CFJ June-July 2008 Proof - National Firearms Association

Transcription

Tel: (780) 426-4866
Phase IV
Fax: (780) 426-4867
West Edmonton Mall
www.shootingcentre.com
Edmonton, Alberta
Handguns
Shotguns
Ruger MK III SS................ $450 & up
Beretta Extreme I.......................................................................................... $1680
Ruger Single Six.................. $495 & up
Ruger SRH 480............................ $850
Springfield Armory GI 45.......................
Springfield Armory XD 40, 9 45
............................................ $825 & up
Baby Eagle Hardchrome.............. $899
Glock 17....................................... $825
Beretta NEO’s.............................. $395
HK USP.................................... $1295
Sig Sauer P226.......................... $1195
Rifles
Stevens Model 200....................... $365
Tikka T3 Synthetic DM..... $675 & up
Savage 111 c/w 3-9x40 DM
............................................ $695 & up
Sako 95M Synthetic SS DM.... $1499
Mossberg c/w pistol grip.........................................................................$475 & up
Benelli M2 MX4 Camo................................................................................ $1569
Canadian
Firearms Journal
From Head Office
Since our input in the last CFJ we have been working harder than ever. We are fortunate to
have added Edward Lucas as a full time member of our staff and Florence Ellis as a part
time member. Both of these people are great additions and we certainly appreciate them.
We have nearly completed all the second mass mail out. Just a few left that need a little
more attention. Thank you again for all your patience while we were dealing with the
tremendous volume we received. It looks like another fantastic response.
Now we are working diligently on the third mass mail out. This one seems to be going
a little quicker and easier so hopefully, with the help of some volunteers, we will have
fulfillment packages send in a more timely manner.
Diane has traveled to gun shows from Saskatoon to Chilliwack to Dawson Creek, BC plus
several all over Alberta. Tables mostly were donated and we were made very welcome by
all. Blair Hagan and Clive Edwards manned the NFA table in Chilliwack. We brought home
more membership applications, a little less inventory and as always, some donations.
We recently had the distinct pleasure of having Blair Hagen and Christopher di Armani
spend some time with us here in Edmonton. We accomplished a great deal and even had
some fun. Thanks guys! Come back anytime.
Please keep all the phone calls and e-mails coming. Feel free to drop in at the office
anytime as we can usually find a cup of coffee and a cookie to share with you.
From you friendly staff at the NFA office.
Mission Statement
Canada’s National Firearms Association exists to promote,
support and protect all safe firearms activities, including the
right of self defence; firearms education for all Canadians;
freedom and justice for Canada’s firearms community, and
to advocate for legislative change to ensure the right of all
Canadians to own and use firearms is protected.
Inside this issue
Regulars
On the Cover
This issue starts a 4-part in-depth examination
of school shootings. The series will focus on
the history of the phenomenon, why school
shootings happen where they do, and how
different nations deal with them.
Caution!
Technical data and information contained in this magazine
are intended to provide information based upon the limited
experience of individuals under specific conditions. They do
not detail the comprehensive training, procedures, techniques,
and safety precautions that are necessary to properly carry out
similar activities. Always consult comprehensive reference
manuals before attempting any similar activities. Any printed
reloading data may contain printing errors and so is used entirely
at the risk of the reader. It is the responsibility of all hand
loaders to check factory reloading manuals for the specified
components in use. Canada’s National Firearms Association has
no ability to control the conditions under which any published
information may be used and therefore assumes no liability for
use or misuse of published reloading information.
The contents of the Canadian Firearms Journal are copyrighted
and may be reproduced only when written permission is
obtained from the publisher.
From the Editor’s Desk................................................................6
Christopher di Armani
President’s Column......................................................................8
Blair Hagen
Vice President’s Column............................................................10
Sean G. Penney
Letters to the Editor...................................................................12
Bruce Montague Case Update...................................................14
Politics & Guns..........................................................................17
Sheldon Clare
Women & Guns ........................................................................18
Jane Gaffin
Gun Culture................................................................................20
Megan Tandy Update.................................................................23
Preserving Our Firearms Heritage.............................................30
Sybil Kangas
Self-Defense...............................................................................34
Clive Edwards
Old West Armory ......................................................................40
Jesse L. Hardin
Liberty . .....................................................................................46
Vin Suprynowicz
The International Front..............................................................48
Dr. Gary Mauser
Youth Development...................................................................52
Kids & Guns..............................................................................54
Kathy Jackson
Gunsmith Q & A........................................................................57
Bill Wimpney
Important Lessons Never Learned.............................................62
J. J. Jackson
The Last Word............................................................................66
Features
Big Bang on the Watopeka - End of an Era................................24
Bernard Pelletier
Firearms I have Known...............................................................31
R. Hugh Lyle
Marlin Firearms..........................................................................33
Maritimers in Cowboy Boots......................................................38
Quebec Update............................................................................51
Stephen Buddo
Biathlon Rifles............................................................................58
Frans Diepstraten
Safe Storage Laws & the Obsession with Prevention.................61
Chris McGarry
Why did it have to be Guns?.......................................................65
L. Neil Smith
by Christopher di Armani
Welcome to the “new” Canadian Firearms Journal.
With this issue we bring you a whole new look. I
hope you like it. We hadn’t planned on it, but
computer upgrades combined with Windows Vista
incompatibilities with our existing design software
meant we had to rebuild the magazine from the
ground up.
This became the perfect opportunity for the Canadian
Firearms Journal to revamp our look so we can better
reflect the focus and direction of Canada’s National
Firearms Association.
This magazine is, after all, the vehicle through which
we spread our message to the world.
Over the last two issues we have doubled the size
of the magazine, which of course doubled Nicole’s
workload, and added a side helping of “redesign the
magazine” thrown in for good measure.
It is therefore with my profound gratitude that I thank
Nicole Greenwald for all her hard work re-designing
this new and improved Canadian Firearms Journal.
Sheldon Clare updates us on the political situation as
it pertains to our right to own our private property, and
Gary Mauser gives us the latest on the international
front, and the ongoing United Nations push to disarm
civilians around the world.
This issue also brings us the latest news on Bruce
Montague’s ongoing battle for the rights of all
Canadians to own firearms free from government
interference. This case is far from over, and it may
well set a precedent that will affect every (legal) gun
owner in Canada.
Noted columnists Vin Suprinowicz, L. Neil Smith and
J.J. Jackson join us to explore the issues of freedom,
electoral process and the fallacy of “gun-free zones”.
On the historical side, author Jesse L. Hardin
begins his column on guns in the old west. His
first installment “Pocket Guns of the Old West” is
a fascinating and informative look at the firearms
carried across North America in the frontier days of
Canada and the United States.
Kathy Jackson joins us for a series of articles under
the banner of “kids and guns”, aimed at keeping our
children safe, as well as how we can educate them to
best inoculate them against the mystique of firearms.
Gary and Sybil Kangas continue their column on
preserving our firearms heritage, and in this issue
Gary introduces his long-time friend and gun guy
Hugh Lyle.
Jane Gaffin joins the magazine with her colum
“Women and Guns”. In her first installment, Jane
delves into the issue of personal security with all the
panache we’ve come to expect from her!
Lastly, we begin a new column, “Profiles”, where as
promised, we have an interview with Lori Townsend,
the cover girl on the last issue. This column is where
we will profile unique individuals from across Canada
in future issues.
This is an exciting edition.
Clive Edwards contributes the first of a
four-part series on school
shootings. In this
6
edition he gives us an overview of the phenomenon,
and in future editions of CFJ he will delve into school
shootings around the world (outside North America),
in the United States, and finally, in Canada. Mr.
Edwards has researched this issue in depth and will
show us what has been done around the world to solve
this problem, what has worked and what hasn’t, and
finally, will recommend what might be the best option
for dealing with deranged souls with firearms.
June / July 2008
On behalf of all of us here at the NFA, I hope you
enjoy the “new” Canadian Firearms Journal!
CanadianFirearmsJournal.com
www.nfa.ca
by: Blair Hagen, National President
President’s
Column
Are Canadians allowed to use force
to defend themselves? Can they use
weapons, even firearms to do so? The
age-old debate about self-defense and
use of force in Canada rages on.
Les canadiens ont-ils le droit
d’employer la force pour se défendre?
Peuvent-ils employer des armes,
même des armes à feu pour se
défendre? Le débat concernant l’autodéfense et l’utilisation de la force au
Canada continue.
Canadians are not bloody minded
nor are they vigilantes by nature.
Canadians do not seek conflict.
However, Canadians also are not
docile sheep, dependent upon the
protection of sheepdogs for their
well being. When called upon to do
so, Canadians are fully capable of
supporting their fellow citizens and
law enforcement officers within the
boundaries of the Criminal Code of
Canada.
Les canadiens ne sont ni des tueurs
ni violents de nature. Les canadiens
ne recherchent pas les conflits.
Cependant, les canadiens ne sont pas
des moutons dociles qui dépendent
de la protection de leurs chiens afin
d’assurer leur bien-être. Lorsqu’il le
faut, les canadiens sont pleinement
capables d’aider leur prochain ainsi
que les policiers selon les limites du
Code Criminel du Canada.
The key here is understanding the
Criminal Code of Canada. Unless you
8
June / July 2008
have studied criminal code regulations
regarding use of force, you cannot
understand in what situations they
legitimately apply.
La clé ici est la compréhension du
Code Criminel du Canada. À moins
d’avoir étudié les règlements du code
criminel concernant l’utilisation de
la force, vous ne pouvez comprendre
dans quelles situations légitimes elle
s’applique.
While statistically it is still rare for
Canadians to become victims of
violent crimes or tragedies, the fact
is that when they are, the violence
employed by criminals is more likely
to be brutal in the extreme, often
causing death. Weapons, including
firearms, are far more likely to be
employed by violent criminals today
than they were thirty years ago,
despite Canada’s much vaunted “gun
control” laws.
Statistiquement parlant, les canadiens
sont rarement victimes de crimes
violents ou de tragédies. Le fait est
que lorsqu’ils le sont, la violence
employée par les criminels est
généralement brutale à l’extrême,
causant souvent la mort. Des armes,
incluant des armes à feu, sont plus
souvent employées par des criminels
violents aujourd’hui qu’elles l’étaient
il y trente ans, même malgré les lois
sur le « contrôle des armes à feu »
implantées au Canada.
Today, Canada is at a crossroads.
The Conservative Government
introduced criminal justice reforms
that may one day return Canada to
the peaceful and safe society our
parents and grandparents knew. They
are being fought in Parliament by the
opposition parties and in the Liberal
dominated senate. It will take years
- if not decades for these reforms to
have effect, if and when they are fully
introduced.
Aujourd’hui, le Canada est à la croisée
des chemins. Le Gouvernement
Conservateur a introduit des
réformes du Code Criminel qui, un
jour, rétablira la société paisible et
sécuritaire que nos parents et grandsparents ont connue. Ces réformes
sont contestées au Parlement par les
partis d’opposition ainsi qu’au Sénat,
qui est actuellement dominé par les
Libéraux. Cette réforme prendra des
années – Sinon des décades avant
d’être implantées, si et quand elles
seront introduites.
Thirty years of social re-engineering
in the criminal justice and corrections
systems must be undone. The
cultures of these institutions must
also be reformed. Public safety - not
the rights of offenders - must be
made paramount. What must also
be paramount are the rights of lawabiding Canadians. For decades,
our traditional rights have been
undermined in the name of public
www.nfa.ca
safety, while the rights of offenders have been enhanced in
the name of rehabilitative justice.
Trente ans de réingénierie sociale des systèmes de
justice et de correction devront être défaits. La culture
de ces institutions devra aussi être réformée. La
sécurité publique et non pas les droits des criminels est
primordiale. Les droits des honnêtes citoyens canadiens
doivent aussi reprendre toute leur importance. Depuis des
décades, nos droits traditionnels ont étés brimés au nom
de la sécurité publique, alors que les criminels ont vu leurs
droits augmenter au nom de la réhabilitation.
