Resistance Item
[NOTE: This item was written in 1996. Please jump to www.pierrelemieux.org/policecanada to follow my 2001 battle against what has now become a police state bureaucracy.]
How, in 1996, I Obtained a "Firearms Acquisition Certificate" While Refusing to Comply With Some of Their (pre-C-68) Immoral Requirements
In order to renew my so-called "Firearms Acquisition Certificate" -- more aptly called Autorisation d'acquisition d'armes à feu in French --, I had to spend a weekend in a reeducation camp (see my La Presse article on this) and, then, to fill the voluminous application forms.
However, the harassed decided to harass his harassers. I wrote an article in Le Devoir , ridiculing these tyrannical forms. As I recommended in this article, I myself refused to answer question 16 about "loss of job, failure at school, sentimental deceptions," etc., and wrote instead: "Mes chagrins d'amour ne vous regardent pas" (My love sorrows are none of your business). I also refused to provide one of the numerous recommendations required, i.e., the one from a neighbor. I explained my four reasons on the back of the form, including that a civilized man does not frighten his neighbors by boasting that he has firearms at home, and that a sovereign individual does not advertise to them the slavery which so-called "laws" impose on him.
I also had warned the Sûreté du Québec (the Québec Provincial police, which administers these laws on behalf of the federal tyrant) that I would refuse to provide any government ID. The application forms stipulate that a health insurance card or a driver's license is required. Since this requirement is against the law, I complained to the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec . The head of the SQ License Department replied to me in writing that, indeed, they could not require these government ID papers, but claimed that the mention on their forms was only indicative of the kind of documents that people usually provide. I warned them that the only ID I would provide is my Friends of Liberty membership card.
On July 8, 1996 -- after more than three months of administrative hassles and correspondence --, I personally brought the filled-in forms to the SQ office, as required. The old, smiling and whistling cop at the desk casually asked for my driver's license or health insurance card. I replied that I would provide no government ID, but that I had a Friends of Liberty membership card. "Well," he said, "I have to talk to my boss." The boss arrived. He was more of the BATF type: slim, muscular, clean-shaven, short-haired, intense-looking. He said he would take care of me. His first, and only, question was: "You have your FL membership card with you?"
With me was my youngest son, who was applying for a first FAC. He also refused to provide a neighbor's recommendation. As a first applicant with no previous FAC, he was only asked for a birth certificate.
The delay in issuing this authorization to merely own firearms (including long guns) run from a few months in Québec to more than a year in Ontario. Both my son and I received "our" firearms certificates on August 12, 1996. They had been issued by the Sûreté du Québec 33 days, or 24 business days, after we filed our forms on July 8.
Pierre Lemieux
Summer 1996
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