budget is cut. The legislation falls into disuse, or perhaps -- a rare event in Canada -- is altogether repealed. Who knows, perhaps the signal sent to the politicos is so loud and clear that many tyrannical provisions of the 1977 and the 1991 gun control legislations are also brought down.
Whichever scenario materializes, one prediction can be made quite safely. In one hundred or two hundred years, if we do have some liberty left, historians will show only contempt, and school children will have only disgust, for the politicians and the bureaucrats who will have conspired to disarm and criminalize us. Louis Riel will be small beer compared with this dark period in our history. And Bruce Hutton will have his statue on Parliament Hill in honor of his heroic resistance.