Under the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Liberal governments
of the 1970’s, a social revolution took place in Canada.
Nowhere is this more evident than in our failed and broken
criminal justice system. Punishment, and the retribution
of Canadians through their government, courts and law
enforcement agencies were removed and «rehabilitative
justice» brought in to replace them.
Sous le régime Libéral de Pierre Elliot Trudeau des années
1970, une révolution sociale a eu lieu au Canada. Ceci
est d’une évidence flagrante lorsque l’on constate notre
système de justice criminel brisé et déchu. Les peines,
In the meantime, it is clear that Canadians will
be called on more and more to provide for their
own personal security. If the reality of present
day Canadian society dictates this, the traditional
and practical rights of Canadians to provide for
that self-defense must be recognised and rediscovered in the courts, on the streets by law
enforcement, and in Parliament itself.
Pendant ce temps, il est clair que les canadiens
seront appelés de plus en plus de prodiguer leur
propre sécurité personnelle. Si la réalité de la
société canadienne actuelle nous dicte ceci, les
droits traditionnels et pratiques des canadiens de
prodiguer leur auto-défense doit être reconnue
et redécouverte par la Cour, dans la rue par les
policiers, ainsi qu’au Parlement lui-même.
The practise of creating a level playing field
between criminal and intended victim must end. For
too long, law-abiding Canadians have been hamstrung
by regulation and misguided enforcement when they
are forced to exercise their right of self-defense. Vague
laws and confusing regulations governing the right of
self-defense no longer serve Canadians. For too long
the Criminal Code of Canada has been misused by
governments and courts to facilitate bizarre social policies
and social re-engineering agendas, and it has begun to
undermine confidence in this most important of Canadian
institutions. That, perhaps, is the worse crime of all.
La pratique de créer un terrain égal entre les criminels
et leurs victimes doit cesser. Depuis trop longtemps,
les citoyens canadiens honnêtes ont été brimés par les
règlements et leur mauvaise application lorsqu’ils ont
été obligés d’exercer leur droit de se défendre. Des
lois vagues et des règlements qui portent à confusion
concernant l’auto-défense ne servent plus les canadiens.
Depuis trop longtemps le Code Criminel du Canada a
été malmené par les gouvernements et les Cours afin
de faciliter des politiques sociales bizarres ainsi qu’un
agenda de réingénierie sociale. Tout ceci a miné la
confiance de tous envers la plus importante des institutions
canadiennes. Ceci est, peut-être, le pire crime de tout.
www.nfa.ca
la rétribution des canadiens via leur gouvernement, la
magistrature et les agences policières ont été enlevées et
remplacées par la « justice réhabilitative ».
Part of this movement commanded that use of force in the
enforcement of the Criminal Code of Canada would be the
sole purview of the state. The readiness to use force in the
act of self defense, or the defense of others would be bred
out of Canadians. New directions were given to the RCMP
and other law enforcement agencies to discourage these
acts of personal authority and autonomy. Crown Attorneys
were instructed to file charges in any and every case where
violence was used in self defense, in the hope of getting
Continued on page 64.
Your Business Card
Could Appear Here!
Interested?
Call us at (604) 250-7910
or e-mail us at
[email protected]
June / July 2008
9
by Sean G. Penney, National VP Communications
Vice President’s
Column
The Winds of Change...
A
s a small child I was always taught not to fear
change. Change can be good and as fellow members
of Canada’s National Firearms Association, I’m
sure you’ve taken note of the radical and the some not
so radical changes your new National Executive have
undertaken the past number of months.
Thus far, the responses from Canada’s recreational
firearms community, and you, our members, have been
overwhelmingly positive. Indeed it is heartening to read
the many positive E-mails and letters we’ve received
in response to our last issue of the Canadian Firearms
Journal. What made it even better was the sheer number
of past and present members who actually picked up the
telephone and called us directly with your congratulations,
comments, suggestions and who chose to renew their
membership then and there!
That was one of our goals – to renew and revitalize, not
only the National Firearms Association, but the faith and
interest you, our members, have in the NFA as well! I now
know that we’re on the right track.
As part of this continuing renewal and revitalization
process, the National Executive, in conjunction with
provincial executives and various stakeholders has been
working diligently to draft a completely new set of bylaws for your National Firearms Association…Now before
you nod off, hold on a minute!
I know reading about a bunch of rules and procedures
may seem pretty darn uninteresting, but when you look at
them in the grander scheme of things, they’re essentially
the backbone of our Association. Without them, no
organization, including the National Firearms Association,
10
June / July 2008
could operate effectively, respond to crisis or function on
even the most minuscule of levels.
Our original by-laws were drafted way back in the early
1980’s by our irascible and sorely missed former National
President, David Tomlinson. Dave had been fighting the
“good fight” against bad gun laws and for the protection
of the rights of responsible firearms owners since the
1970s. The NFA and the by-laws he drafted then was the
sum product of his experiences until that time. Obviously,
the final product was most definitely a child of the 20th
Century and one that worked well for its time.
However, as I pointed out in my last column, we’ve
entered a new political era. With the election of the
Harper Government we are now in the midst of a very real
paradigm shift in Canadian politics. While the recreational
firearms community, in general, and Canada’s National
Firearms Association, in particular, is reaping the benefits
of this radical transformation, we cannot afford to assume
that a few tactical wins will translate into ultimate victory.
As the winds of change (there’s that word again!), both
legal and political, sweep across our nation, Canada’s
National Firearms Association must change with it.
That is why we have undertaken the Herculean task of
creating an entirely new framework within which future
NFA executives will govern and guide the course of our
Association, and our ever so important fight to protect our
rights as responsible firearms owners.
The NFA, as it exists today, is the child of the last quarter
of the 20th Century. As we draw near to the end of the
first decade of the 21st Century, we realize it is time for
us to reinvent ourselves. This is necessary for us to meet
www.nfa.ca
the needs of our rapidly growing and increasingly diverse
membership; the rapidly transforming political reality we
find before us in Ottawa; and to better serve the needs of
the recreational firearms community in this new age.
In the weeks ahead we plan on presenting to you, for your
approval, a draft of our proposed new bylaws. The goal of
these bylaws is to create a more open, more democratic,
more transparent, more representative and more flexible
National Firearms Association…an Association that can
respond even more effectively and efficiently to the many
challenges still facing responsible firearms owners.
Since accepting the responsibility of serving as your
National Vice-President, the words of one of my personal
heroes, (as well as drafter of the American Declaration of
Independence and third President of the United States),
Thomas Jefferson have begun resounding within me
with ever greater frequency. Jefferson said, “…the price
of freedom is eternal vigilance.” While those words may
sound corny or outdated to an ever increasingly jaded 21st
Century populace, they ring true to me today.
Our rights remain in jeopardy. Until we succeed in
completely dismantling the former Liberal Government’s
gun control program - from the $2 Billion dollar
boondoggle that is the “Long-Gun Registry,” to the
wasteful and inefficient bureaucratic complexity of our
“Authorization to Transport” requirements for restricted
firearms to the haphazard and unilateral reclassification
of some legally purchased and owned firearms from being
“good” Restricted Class guns to “bad” Prohibited Class
guns because of a single millimeter in barrel length or
difference in caliber.
It all has to go, and until it does it doesn’t matter if you are
a dedicated Trap shooter, hunter, military surplus collector,
high-power rifle competitor, handgun shooter, “black or
green” rifle shooter or simply own an old Cooey .22 that
sits behind the hot water boiler in your basement.
We’re all equal members of Canada’s recreational firearms
community and we all must accept the mantle of becoming
steward’s of our own destiny. We can no longer choose to
ignore attacks on one group of shooters and their rights,
simply because we, ourselves are not directly impacted.
Nor can we continue to tolerate “fair weather” gun
owners who have foolishly bought into Mayor Miller’s
disinformation campaign simply because, as rifle owners
they believe “their guns aren’t the problem,” or who say
“…there is no reason to own a handgun because you can’t
hunt with it!”
In addition to displaying their ignorance, such individuals
do a grave disservice to all responsible firearms owners,
as they essentially give aid and comfort to the enemy of
every generation of Canadian gun owner now born and yet
to come.
Their words and support provide ammunition that our gungrabbing enemies gleefully use against us and serves to
sow dissent and recrimination amongst what should be a
tight-knit community of hunters and shooters.
To those individuals, I ask you, who will speak for you
when they’ve banned all handguns, when they’ve banned
all semi-automatics, when they’ve banned all repeating
firearms and they’ve finally come for your deer rifle or
duck gun???
“Never happen,” you say??? Just ask any former British
or Australian gun owner! Canada’s gun laws are directly
based on the exact same legislation used by our gungrabbing enemies in Great Britain & Australia!!! We must
stand united!
In closing I would just like to thank those or you who have
stepped up the plate and become involved in your local
Conservative Riding Associations, joined the Conservative
Party of Canada, taken the time to write to your local
newspaper and/or renewed your NFA membership. Thankyou!
Now go out there and motivate your family members and
hunting and shooting buddies to follow your example! For
the first time in decades we are not under active legislative
attack. We have the momentum, and it’s up to all of us to
ensure that we don’t lose it!
Get involved! Get motivated and join the fight! You Are
the NFA and we’re in this fight to win!!!
The renewed attacks on legal handgun owners by Toronto
Mayor David Miller are a case in point. While statistics
and past experiences of fellow British Commonwealth
members such as Great Britain and Australia provide
positive proof of the ineffectiveness and folly of gun bans,
Mayor Miller and his supporters are far more interested
in appearing to deal with Toronto’s “gun” problem, rather
than directly addressing the politically sensitive reality of
illegally smuggled guns from the United States and his
city’s growing criminal gang problem.
www.nfa.ca
June / July 2008
11
Letters to the
Hello Mr. Mauser,
Good Afternoon Christopher,
I read with great interest your article
regarding the Bruce Montague trial in the
latest Canadian Firearms Journal. A Great
Magazine.
I was particularly interested and concerned
about the judge’s statement: “While
Canadians have many rights, not all of them
are fundamental rights which are guaranteed
by the Charter. Even Blackstone noted that at
Common Law the right to possess firearms
was not an absolute right but an auxiliary
right....”
The homicide rate in Canada as per your information is 1.9 per 100K
population.
In the US it is decreasing, but is probably still much higher than
1.9?
In the UK it is increasing, but is probably still much lower than 1.9?
This continues in the second chart, since the change in the US rate is
based on the fact that the rate is probably much larger than 1.9.
It has been some time since I have read
Blackstone’s Commentaries, but I seem to
remember that he did say something to the
effect that auxiliary rights ( I believe he
cited four) were not to be seen as secondary
rights but rather as pillars that supported the
other rights. I do remember him saying the
KEYSTONE RIGHT which upheld all the
others was the “ right of the subject to bear
arms” followed by some sort of statement - in
the event that the social order or governments
fail... something like that.
If the above assumptions are correct, then personally, I find your story
kinda misleading as it exposes only the statistics that tend to confirm
the exposé which is required to influence readers of the journal, but
not the whole picture.
It is my understand that when the Constitution
is silent - Common Law prevails.
Dear Mr Magnan,
I am disappointed that increasingly many but
not all firearm groups are using hunting as the
reason for firearms being owned in Canada. I
have nothing against hunting but we should
remember that hunting is a privilege, selfdefense is the right. The first fundamental
right.
12
I have read and enjoyed your article on violent crime in Canada, but
can not take it too seriously. I am sure that your numbers are correct,
but find them to be incomplete. In the paragraph where you state
that the rate is falling in the US but increasing in UK, it would be
greatly appreciated if this was substantiated with numbers. This can
be interpreted as follows, which is probably why the base figures do
not appear.
Hope that you can print the numbers that would show the whole
picture.
Thank You,
Roger Magnan
Orléans On
You are correct in saying Figure 2, my chart comparing Canadian
and American homicide rates, is incomplete. That’s how it should
be. Charts are supposed to answer a question not present all the data.
Any chart that includes too much is just confusing. But charts should
not be misleading. I did not cherry-pick the statistics that supported
my argument while rejecting those that do not. I try very hard to be
honest.
Sincerely
Rob A. Hetherington.
My question here is how to evaluate the success of a country’s
approach to criminal violence. Thus, this chart compares
the changes in the homicide rates since the early 1990s.
The magnitude of the homicide rates is irrelevant to
this question.
Editor: I couldn’t agree more Rob, and
hopefully this issue of CFJ will clarify the
NFA’s position on self-defense, in case
anyone had doubts.
This question is analogous to evaluating efforts
to lose weight. If two people adopt different
diets, then the way to know which approach
works better is to compare how much weight
June / July 2008
www.nfa.ca
Editor
(by percentage) each one loses. Consider two
women, one weighing 180 and the other 120
pounds. If one woman loses 20% while the
other only loses 15%, this suggests the first
diet is more effective, ceteris paribus. The fact
that one still weighs more than the other is
irrelevant.
The Canadian approach to guns and violence
has not reduced our homicide rate as much as
the Americans have been able to reduce theirs.
This is quite surprising. First, since the US
is roughly ten times the size of Canada, they
would be expected to have greater difficulty in
making changes than would a smaller country.
Compare trying to try to turn a battleship with
a speedboat. Second, the American justice
system is much more decentralized than ours.
Any major change in the US requires many
states to act in concert.
Readers should however be provided with
enough information to check on my claims.
Here are average homicide rates for Canada,
the US, and England (per 100,000 population)
for this time period.
Canada USA England & Wales
1990-94 2.58
9.4
1.2
2001-05 1.85
5.6
1.7
Cordially,
Gary Mauser
Professor emeritus
Simon Fraser University
National Firearms Association
Published by the National Firearms Association
Editor.........................................................................CFJEditor@nfa.ca
Advertising............................................................. [email protected]
Clive Edwards
(604) 250-7910
Accounts / Membership / General Info................. [email protected]
Legal Inquiries.................................................................. [email protected]
National Executive
National President..........................................................(780) 439-1394
Blair Hagen
[email protected]
National Vice-President Communication......................(780) 439-1394
Sean Penney
[email protected]
Provincial Contacts
British Columbia.............................................................bcpres@nfa.ca
Sheldon Clare
(250) 563-2804
Alberta.................................................................................info@nfa.ca
(780) 439-1394
Saskatchewan.................................................................. [email protected]
Dan Lupichuk
(306) 332-3907
Manitoba.............................................................................info@nfa.ca
(780) 439-1394
Nova Scotia..................................................................... [email protected]
Dave Udle
(902) 567-3600
Letters should be directed to the Editor. Legal and
political questions should be directed to the NFA
Legal Department. Letters must include the Name,
Address, and Phone Number of the sender.
www.nfa.ca
The Official Magazine of the
Quebec............................................................................pqpres@nfa.ca
Phil Simard
(514) 365-0685
Vice-President
[email protected]
Stephen Buddo
(450) 430-0786
Do you have a question? Something you want
clarified? Please send us a letter or an e-mail. We
would love to hear from you.
e-mail: [email protected]
Firearms Journal
Ontario............................................................................onpres@nfa.ca
Bill Rantz
(705) 385-2636
Questions?
P.O. Box 52183
Edmonton, AB
Canada T6G 2T5
Canadian
New Brunswick.......................................................................................
Harland Cook
(506) 459-7416
Newfoundland.................................................................natvpc@nfa.ca
Sean Penney
(709) 598-2040
Cathy Keane
(709) 368-3920
Publication Sales Agreement 40050578
Box 52183
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada T6G 2T5
www.nfa.ca
Tel: (780) 439-1394
Fax: (780) 439-4091
[email protected]
June / July 2008
13
I
n 2003, Dryden, Ontario gunsmith
Bruce Montague set out to get
arrested for violating Canada’s
Firearms Act. His intention was to
challenge the law’s constitutionality
in court. He demonstrated peacefully
on Parliament Hill on January 1,
2003. He traveled across Canada with
members of the Canadian Unregistered
Firearms Owners Association and
protested in every provincial capital,
at the Canadian Firearms Centre in
Miramichi, New Brunswick and finally
back on Parliament Hill. They were
ignored.
Montague’s “moral authority” to
defy the law comes from the writings
of the late Dr. Martin Luther King
as expressed in his “letter from a
Birmingham Jail”:
“I would agree with St. Augustine that
an ‘unjust law is no law at all. [..]
A just law is a man-made code that
squares with the moral law or the law
of God. An unjust law is a code that is
out of harmony with the moral law.”
On Saturday, September 11, 2004,
Bruce Montague was arrested at a
Dryden, Ontario gun show. Ontario
Provincial Police Officers dragged
Bruce away, leaving 12-year-old Katey
to fend for herself. Donna Montague
was informed of Bruce’s arrest by a
show vendor and told to come pick up
her daughter. When Donna arrived,
OPP Officers arrested her too.
14
June / July 2008
They searched the family home
twice. Despite asking for one, Donna
Montague was refused a copy of the
search warrant. Upon her release,
she was threatened with obstruction
of justice charges if she stepped foot
on her property. Prior to the second
search warrant being issued Bruce
was held in custody where he was
threatened with the destruction of his
home by bulldozer if he did not reveal
the location of his firearms.
When Bruce was finally released, no
bond of any kind was required, despite
his facing 23 charges of violating
Canada’s licensing and registration
scheme.
In 2004, a year after Bruce and
Donna’s arrest, the Ontario
Government seized the Montague’s
family home using Ontario’s Proceeds
of Crime Act. They “graciously”
allowed the family to remain in the
home until after criminal proceedings
are complete, at which time they will
proceed with the house forfeiture order
regardless of the outcome of Bruce’s
criminal trial. This seizure effectively
killed the Montague’s defense. Equity
in their home and 160 acre property,
which they own outright, could no
longer be used to help finance their
legal challenge.
The seizure of his home forced
Montague and his case management
team to find other ways to finance
the Constitutional Challenge. Katey,
Bruce’s daughter, found her own
way to help raise awareness of the
case using the video sharing service
YouTube.com. (http://youtube.com/
KateysFirearmsFacts)
As I wrote earlier, “Round One” is
now complete. The constitutional and
criminal trials have finished, decisions
and sentences handed down.
“Round Two”, the appeals process,
now begins.
There are numerous grounds to
appeal the Constitutional Trial
judgment, as there are in the criminal
trial. Both search warrants for the
Montague family home were probably
illegal. Justice Wright ruled that
Montague and his attorney Douglas
Christie could not challenge the
constitutionality of the search warrants
because “the window” had expired
(whatever that means).
Montague was held in custody and
threatened with the destruction of
his home by a bulldozer if he did not
reveal the location of his firearms.
When he finally relented, not wanting
to see the home he built with his own
hands destroyed by his government,
the second search warrant was sought
and granted.
During the criminal trial where
Montague was exonerated of all
charges of “dangerous to the public
peace”, the judge ordered the Crown
to redraft the charges three times.
Justice Wright’s rationale for ordering
www.nfa.ca
the changes was that if the Crown did not re-word them, he would have
to order an acquittal. Justice Wright ordered the final change after the
Defense had rested and could no longer present evidence.
This is NOT the kind of thing that Canadians expect of their justice
system. It’s what we expect from third-world dictatorships.
The pre-sentencing report asked for a community-based sentence, as
Montague was found to be a productive and useful member of society, for
whom jail time would not be useful.
The judge criticized Montague’s personality traits but recognized him as
a fine upstanding citizen and a contributing member of society. He then
proceeded to sentence Montague to 18 months in jail.
The “crimes” that most upset the judge and the general public related
to full autos and a silenced pistol. The Criminal Code s117.09 exempts
gunsmiths, indeed all firearms businesses, from the law on these types
of firearms. It is clearly written that a business and any employee of
that business may possess prohibited devices and/or prohibited firearms,
may manufacture them, and may convert a firearm to fire full-auto. It
also authorizes the alteration of a serial number. (see sidebar “As It Is
Written”)
All of these so-called offenses were committed BEFORE his personal and
business licenses had expired.
These offenses, for which Bruce received the longest sentences, are
“paper crimes” in their truest sense. Had Mr. Montague retained his
personal and business licenses, there would be no violation of the law. It
is only his principled stance against an unjust law that allowed the Crown
to arrest and charge him for these “paper crimes”.
There was no victim or threat to anyone for the “crimes” Mr Montague
was convicted of.
Murderers have received lesser sentences than Mr Montague. For
example, a BC woman, Teresa Layne Senner, was given two years less
a day house arrest for the murder of her married lover. She killed a man
and got sent home, after being told she cannot use email or the Internet
for the two years. Montague gets 18 months in jail. Is that justice?
Off to Jail - March 18, 2008 - present
Mr. Montague was taken directly to jail from the court house. There he
was strip searched and put in Segregation. Guards demanded a blood
sample, despite the judge ruling no such sample was required.
Montague was deemed non-compliant for refusing to give a blood
sample. He eventually agreed to an x-ray for TB, but was held in
segregation for another five days after that. He was released from
segregation on his 15th day in prison.
Calls to the Ontario Ministry of Corrections to find out why Bruce
Montague was being held in segregation by the editor of Canadian
Firearms Journal, were not returned, although the editor was told
someone will “definitely” get back to him. As of publication date,
nobody has returned that phone call.
On April 11th Bruce was released on bail pending the outcome of his
appeals to both the criminal convictions and the Charter Challenge.
Fundraising for the lengthy appeals process is now underway.
www.nfa.ca
If you would like to help Donna and Katey
Montague, the Dryden IGA store will accept
credit card purchases of gift certificates for the
Montague family. Please call 807-221-2400 if
you would like to help the family in this way.
The store will call the family to let them know
your gift certificate is waiting for them.
If you would like to make a donation to help
the Montague’s continue the legal battle for
all our rights to the Supreme Court, you can
donate through the website at http://www.
brucemontague.ca, or by mailing donations
directly to “Bruce Montague Scrap C-68
Fund” c/o Roger Nordlund, Trustee, RR#2,
Site 211, Box 7, Dryden, Ontario, P8N 2Y5.
Your guns and the rights of your children and
grandchildren depend on it!
As It Is Written...
This is what the law says:
Employees of business with licence
117.09 (1) Notwithstanding any other
provision of this Act, but subject to section
117.1, no individual who is the holder of
a licence to possess and acquire restricted
firearms and who is employed by a business
as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Firearms
Act that itself is the holder of a licence that
authorizes the business to carry out specified
activities in relation to prohibited firearms,
prohibited weapons, prohibited devices or
prohibited ammunition is guilty of an offence
under this Act or the Firearms Act by reason
only that the individual, in the course of the
individual’s duties or employment in relation
to those specified activities,
(a) possesses a prohibited firearm, a prohibited
weapon, a prohibited device or any prohibited
ammunition;
(b) manufactures or transfers, or offers
to manufacture or transfer, a prohibited
weapon, a prohibited device or any prohibited
ammunition;
(c) alters a firearm so that it is capable of, or
manufactures or assembles any firearm with
intent to produce a firearm that is capable of,
discharging projectiles in rapid succession
during one pressure of the trigger; or
(d) alters a serial number on a firearm.
June / July 2008
15
By Sheldon Clare
O
n April 4, I was in Ottawa to meet
with Stockwell Day’s senior policy
analyst, Roy Rempel, to discuss
some of the NFA’s concerns regarding
Canada’s firearm laws. The meeting was
a frank discussion of the issues, one-onone. Mr. Rempel listened to the concerns
I presented and asked questions about the
issues.
He pointed out that if the Liberals get in next
election, or if the other parties increase their
seats it will not be a good thing for firearm
people. The Australian model seems to be
the one that our enemies are interested in
adopting.
I acknowledged the good things that this
government had done, but pointed out that
most efforts represented delays rather than
real legislative solutions. I pointed out that
Bill C-24, so-called ending of the longarm registry is not sufficient to get base
voter support, because it retains a quasiregistration of each long arm transaction.
Bill C-24 does not end the long arm registry
nor does it remove existing records.
The point that I made to Mr. Rempel is
that if the Conservatives want firearm
people to vote for them, they must offer
something worthy of our support. In other
words, repeating that others are worse will
not stop people from staying home during
the election. Pandering to those who will
not support the Conservatives anyway
is likewise not the way to get a majority
government.
The way to build a majority is by recognizing
the party’s base supporters, and by holding
firm on the issues that built that base.
What’s for sale?
When you want to buy something it only
makes sense to see what the merchants are
selling. It is not enough to see something in
www.nfa.ca
the window that you don’t like. If there is
nothing in the window for you, all that tells
you is not to shop at that store. You want
something that makes you choose that store
instead of one of its competitors.
It is the same with politics.
We all know there are political parties that
have items in their window that firearms
people are not interested in buying. These
things are firearms prohibitions, increased
controls on firearms and their owners and
users, more controls on ammunition, etc.
We are not going to shop at those stores.
However, is it sufficient to shop at the
other store just because the competition is
bad? In economics, if there is nothing to
buy then people don’t buy – they hang onto
their resources for things that they want and
need.
In politics, if there is nothing offered to
firearms people, then what invariably
happens is that they stay home on voting day.
The way to get votes is to put something in
the shop window.
In this regard, the fact that the Liberals have
nothing in their store let alone the shop
window is helping the other parties a great
deal. But watch out, if the Liberals ever start
stocking their shelves and differentiating
themselves from the other parties, then they
might just attract some supporters.
The challenge right now is for the
Conservatives to start to make their position
on firearms law clear and to give firearms
owners a reason to not stay home on election
day, to leave the comfortable chair and the
television set and VOTE.
Staying home is a dangerous, if
understandable, proposition. Of the major
parties, only the Conservatives are not antigun. However, not being anti-gun doesn’t
make that party pro-gun, despite the best
efforts of MPs like Garry Breitkreuz and
others to encourage pro-firearms policies.
The problem is that there is nothing in the
Conservative window right now to bring
people into the store.
That is where we left the meeting. It is time
for the Conservative Party to show they
represent a choice on firearms legislation
which is neither status quo nor increased
control.
Firearms owners have waited for decades
for a responsible government that will
correct past wrongs and build public policy
based on what works, not on the action of
lunatics in well-publicized shootings, or the
inability of municipal governments to solve
gang problems.
As a member of the Canadian firearms
culture, it is up to you to contact your
Member of Parliament, the Minister of
Public Safety, Stockwell Day, Outdoor
Caucus chair Garry Breitkreuz and all the
other Conservative MP’s out there.
Write a letter, not merely an e-mail, and tell
them that you want real change on firearms
law, not just status quo. When you send
your letter, email a copy to the National
Firearms Association so we can help bring
your voice to our politicians.
Postage to your MP and Ministers is free.
The mailing address [MP or Minister’s
Name], House of Commons, Parliament
Buildings, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6.
It is only our continued and unwavering
dedication to this fight that will bring us
victory, so write soon and write often.
And when you write, keep us here at the
NFA informed so we can echo your voice
when we deal with the Minister and the
Conservative Party.
June / July 2008
17
by Jane Gaffin
In Defense of the Great Equalizer
Cell phones offer little comfort.
Should one be so unfortunate to be the
victim of an assault, rape or robbery, it
will be difficult to call the police while
the act is in progress.
Policeman Massad Ayoob, a cop of
27 years, and a father who taught his
two daughters to handle guns properly,
knows the reality of crime and
violence on the streets.
A
s a woman once held hostage at gunpoint, I want to
have a heart-to-heart talk with my rational sisters about
crime in our community. Men need self-protection, but this
article is FOR WOMEN ONLY.
Personal security has become very serious business as crime
continues to escalate disproportionately in our community.
Yet crime can only be rampant if it is condoned, excused,
overlooked, allowed, and, yes, submitted to.
As much as possible, crime should be dealt with when and
where it happens. Without blaming the victims for dealing
with it.
Crime doesn’t run on a clock. It can occur anywhere at any
minute. A victim can be traumatized, terrorized, maimed or
killed within a matter of seconds.
In broad daylight, a lone 31-year-old woman was dragged
into a ditch and beaten unconscious while she walked along
busy Mountainview Drive in the residential area of Porter
Creek. An unknown male attacker is still on the lam and
may never be apprehended.
Self-defense classes for women have become popular.
Women have been advised to arm themselves with
everything from flashlights to whistles. Whoop-dee-do.
18
June / July 2008
Police work is reactive, not proactive,
he advised in a column for Backwoods
Home Magazine. “Anyone who says ‘the police will protect
you’ hasn’t been a cop,” he related in his article Of Kids and
Guns (http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/ayoob68.
html ).
“Those of us who have been, know that we can only
respond to calls for our service. This means, basically, that
you have to survive long enough to call us, and then you
have to wait for us to get there.”
Some women, discouraged by the red-tape involved with
Canada’s abominable Firearms Act, unfortunately sold their
self-protection rather than endure the over-regulation.
The gun prohibitionists who lobbied for unrealistic gun
control laws and the politicians who passed the legislation
sent Canadians a message: the state distrusts honest,
decent, law-abiding citizens more than it fears rapists,
robbers and murderers!
They say our lives are not worth defending.
Countering violence by killing an attacker is said to breed
an uncivilized society. Translation: It is morally superior to
be raped and dead, than be standing over your dead attacker,
a smoking gun in your hand.
www.nfa.ca
There is no evidence to substantiate
a claim that more lenient gun laws
would translate into every assailant or
house burglar being blown away by a
gun.
Any item you might use in selfdefense can be construed as a weapon
if you use it inflict harm on another
person. It may be hands, clunky goldnugget rings on fingers (like brass
knuckles), boots (feet in), fingernails,
keys, kitchen knife, hockey stick,
baseball bat or walking cane.
“The law is taking away people’s guns
and the criminals know this fact and
are emboldened,” explained Ottawabased Linda Thom, Canada’s first
woman to win an Olympic gold medal
in handgun shooting.
Honest and decent people, who try
to be law-abiding citizens, are losing
their rights and are afraid to defend
themselves.
In the Criminal Code section on “selfdefence against unprovoked assaults”,
the court’s responsibility is to decide if
the force is no more than necessary to
fit the occasion.
“That is the hardship,” noted Thom,
an authority on guns, personal safety
and legislation. “The ordinary citizen’s
actions are interpreted afterwards.”
Women should not be lured into a
false sense of security or confidence
by believing they can learn physical
self-defense techniques to ward off
a doped up thug, much less a whole
gang of them armed with razors and
chains. Those skills cannot be learned
overnight. This is not a television
script, but reality.
Not all females are athletic. And, as
people age, their bodies are less agile.
Arthritis or a bad hip can render two
feet useless for running away.
In 1991, a couple moved from
California’s Monterey Peninsula
to Oregon. The woman became
apprehensive about her personal safety.
She keeps books for her husband’s real
estate business and often travels alone
at night or would be at home alone
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while her husband worked late. Guard
dogs weren’t her style. She considered
various forms of self-defense before
choosing a handgun.
thorough background check weed out
irresponsible people and ensure it’s not
just the criminals who have access to
guns.
“I think I’m sort of too old to do
martial arts,” the middle-aged
grandmother recently told the
Christian Science Monitor, “and I
really don’t want to let anybody get
that close.
“Hopefully, I’ll never need it,” she
was quoted as saying. “But that’s not a
reason not to carry it.”
“If you want to know the truth, I’d
rather end it (encounter) sooner than
later.”
In places where concealed weapons
can be carried legally, criminals don’t
know who does and who doesn’t have
one. They’re not as willing to carjacking a lone women. She might be
packing.
So, she packs a .38 caliber revolver
next to her breath mints and Kleenex
in a separate, hidden, tear-away Velcro
pouch in a black handbag. She can
plunge her hand inside and shoot her
attacker right through the purse.
“I don’t believe in killing people,” said
the sweet-voiced woman who cannot
be identified for obvious reasons. “But
I do believe in protecting myself.”
The handgun is small and light. It
can be carried constantly. It doesn’t
demand great strength or skill like a
knife or the art of karate.
It does, however, require gun courses,
a cool head under pressure and good
hand-eye coordination. The beauty
of the .38 is it can be used effectively
by the lone jogger, the teacher, the
elderly and the physically disabled
against the young and mighty who are
intent to inflict harm on an otherwise
defenseless person.
The Oregon woman recognizes the
huge responsibility of packing a pistol.
It is for self-protection only. It was the
urging of a friend that prompted her to
apply for a concealed-weapon permit
five years ago.
“Things have gotten more dangerous,”
she told Lane Hartrill of the Monitor.
“People are more bold than they used
to be. Generally, society itself is going
to you-know-where in a hand-basket.”
She is quite aware of the paranoia
about guns and the white-hot debate
raging between concealed-carry
advocates and gun prohibitionists. She
believes Oregon’s laws requiring a
Everybody doesn’t have to pack a gun
to render a community safer.
Although millions of Canadians own
guns, this country has essentially been
disarmed, thanks mainly to the radical,
do-good women’s groups.
These groups view guns as instruments
of violence only, not a means of selfprotection.
A Yukon woman’s application to
carry a concealed weapon for selfdefense would undoubtedly be denied.
Meanwhile, the criminals can buy an
AK-47 assault rifle or a handgun quite
easily.
To put it crudely, my dear sistahs, we
are the victims of our own gender’s
screw job. Those radical ladies, the
likes of Wendy Cukier, president
of the Coalition for Gun Control,
pushed until innocent women are now
“desperadoes”. We are faced with the
ugly choice between self-protection or
respecting an odious law.
Just as violent crime is not about sex
or property, but rather about power
and domination, un-obey-able firearms
laws are not about crime control but
about the power of the state to control
our lives.
This country is already feeling the
fallout from that horrible piece of
legislation: the Firearms Act.
Self-defense is every person’s right.
We can and must demand the law be
changed. However, we’d better hurry.
Our lives depend on it.
June / July 2008
19
Lori Townsend:
Hunter, Shooter... Newlywed
This new column will feature
an interview and photos of an
interesting gun owner... who
they are, why they own guns,
and how their shooting interest
got started. If you or someone
you know would like to be
featured in this column, please
contact Christopher di Armani
at [email protected] with
your contact information and
a short note about why you
ought to be featured here.
L
ori Townsend was born in
Hammond, Louisiana, and
now resides in Houston
Texas, where she is Director of
Marketing for several surgical
practices. She’s an avid hunter and
she recently got married. Her wedding ceremony had an interesting
twist, as you will read. Lori was gracious enough to spend a little time
answering questions about her life and firearms experience.
CFJ: When did you first get interested in firearms?
LT: I grew up with firearms, and they’ve always been a part of my life. It
took several years to realize that not all of my friends had parents who
owned firearms. To me it was just a normal way of life. In my eyes,
having guns all around was as normal as having a gallon of milk in
the fridge.
CFJ: Who was your primary firearms instructor?
LT: My dad taught my older brother and me about guns at a very
young age. We grew up in a house with loaded firearms in almost
every room. My dad was great about taking the mystery out of
firearms. Any time we wanted he would take one out, unload it,
let us handle it or take us out to shoot it. We were taught not
only to respect firearms, but to enjoy them as well.
CFJ: Why do you own firearms?
LT: I own firearms for a variety of reasons. Each gun that
I own is actually part of my collection for its own reason.
Some I own for hunting various animals of different
sizes, some I own for protection and some I own simply
because they are fun to shoot. I own them because I
can. I own them because I could never imagine not
owning firearms. CFJ: How did you get started hunting?
LT: My dad has been taking me out on hunting
trips with him since I could walk. Getting all
20
June / July 2008
www.nfa.ca
dressed up in camo and trying to be very quiet so I didn’t scare away the deer. It’s not
easy to keep a 4 year old quiet for several hours!
CFJ: What animals to you like to hunt? With what firearms and calibers?
LT: I have gone on dove and duck hunts before, but the only animal I routinely hunt
is whitetail deer. When I was just starting out as a hunter, I had a Winchester Model
70 in .243. These days I love having my trusty Ruger M77 in .25-06 with me. I have
other rifles, but this is my favorite by far. It has taken down deer from 50 to 350
yards away.
CFJ: Why do you hunt?
LT: I hunt for many reasons. I hunt because it helps keep animal populations
under control. I hunt because I love the adrenaline rush of lining up that perfect
shot and making a clean kill. I hunt deer because venison is quite tasty and
healthy and there is a certain satisfaction in eating something that you have
personally killed, cleaned and cooked. I hunt because it gives me a good excuse
to get away from the city and all of the chaos and enjoy the woods as the sun
first comes up and the animals begin to move. It’s peaceful and quiet and a
welcome reprieve from the daily grind.
CFJ: Tell us about your best hunting experience. LT: My best hunting experience was actually one in which I didn’t kill
anything. This past Thanksgiving I took my husband (then fiance) out with
me to the deer lease in Mississippi for his first hunt. The weather did not
cooperate and we weren’t able to take any shots, but it was great to be able
to share that part of my life with him. He grew up shooting, but had never
tried hunting. He had a great time and I know it is a hobby we will be able
to share for the rest of our lives.
CFJ: What is your opinion on banning handguns?
LT: I think that banning handguns only takes them out of the hands of
law-abiding citizens and makes them easier targets for criminals. If
someone doesn’t care about the laws regarding robbery, rape or murder,
they are definitely not going to care whether their ownership of a gun is
legal.
CFJ: Tell us about your Texas concealed carry license, what is
required to obtain it, and why you chose to carry a firearm.
LT: Texas requires going through a 10 hour course taught in the
classroom, qualifying at the range and passing a 50 question test.
The class covers the basics of gun safety and the laws regarding use
of force and when and where you may legally carry a weapon. You
send in fingerprint cards, color photographs, a licensing fee and
your application and if you are able to pass a background check,
you are issued your CHL.
I chose to take this class and carry a firearm because I do not
want to ever be a victim. I don’t need a CHL to hunt or target
shoot, but I do need it if I want to legally give myself every
chance for self defense. There are always going to be criminals
who are bigger and stronger than I am and carrying a gun
levels the playing field.
They call firearms “the great equalizer” for a reason. There
are dangerous people in this world and if more people armed
themselves and made it riskier for criminals to cause harm I
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June / July 2008
21
know the crime rates would plummet. We don’t
need fewer guns in the street, we need them in
the hands of law-abiding citizens.
CFJ: You are active politically to protect the
rights of law-abiding gun owners. What is the
primary focus of your activism?
LT: Educating the public is the first step.
One of my favorite things to do is take new
people out to the range and teach them how
to shoot. I have taken numerous people who
were either afraid of guns, anti-firearms or
just never had an opportunity to be around
them and turned them into gun lovers. There
is no better feeling than watching the smile on
someone’s face after they fire that first shot. I
also keep up to date with the latest legal battles
related to firearms and make sure my elected
representatives know how I feel.
CFJ: What prompted you to become politically
active?
LT: I believe that if you are passionate about
something, you must do what you can to
protect it. Politicians are supposed to be
elected to represent our interests and without
the public voicing those opinions, this is not
possible.
CFJ: You got married recently. Tell us all
about the “big day”! LT: My wedding was amazing. It was
incredible to have all of your friends and
family gathered in one place to share in such a
momentous occasion. There were a few bumps
along the way, but I don’t think anyone has a
wedding where every little detail goes exactly
as planned. Everything worked out in the end
and we had a blast. I only wish it hadn’t gone
by so quickly.
CFJ: How did your new husband take to
the discovery of your gun and thigh holster
underneath your wedding dress?
LT: My husband already knew I’d be carrying
at the wedding. At one point in the picture
taking process the photographer asked to
take some pictures of the garter. I replied “I
don’t have a garter, but I do have a gun under
there.” Our wedding photographer also runs
a few gun related websites and I knew he
would enjoy it. Several of the guests were a
bit surprised, but everyone had a good laugh
about it.
Photo courtesy Nolan Conley (www.NolanConley.com)
22
June / July 2008
www.nfa.ca
Canadian
I
Championships:
returned home after almost 3 months in Europe to race
Canadian Nationals in Callaghan Valley (the 2010 Biathlon
site!) These were my last races of the season and it was
awesome to be back in Canada. My parents and grandparents
came to watch and I enjoyed cheering for my younger sister
who competed in the afternoon. I took a gold medal in both the
Individual and Sprint competitions. Our BC mixed relay team also
took a bronze medal. Two wins at home was a satisfying way to
end an exciting season!
Once again I owe an enormous THANK YOU to everyone who
has supported me. I have been able to afford a winter season
with multiple tours, many good races and some once in a lifetime
learning experiences with your support. I paid close to $6000
in tour fees this season and every contribution makes a huge
difference to me. I am so thankful that I was able to accept
all of the race opportunities I earned this season - there is no
replacement for race experience and I become a stronger and
smarter athlete with every competition. I truly cannot thank you
enough.
Photo credit to the Prince George Citizen and photographer David Mah.
Megan Tandy Update
I have finished this season as the Canadian Junior Women’s
Champion and as one of the top 4 Senior Women in Canada. I
have taken a number of big strides towards qualifying for the 2010
Olympics this year. For the first time I can now say that, not only
is 2010 a dream, but it is a goal that I am well on my way
to achieving. I know there is a lot of hard work ahead of
me and I can’t wait to get started! 2010 here I come!
What’s Next?
I will be back to full time training in the last week of
April with my goals set on the podium at Junior World
Championships 2008.
One of the biggest changes in the next months for me will be
moving to the National Training Center in Canmore, Alberta where
I have an “unofficial” invitation to train with the Senior National
Team.
I am apprehensive about leaving my current coach as we work
very well together; however, I know I will be better off in Canmore
where I will be training on paved rolllerski trails with a paved and
lit range; I will have access to sports massage, physiotherapy and
physiological testing at the University of Calgary and I will be
training with the best biathletes in Canada. I will also have other
advantages in terms of having a team of wax technicians to help
me choose and maintain my skis. Altogether, I am really excited
about some big changes and new training advantages this year.
www.nfa.ca
June / July 2008
23
by: Bernard Pelletier
Big Bang on the Watopeka
End for an era
crédits photo : Bernard Pelletier
View of the cooperage from the gangway on the Watopeka.
Une passerelle sur un des bras de la Watopéka donne une perspective intéressante sur la
tonnellerie.
O
n April 21, 1922, Mr Arthur Trahan dies in the
explosion of the corning mill of the Windsor1
(Quebec) black powder plant. When the wind
finished blowing away the smoke and the dust, the oldest
black powder facility in Quebec had disappeared. During
half a century of operation, twenty workers were killed
in duty. The end of the black powder era was already
programmed even if World War I had postponed the
inevitable. Soon, the alders would take their revenge.
The whole story had started in 1864 when Sheldon Andrews
and Company built the first black powder mill in the
Province of Quebec to provide the North with explosives
during the Civil War that would give birth to the Unites
States.
The company had chosen the perfect place for such a
venture since the rapids of the Watopeka River were close
by and were used as a power source for machines. By the
way, Watopeka or Wdopika, from Abenaki origin, freely
translates as “the place where alder grow”, alder being the
much sought-after wood to produce the charcoal needed
to make black powder. The other two ingredients would
travel by boat and train. Indeed, India, Spain, Chile or Peru
would send their potassium nitrate, or saltpetre, which is
the oxygen provider for the explosion. Sulphur, needed as a
catalyst, would come from Sicily. Moreover, the plant was
close to the railroad leading to New England.
Under different names (Sheldon Andrews and Co., Marble
Andrews Co., Windsor Powder Co., Hamilton Powder
24
June / July 2008
Company and Canadian
Explosive Ltée), the
plant will mix two types
of black powder and,
between 1873 and 1880,
Dualin, a nitro-glycerine
based explosive. The first
type of black powder was
used in mining or similar
operations and the second
would provide hunters with
their gunpowder. In the U.
S., these explosives played
their part in the legendary
Conquest of the West. In
Canada, they also saw much
use in roads and railroads
construction. Closer to
the plant, the mines of the
Eastern Townships were
eager for it. The most spectacular use was certainly done
by the raftsmen who blasted away, often putting their own
life at risk, wood and ice jams that would hinder floating the
timber to the sawmills downstream.
In its heyday, the plant would comprise 56 buildings of all
kinds and cover 200 acres : a cooperage, a sawmill, a forge,
three charcoal kilns, an electric station, sheds, stables, an
office, the foreman’s house et two main warehouses. The
first would store up to 40 000 kegs of mining powder and
www.nfa.ca
by: Bernard Pelletier
Explosion sur la Watopéka
Fin d’une époque
The Foreman (Samuel Morin) talks business with one of the workers.
crédits photo : Parc historique de la Poudrière de Windsor
Le Foreman (Samuel morin) discute avec un travailleur de la presse, une
des bornes interactives qui rendent la visite des plus intéressantes.
V
ingt et un avril
1922, M. Arthur
Trahan périt dans
l’explosion du bâtiment
de granulation de la
poudrière de Windsor1.
Ainsi s’achève l’histoire de
la plus ancienne usine de
poudre noire du Québec.
Elle aura duré un peu plus
d’un demi-siècle et coûté la
vie à vingt travailleurs. La
grande époque de la poudre
noire se terminait. Si la
Première Guerre mondiale
lui avait donné un sursis,
ce dernier accident mettait
irrémédiablement fin à la
production de poudre noire
au Québec. L’usine fermait
ses portes et, au fil des années, les aulnes de la Watopéka
allaient reprendre leur sylvestre revanche.2
En 1864, la Sheldon Andrews and Company construit à
Windsor la première usine de poudre noire du Québec. Elle
pourvoira en partie aux besoins en explosifs des États du
Nord dans le conflit qui les oppose à ceux du Sud, au cours
de la Guerre de Sécession dont émergeront les Etats-Unis
d’Amérique.
www.nfa.ca
Le choix de cet emplacement était éminemment stratégique.
Rappelons-nous qu’à l’époque le courant des rivières
constituait une source d’énergie de première main. La
Watopéka par ses rapides était donc une candidate idéale.
En outre, Watopéka ou Wdopikak se traduit librement de
l’abénaquis par « là où poussent les aulnes ». Or, il s’agit
de l’essence préférée pour la fabrication du charbon de bois
qui représente la partie combustible du mélange de poudre
noire. Pour mémoire, les autres éléments sont le salpêtre
et le soufre(voir l’encadré des types de poudre noire). Le
salpêtre, nitrate de potassium ou de sodium, a pour fonction
est d’apporter l’oxygène nécessaire à la déflagration. Dans
le cas qui nous intéresse, il provient des Indes, d’Espagne,
du Chili ou du Pérou. Enfin, le soufre, le catalyseur, a fait le
voyage depuis la Sicile. La présence d’une ligne de chemin
de fer reliant la région à la Nouvelle-Angleterre facilite le
transport des matières premières et l’expédition du précieux
explosif.
Sous de multiples raisons sociales (Sheldon Andrews and
Co., Marble Andrews Co., Windsor Powder Co., Hamilton
Powder Company et Canadian Explosive Ltée) l’usine
fabriquera essentiellement deux types de poudres noires
et, entre 1873 et 1880, une dynamite appelée Dualin.
Le Dualin contenait de la nitroglycérine, des résidus de
poudre noire et de la sciure de bois. En ce qui concerne
la poudre noire, l’usine se consacre essentiellement à la
poudre à miner et à la poudre pour les fusils de chasse. Ces
explosifs contribueront à la conquête de l’Ouest américain.
Au Canada, les mines des Cantons de l’Est, là où se trouve
June / July 2008
25
the second up to 30 000 kegs of gunpowder. These were 25
pound kegs. Other buildings would be used for the Wheel
Mill, the Press, the Corning Mill, the Glaze Mill and the
packaging facility.
The Wheel Mill was responsible for most of the casualties,
though the risks were enormous at every station. In
November 17, 1904, the Press was blown up by an
explosion which was felt up to 20 miles. Two workers were
killed. Windows broke and chimneys crumbled.
thing would be made of two ten ton wheels to crush and
mix together saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur. My job as a
Wheel Man is to keep a two inches cushion of the mixture
under the wheels at all time. That’s what my rake is for.
Otherwise… Well you know! The mill building has very
thick concrete walls and is partly buried with a very light
roof that would readily come of under an eventual blast.
There’s even a huge protection wall between the Wheel
Mill and the nearby dam. If they had to protect the dam,
Nowadays, there are but a few remnants on the banks of the
Watopeka. Fortunately, the Corporation du Centre culturel
et patrimonial de la Poudrière de Windsor has developed
on the site an historical park and welcoming interpretation
footpaths.
Touring the historical park
The paperwork has been done on arrival at the cooperage.
I’ve just been hired by the Company. The Foreman is
guiding me through the plant and tells me I’ll work at the
Wheel Mill, the most dangerous place of all. He is quite
clear that I must avoid anything that could produce a spark.
Even the buttons on my shirt are wood and I’m not allowed
cigarettes or, quite obviously, neither matches. I’m given
some sort of an old wooden rake and I really don’t know
what I am to do with it. Every visitor of the park goes
through this routine.
My guide – Foreman is Samuel Morin2, a history student
at the time. He’ll have the patience to bear with my many
questions for the next two hours. He’ll show me through
the whole process of making my preferred hunting powder
with good humour. Ah! Yes, I’m one of those weirdoes that
thrive on the smoke and smell of black powder, preferably
the real stuff. Nothing like a fronstuffer! “Forget about it,”
says my Foreman. There’s no time to fool around. This is
serious business. First stop, we meet a woman for a nearby
farm. She wants to sell us some alder. Then starts between
her and my new boss a session of memorable wheeling and
dealing. Actually, she is one the many interactive stations
that we’ll meet on our way around the plant.
When I start wondering why the buildings are so far apart,
my cicerone explains that’s in case of explosion. OK! Right
after the charcoal crushing station, we cross the river on a
gangway that reveals us a very nice view on the cooperage
and one of the dams. Here we are. We have reached the
place: the Wheel Mill, actually a recreation of one. The real
One of the Wheel Mill.
Un des moulins à roues vu de l’intérieur.
what about me?
At last, the work finished here. The wheels have stopped.
With wooden tools we load the powder in wooden
wheelbarrows that we push on a wooden sidewalk. We
reach the Press. Here, we press black powder cakes, 2
Black Powder
Composition
Saltpetre
Charcoal
Sulphur
Gunpowder
78 %
12 %
10 %
Mining
72 %
16 %
12 %
Military
75 %
15 %
10 %
Source : Histoire de la poudrière de Windsor, page 18
26
June / July 2008
www.nfa.ca
Encadré poudres noires
Les types de poudre noire
Composition
Nitrate de potassium
Charbon de bois
Soufre
Poudre à fusil
78 %
12 %
10 %
Poudre à miner
72 %
16 %
12 %
Poudre militaire
75 %
15 %
10 %
Source : Histoire de la poudrière de Windsor, page 18
l’usine, ont besoin de cet outil formidable
tout comme les constructeurs de routes
et de voies ferrées. Comme il se doit,
les chasseurs réclament aussi leur part.
Ces explosifs sont enfin précieux pour
détruire les embâcles qui se forment sur
les cours d’eau au printemps. Les glaces
s’accumulent en d’énormes amas qui
retiennent les eaux de la crue printanière et
provoquent l’inondation des installations
humaines situées en bordure. Des hommes
courageux s’aventuraient sur la glace
instable pour placer des charges explosives
à des endroits stratégiques pour détruire
l’embâcle et ainsi rétablir le flux normal.
Au faîte de la production, 56 bâtiments
occupent un site qui couvre 200 acres
soit 81 hectares. Outre la tonnellerie, on
y retrouve un moulin à scie, une forge,
trois fours à charbon de bois, une station
électrique, des hangars, des écuries, un
bureau, la maison du contremaître et
deux entrepôts principaux. Le premier
emmagasinait jusqu’à 40 000 barils de
poudre à miner et l’autre jusqu’à 30 000
de poudre à fusil. Ces tonnelets de bois
étaient fabriqués sur place et contenaient
25 livres (11,3 kg) de poudre noire chacun.
Il faut ajouter les bâtiments qui abritaient chacune des
étapes de la production de la poudre : le moulin à roues, la
presse, le moulin à granuler, le moulin à glacer et la zone
d’empaquetage.
un parc historique et des sentiers d’interprétation fort
accueillants.
Le Parc historique de la Poudrière de Windsor
Les formalités d’usage sont terminées à l’Atelier de
menuiserie et tonnellerie devenu bureau d’accueil et mini
musée. Je viens d’être embauché comme ouvrier à la
poudrière. Le Foreman me prend en main. Il m’assigne
à l’une des étapes de fabrication de la poudre noire, le
moulin à roues. Il m’explique ensuite que pour éviter
de dangereuses étincelles les boutons de mes vêtements
devront être en bois de même que les semelles de mes
souliers. Après s’être de plus assuré que je n’ai sur moi
aucun objet métallique, ni de cigarettes ou d’allumettes,
il me remet un curieux râteau de bois dont je vois mal
l’emploi. Voilà la mise en situation qui attend le visiteur du
parc historique de la Poudrière de Windsor.
Mon guide sera Samuel Morin2, étudiant en histoire, et
il aura la patience de supporter mes questions pendant
les deux heures à venir. Casquette de guingois et pouces
enfoncés dans les bretelles de sa salopette de travail, mon
contremaître me fait franchir chacune des étapes de la
fabrication de mon explosif préféré pour la chasse. Eh!
oui, je le confesse, je fais partie de cette confrérie qui faute
d’atteindre son gibier d’une balle l’asphyxie avec la fumée
de sa pétoire. Hors propos de s’exclamer mon nouveau
Les accidents avaient tendance à se produire au moulin à
roues, mais l’ensemble de ces postes de travail comportait
d’énormes risques. Ainsi, le choc de l’explosion de la
presse, survenue le 17 novembre 1904, fut ressenti jusqu’à
20 milles de là. Deux hommes périrent et le souffle de la
déflagration arracha les fenêtres ou les cheminées d’une
dizaine de maisons.
Aujourd’hui, il ne reste guère que quelques ruines sur les
berges de la Watopéka, qui prêtent davantage à la rêverie
solitaire dans le bruissement de la rivière et les efflûves des
conifères. Heureusement, la Corporation du Centre culturel
et patrimonial de la Poudrière de Windsor y a aménagé
www.nfa.ca
Wooden keg and metal containers.
Tonnelets de bois et canettes métalliques.
June / July 2008
27
Notes:
1 Windsor is a 90 minutes drive
East of Montréal through
Highway 55. But for the more
bucolic inclined, the smaller
roads are best.
2 I wish to sincerely thank
Mr
Thomas
Dandurand,
director of the Park, for his
collaboration and Mr Samuel
Morin for his patience and his
professionalism.
feet square by an
inch an a half or
two inches thick.
Remember that the
1904 explosion has
killed two workers
and has been
heard fifteen miles
from here. So be
CAREFUL.
Keeping on
pretending we are
real workers we
proceed through
the other stages
of black powder
manufacturing on our way back to the cooperage. The
ruins we observe give us a clear idea of the magnitude
of the operations that went on here. At the cooperage,
crédits photo : Bernard Pelletier
information panels, games and quiz, and even a canon
The Park offers a tour of the old mill and many other activities.
(it’s false but it bangs loud enough and flashes too) keep
Outre la visite historique, le Parc propose plusieurs autres
on describing us the history of the plant to complete the
visit. Some artefacts add to the cachet. Two XIXth Century activités.
shotguns show this habit the trappers of yesteryears had to
saw the barrel of their gun to render them easier to carry and use in the forest.
All in all, the Windsor historical park is a nice place to bring the whole family to discover your beloved black powder.
English visits are available.
Each one
of us is...
An ambassador, a teacher,
and a mentor. One of the most
important functions of the
National Firearms Association is
making firearms ownership and
use relevant to growing numbers
of Canadians.
To prosper, we must have a
steady flow of new shooters and
enthusiasts entering our proud
firearms heritage.
Your membership and your
donations to the
National Firearms
Association are
helping us develop
the programs
Canada needs to
make sure our
firearms heritage
continues to grow.
I want to help Make It Happen!
Here is my contribution to the
to help protect my rights to own and use firearms.
q $100 q $50 q $25 q $________
q My Cheque or Money Order enclosed
q Charge my Visa/MasterCard/AMEX
Card #:______________________________________ Expiry: _____________
Signature:_ ______________________________________________________
Name: __________________________________________________________
Address: ________________________________________________________
City/Town: ________________ Prov:_________ Postal Code: _____________
Ph.:__________________________ Fx.:_______________________________
E-mail: _________________________________________________________
Mail this form to:
National Firearms Association, Box 52183, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2T5
28
June / July 2008
www.nfa.ca
patron. « Ici, on ne joue pas. On fabrique de la poudre noire
et c’est sérieux. » Première étape, nous rencontrons une
paysanne venue vendre son aulne pour la fabrication du
charbon de bois. S’en suit une séance de barguignage digne
des plus roués maquignons. En réalité, notre paysanne est
une borne interactive comme nous en retrouverons à chaque
étape importante de notre tournée. Ces bornes présentent
souvent de façon amusante l’information tant sur l’époque
que sur le processus de fabrication de la poudre noire.
Une première constatation, contrairement à une usine
traditionnelle, les bâtiments sont largement espacés à cause
des risques d’explosion, de m’expliquer mon cicérone.
Passé le site de la pulvérisation du charbon de bois, nous
nous engageons sur une passerelle qui nous donne un point
de vue superbe sur la tonnellerie, un des barrages et la
rivière Watopéka. Et nous voici devant une reconstitution
d’un des trois moulins à roues, de si terrible réputation.
L’appareil mélange les matières premières en les écrasant
et les incorporant les unes aux autres. Il est formé d’une
cuve en bois dont le fond est doublé de métal. Deux roues
de dix tonnes y écrasent charbon de bois, salpêtre et soufre.
Comme Wheel Man ma fonction est de maintenir une
couche de poudre de deux à trois pouces entre les roues et
le fond de la cuve sous peine d’explosion, d’où l’utilité de
mon râteau. Le bâtiment du moulin est d’ailleurs constitué
de murs de maçonnerie épaisse, partiellement enfouis et
surmontés d’un toit de tôle prévu pour s’arracher facilement
en cas de déflagration. Les propriétaires de l’usine ont
même jugé bon de construire une barricade, un solide mur
de protection, entre le moulin et le barrage qui y est contigu.
Jugez de ma nervosité.
Le travail enfin terminé au moulin à roues, nous chargeons
la poudre avec des pelles de bois dans des chariots de bois
que nous poussons sur des trottoirs de bois vers la presse.
L’objectif ici est de produire des galettes de poudre qui font
deux pieds sur deux par un demi à deux pouces d’épaisseur.
L’explosion de 1904 a fait deux victimes et a été entendue à
vingt kilomètres de là. Il a fallu trois mois pour reconstruire
la presse. La vigilance est donc toujours de rigueur.
Dans ce jeu de rôle, nous franchirons toutes les étapes de
la fabrication de la poudre noire (granulation, glaçage et
empaquetage) pour revenir à la tonnellerie. Les vestiges,
entre autres des arbres de transmission qui reliaient
les turbines aux machines, ne laissent aucun doute sur
l’ampleur des activités de l’entreprise. À la menuiserie
tonnellerie, des panneaux et des jeux interactifs (dont
un faux canon) sur l’histoire de l’usine et sur les modes
de fabrication de la poudre noire complètent la visite.
Quelques armes d’époque, des tonnelets de poudre et divers
accessoires
ajoutent
une touche
Notes
intéressante.
1
Windsor est situé à environ 90 minutes
Deux fusils du
à
l’est de Montréal par l’autoroute 55.
e
milieu du XIX
Pour
les voyageurs plus patients, les
siècle illustrent,
routes
de campagne valent le coup
par exemple,
d’œil.
cette habitude
2
Je remercie très sincèrement M.
Thomas Dandurand, directeur-général
du Parc, de sa généreuse collaboration
et M. Samuel Morin pour sa patience et
la qualité de sa prestation.
Visitors may see views of the old installations at many
stations on the site.
Vue d’époque que les visiteurs peuvent regarder dans
des lunettes disposées près des sites originaux.
www.nfa.ca
June / July 2008
29
by Sybil Kangas, SASS Life Member #55147,
Gary & Sybil Kangas have produced
Wild West shows, videos and stage
productions. Their writing has been
published in: Trails End Magazine,
Guns & Ammo and the Cowboy
Chronicle plus various newspapers
and journals. They are international
competitors in Cowboy Action
Shooting, life members of the Single
Action Shooting Society (SASS) and
long time members of the National
Firearms Association.
P
reserving our firearms heritage and
the ongoing ownership and use of
firearms is the responsibility of all
of us and the gun clubs we belong to. To
that end, the Victoria Frontier Shootists,
a division of the Victoria Fish & Game
Protective Association annually host an
event called “Nimrod” to bring together
experienced shooters to mentor novices in
the safe handling of firearms.
This event attracts a wide variety of
people. Mothers bring their sons, fathers
their daughters, 2 young women who
have an interest came on their own.
Shooting appeals to the young and it
teaches discipline and responsibility.
The novices are split into 3 groups
rotating through pistol, rifle and shotgun
categories. They are taught how to hold,
aim, shoot, load and unload with the
emphasis on safety, safety, safety at all
times.
After the groups have completed the three
areas of training, the novices shoot a
couple of cowboy action stages with the
experienced shooters coaching them. The
novices end their day on this high note.
A great time is had by all and we usually
see many of these young people back
again.
The SASS Range Officers course is also
offered at this event for experienced
shooters to take which ensures a steady
supply of qualified Range Officers for the
future to preserve our firearms heritage.
30
June / July 2008
www.nfa.ca
by: R. Hugh Lyle
Hugh Lyle
By Gary K. Kangas, SASS
Life Regulator #223
H
ugh is a living legend
in firearms circles.
Hugh’s memory is sharp
and vivid. He still owns
some of the items in his
reminiscences. Hugh is
still active in the Vancouver
Island Arms Collectors
Association and has
mentored myself and many
others. I have known Hugh
for the past 41 years. His
knowledge is monumental.
His acquaintances include
Roy G. Jinks, Smith &
Wesson historian and John
Kopec of Colt fame and
noted author.
The following are
reminiscences of R. Hugh
Lyle who will be 84 on his
next birthday. Hugh is a
student of firearms and has
been an avid collector since
childhood. He has owned
award winning Smith &
Wesson, Colt’s and Merwin
and Hulbert collections
plus an unending list of
other treasured firearms.
Hugh’s recollections
underscore the wide spread
ownership and use of
firearms in Canada.
Hugh’s memories reflect
what has been shared with
me by many other seniors,
that firearms were simply
tools that were used and
still are on a daily basis and
no one paid much attention
to them.
It dispels the notion that if
people have firearms they
will constantly be in danger
of having wild shootouts.
It simply doesn’t happen,
and hasn’t, then or now.
www.nfa.ca
Firearms
I Have Known
M
y interest in firearms developed at an
early age. We lived in Burnaby, B.C. at
3060 Laurel Street in a house my uncle,
Ross Lort, was building before he went overseas
in WW1 and completed when he returned in
1918. We, Dad, Mum, and my sister Betty moved
there from North Vancouver, B.C. in 1927. At
that time Burnaby was only a few years away
from major logging in the area. Our house was
just off Douglas Road and the property line butted
up against logged off property with huge cedar
and fir stumps, some over eight feet high and
many 4 and 5 feet in diameter.
My first introduction to firearms came when I
was 7 or 8 when I saw a WW1 rifle and a huge
black revolver one of our neighbours had. I later realized the rifle was a Lee
Enfield and the revolver a Colt New Service. A retired Major by the name of
Moore had a number of rifles, shotguns and several revolvers in his study. On
occasion, attending birthday parties for his daughter who was my age, I was
more take by the food and firearms than playing games with the other children.
The Major encouraged my interest in his
collection and showed me the correct
way to handle firearms.
Another retiree, Colonel Taylor, a
practicing architect and his wife had me look after
their son on occasion. Imagine my surprise when I
found a small revolver on his desk top. In later years
after he had passed away, his wife arrived in Victoria with
the revolver, wondering if I would like it, a .450 cal. Webley RIC
revolver. I said “yes” and had it for several years.
Most homes in the area had some form of firearm. Rifles were prominent,
usually ex-military, as well as shotguns, handguns and .22’s.
I recall a time when a large black bear was roaming in the area. I ran into
our house to tell my mother that there was a big black dog by our cherry tree
that I had been throwing rocks at and it growled at me so I ran into the house.
As a result of this a number of the neighbours, armed to the teeth with rifles,
shotguns and several pistols and revolvers finally cornered the bear. I thought
this was great as I was into reading Western stories at the time and this episode,
with all the heavily armed men seemed to be right out of the old west. I am
June / July 2008
31
afraid I was more taken with the guns and being able to
look at them, then what would be the fate of the bear.
Oakalla was a Provincial Goal on the shores of Deer Lake.
At one time, two U.S. criminals confined there managed to
escape. Again, armed locals joined in the search aiding the
B.C. Police. Fortunately no shots were fired and the two
desperadoes were captured and sent back to the States.
We moved to Victoria in
1939 to a large house in
James Bay. Imagine my
surprise when I discovered
a powder flask and a bowie
knife which had been
carried by William Fawcett,
the brother of the lady
from whom we rented the
house, during the troubles
at Batoche. I still have the
flask and knife. He did
have his percussion musket,
but it was stolen from the
shed his sister insisted it be
kept in.
In 1943 my parents purchased property at Yellow Point
and there we met a new group of neighbours and friends.
Again, firearms were very much in evidence. A visit to
the Wheat Sheaf or other beer parlours in the area where
numerous pickup trucks were parked, each with the almost
obligatory rifle rack in the rear window with a 30-30 or .308
or .303 rifle, a shotgun and a .22 rifle behind the seat and
often a revolver tucked under the seat. Katherine Wilson,
one of our neighbours who raised sheep had a .450 Colt SA
revolver that lay on the lintel over the front door of the log
house they had built in 1903. She used it on one occasion
when an eagle was making off with a small lamb. Taking
aim, she nailed the eagle. The lamb survived to become a
mother several times and lived to a ripe old age.
In 1946 when I was waiting discharge from the RCAF in
Winnipeg, I was going out with a girl who worked at the
Bay. She suggested that it might be interesting to be on
hand when the first nylons were put on sale. This was
a culture clash. To enter the store, we went in the staff
entrance and through a long storage area. Along one wall
were dozens of HBC percussion muskets which were still
being sold to old time customers. Powder and lead was
much cheaper than store bought factory ammo. The Charge
of the Light Brigade had nothing on the wave of eager
buyers of nylons who stormed into the store at 10:00am
when the doors were opened, sweeping Security, sales staff
and carefully arranged tables of stock ahead of them. We
watched from a mezzanine floor above the carnage. Police
were called who came to control the unruly mob!!
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June / July 2008
Coal was still being mined in Nanaimo in the late ‘40’s
and early ‘50’s. Many miners carried “lunch bucket” guns,
usually a nickel plated top break .32 or .38 Ivor Johnson or
Hopkins and Allen or similar. It was general knowledge
but no one seemed concerned about it and I don’t recall any
shootings.
When I traveled up-Island with Crane Ltd. I was an eager
collector. On one occasion one of my accounts advised me
that the bar tender at one of the pubs had a revolver that
might be of interest. It turned out that a pub customer had
run up a bill and had no money. His only thing of value
was a .36 cal. Percussion revolver which he pulled out of
his pocket and laid on the table. There was a moment of
excitement on the part of customers and the bar tender.
A deal was struck for the gun against his bill. I paid the
amount and still have the revolver!!
In 1967 the Vancouver Island Arms Collectors Association
put a display in Eatons corner window at View and Douglas
of “History of Firearms” in Victoria. There were over 250
items shown, early percussion long guns, pistols of all
types, military arms and related items on display for a week.
Chief Blackstock agreed that they would “keep an eye on
things”. There was no trouble and Eatons was most pleased
with our efforts and had many positive comments on the
display.
I went on a topographic survey to Gang Ranch country
covering an area 20 by 40 miles in May of 1950. There
were 9 of us and two genuine cowboys, Ray and Bob
Williams, uncle and nephew with a string of 2 saddle and
7 pack horses. We were eagerly awaiting their arrival and
most disappointed to see that while they looked the part in
dress, they did not have cowboy boots, but high top work
boots with square toes. They each had very worn .30-.30
SRC Winchesters in their saddle scabbards. The .30-.30’s
provided the camp with venison when we went west of the
Fraser River in June. In one situation the two men were
herding a deer ahead of them down a talus slope toward the
camp. Ray, mounted, drew a bead on the deer and with one
shot dropped it not 50 yards from the cook’s tent. In short
order we had fresh meat for dinner.
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One prominent cattle rancher, Henry
Koster, rode a huge Chestnut horse
and was concerned that some gates
might be left open by survey party
members. He came into our camp.
From horseback with his right hand
placed on the grip of a Colt .45 ACP,
he expressed his concern while on his
left hip was a twin .45. We listened to
what he had to say! I was sad to see
he had Colt semi-autos and not Single
Action Colt revolvers like the Old
West. While it was never confirmed,
the party chief was suspected of
having a revolver in his back pack.
There were two old time, long time
prospectors, Shorty Schroeder and
Taffy Williams, who lived near
Jesmond and the Big Bar Ranch.
Each year was their last time in their
search for gold. Harry Marriot had
grubstaked them for years and the
summer we were on the survey we
ran into them several times. You
heard them long before you saw them,
leading their loaded pack horse and
arguing at the top of their voices.
Shorty was an ex POW from WW1
who came to Canada from Germany
in the ‘20’s and Taffy had served in
the British army. Shorty carried a
Mauser and Taffy a Lee-Enfield. I
don’t think they ever struck it rich and
they never did stop their arguing.
Most pickups, trucks and saddle
horses in the Gang country had a rifle
of some sort behind the seat or in a
scabbard, part of every day life.
When in high school I delivered for
a local drug store, Peacey Drugs, at
Menzies and Simcoe, that was a postal
outlet. In the stamp drawer was a
nickel plated pocket pistol. I don’t
think it was ever fired or even taken
out of the drawer. But it was there!
Island Freight used to haul beer upisland with a tractor-trailer rig,this
was quite a novelty in the early ‘50’s.
while talking to the driver as he sat
in the cab I couldn’t help but notice a
revolver of some sort (nickel plated)
under his seat. This he said was to
dispatch any deer he might hit.
www.nfa.ca
Marlin Firearms
– A History Of The
Guns & The Company
That Made Them
Lt. Col. William S. Brophy U.S.A.R. Ret. –
Author
Stackpole Books – Originally Published
1989
Hard Cover with dust jacket, 696 pages
Black and White Photographs
T
he first thing the reader will notice about Marlin Firearms is its
immense size. This book measures 9 x 12 inches, is 1 ¾ inches
thick and weighs slightly over six pounds. Marlin Firearms is
a premium publication with excellent photographs, clear easy to read
print and high quality paper.
Brophy divided Marlin Firearms into three sections, allowing the reader
to access desired information very efficiently. Each section represents
a portion of Marlin’s legacy as one of North America’s top gun
manufacturers.
The 90 page section entitled “The History of Marlin Firearms
Companies” guides the reader through the evolution of the Marlin Fire
Arms Company by detailing the relationship it forged with Andrew
Burgess, Lewis Hepburn and Ideal Manufacturing, to name just a few.
The company’s contribution to the American war effort is accompanied
by a great deal of documentation regarding the types of military
weapons Marlin produced during the war years.
The second section, “Description of Marlin Firearms”, contains 370
pages dedicated to the actual guns produced by Marlin over the previous
110 years.
There are separate sections for handguns, Ballard Rifles, lever actions,
semiautomatics, bolt actions, shotguns and pump action rifles. The
information contained in this section is enhanced by many patent
drawings, charts, diagrams and photographs.
The final section is the 230 page “Expanded Glossary”. This section is
wealth of information, with photographs of specific rifles, ammunition,
old Marlin catalogues and advertisements. There are also numerous
charts and production tables which provide information simply not
available in any other publication.
Overall, Marlin Firearms is an extensive reference book that belongs in
every gun enthusiast’s library. The list price on the publisher’s website
is $89.95 plus shipping. At the time of writing I located it online at
Amazon.ca for $70.53 plus $3.53 GST for a total of $74.06 including
free shipping to a Canadian address.
Gun books are a great choice when selecting a birthday or graduation
gift for that special shooter. Quality reference books last forever!
June / July 2008
33
School Shootings
T
– the Canary in the Coal Mine
for a Post-Modern Society
his is the first of a series of articles on school
shootings, and will give an overview of the
phenomenon around the world as well as what
methods of prevention have proven most successful.
school and detonated it on the playground during recess,
killing himself; his son Dusty; a teacher; a custodian and
two seven-year-old boys. The school principal and 18
students aged six to ten were injured, many seriously.
The earliest recorded school shooting happened April
9, 1891 in Newburgh, New York. 70-year-old James
Foster fired a shotgun at a group of male students in the
playground of St. Mary’s Parochial School, causing minor
injuries to several of the students.
The first recorded school attack outside of the U.S. that I
could find occurred on June 11, 1964 in Cologne, Germany.
A 40-year moratorium on school murders ended May 18,
1927 when fifty-five year old Andrew Kehoe of Bath,
Michigan packed the basement of the local elementary
school with explosives and set them off, killing 45 and
injuring 58. This is the world record for number of school
victims caused by one individual, far surpassing Virginia
Tech’s 32 dead.
The next actual shooting occurred on June 4, 1936 when
Wesley Crow shot and killed his Lehigh University English
instructor, C. Wesley Phy. Crow went to Phy’s office and
demanded that Mr. Phy change his grade to a passing mark.
Apparently Phy refused. Crow committed suicide after
murdering the English teacher.
The forties and fifties each had what were likely fraternity
house pranks gone bad. These two incidents, a decade apart,
seem to have been caused by mixing inexperience, alcohol
and firearms.
Twenty years after the last firearms incident and thirty years
after Mr. Kehoe blew up his local school, Dusty Orgeron
was denied enrollment into the second grade at the Poe
Elementary School in Houston, Texas.
On September 15, 1959 Dusty’s forty-nine year old father,
Paul Harold Orgeron took a suitcase full of dynamite to the
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June / July 2008
Forty-two year old Walter Seifert armed himself a lance,
a home-made mace and an insecticide sprayer he had
converted into a flamethrower. Mr. Seifert then went to the
Katholische Volksschule and opened fire, quite literally, on
the girls playing in the courtyard. He knocked in classroom
windows with the mace and sprayed inside with his home
made flamethrower.
Eight children and two teachers died, and twenty children
and two teachers were severely burned, but survived.
Seifert died the following day in custody after taking a
cyanide pill.
The first mass shooting by an unbalanced individual at an
educational institution anywhere in the world occurred
on August 1, 1966. After killing his wife and mother,
twenty-five year old student and ex-Marine Charles Joseph
Whitman climbed the clock tower at the University of Texas
at Austin and spent the next 96 minutes shooting people
from the observation deck. Whitman killed fifteen people
and wounded another thirty-one before he was finally shot
dead by police.
In his autobiography, Austin Police Officer Ramiro
Martinez, the man who finally stopped Mr. Whitman,
praised the citizens who used their personal firearms to keep
Whitman pinned down, thereby allowing police to get close
enough to effect an appropriate and terminal solution.
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The decade of the sixties saw a total of six attacks on
schools worldwide; three of these attacks were by “noncivilians”. In February 1968 The Gia Hoi High School
massacre took place during the invasion of Hue during the
Vietnam War by the Viet Cong. Afterwards 170 bodies were
recovered from the Gia Hoi High School yard alone.
It is likely that yesterday’s unbalanced individuals
considered the prevalence of firearms in society to be a
detriment to their plans, hence the use of explosives or
shooting from a protected position. They certainly didn’t
stand up and blast away like today’s “gun-free zone”
shooters do.
The last year of the decade, May 4, 1970 saw the Ohio
National Guard shoot students of Kent State University,
killing four and injuring 10. Most of the students hit were
passersby and not specifically involved in the anti-war
protest rally being dispersed by soldiers untrained in crowd
control.
The 1970’s adds Israel and Canada to the list of countries
where school shootings occurred. They adopted very
different responses however, and the result is that Canada
has suffered more school shootings than Israel, despite the
fact that most school shootings in Israel have a political
motivation.
In all, 29 of the 77 guardsmen claimed to have fired their
weapons. A total of 67 bullets were fired. The shooting was
determined to have lasted only 13 seconds.
On May 15, 1974 three Palestinian Terrorists went looking
for a “gun-free zone”. They found one at the “Netiv Meir”,
an elementary school in Ma’alot, a community in northern
Israel.
Ten days later at Jackson State University, Mississippi,
police killed two students and injured twelve others during
a demonstration against the Vietnam War.
Up until the end of the 1960’s, attacks on schools by
unbalanced individuals were extremely rare and rarer still
were incidents where the attacker used a firearm. In the
only significant school shooting worldwide, Austin Texas
in 1966, civilians used their personal firearms to help
minimize the damage and assist police in terminating the
attack.
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Although the school was eventually stormed by Israeli
special forces, 26 hostages were killed and over 60 injured.
It is possible likely that a significant number of the hostages
were shot by their rescuers.
In May and October 1974, Ontario was home to Canada’s
first two school shootings and the only school shootings in
the world that year.
Sixteen year old Michael Slobodian of Brampton vaulted
Canada into the history books by shooting a teacher and
a fellow student before turning his gun on himself at
June / July 2008
35
Centennial Secondary School. Total casualties: three dead
and thirteen wounded.
On October 27, 1975 eighteen year old Robert Poulin
opened fire on his class at St. Pius X High School using a
shotgun. He killed one and wounded five before turning
the gun on himself. Poulin had raped and stabbed to death
17-year-old Kim Rabot prior to the shooting rampage.
On January 29, 1979 the world’s first female school killer
opened fire in San Diego, California. Armed with a .22-rifle,
16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer shot and killed Principal
Burton Wragg, head custodian Mike Suchar and wounded
eight children and a police officer at Cleveland Elementary
School.
The school was across the street from her house. When the
six-hour incident ended and she was asked who she wanted
to shoot, she said, “I like red and blue jackets”.
When they asked why, she shrugged and replied, “I don’t
like Mondays. This livens up the day.” Brenda Ann
Spencer will be eligible for parole in 2009.
It was December 6, 1989 before Canada’s only world
class school shooter slouched towards infamy at the Ecole
Polytechnique in Montreal. His score: fourteen dead and
fourteen injured, plus his own suicide. The murderer, Gamil
Gharbi was the son of Algerian immigrant Rachid Liass
Gharbi and Canadian Monique Lépine. Gamil was baptized
a Catholic as an infant and legally changed his name to
Marc Lépine in 1982 when he was eighteen.
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June / July 2008
It would be another seven years before forty-four year
old Thomas Hamilton of Dunblane, Scotland fame beat
Gharbi’s record of fifteen by three, and a further three years
before the Montreal native’s score would be matched by
teenage duo Klibold and Harris at Columbine.
The eighties, nineties and so far in the first decade of the
twenty-first century are when school shootings really took
off.
Between 2001 and today we’ve had ten times more
shootings per decade than the 1970’s; seven events
worldwide in the seventies versus seventy-two events since
2001. Half of all school shootings in history have occurred
since 2000. (Nicole, please make the previous line a text
shout-out) Over ninety percent of school attacks have
occurred since 1970.
We now have enough historical data to look at the overall
picture. While good data exists for Canada, the United
States and most of Europe, such data is unreliable at best
and non-existent at worst when it comes to communist and
third world countries. Even Western media filter the details
of events in a misleading manner; such as omitting mention
of firearms in the hands of civilians that have been used to
end an attack.
After examining the 148 cases of attacks on schools or
students in the public record I have some observations.
Almost without exception attackers are drowning in
hopelessness and powerlessness. Some feel their life will
be ruined by failing an exam or being expelled from school.
www.nfa.ca
Others can’t deal effectively with a failing relationship.
More recent excuses involve accusations of bullying,
homophobia or sexism.
Recreational drugs are rarely an issue, although there has
been some evidence that prescription drugs such as antidepressants or anti-psychotic medications are contributing
factors. While drugs in general may in some instances be
contributing factors they have no more legal standing than
alcohol as an excuse for bad behavior.
Looked at from the point of view of nearly all the recent
school shooters, they are rebelling against society - a
society that appears to a be run by a seemingly all-powerful
government that allows no room for personal rights or
responsibilities.
There are gender differences. Of the 148 cases of school
attacks I could find only four that were perpetrated by
women. I suspect the simple answer is that men need a
different world to live in than women. For most men that
world ended with the sixties. Coincidentally, for most
women that is when their world came into existence.
From examining the circumstances surrounding many of
these shootings, including reading the suicide notes many
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have left, metal detectors, zero tolerance policies and police
in schools will only make the situation worse.
No matter if we commiserate with those individuals who
cannot find a reason to live in our brave new world, we
have to realize that the protection of life, especially our
own, must always trump that of a crazed attacker.
These people must be stopped by the only people present
when the attack starts: teachers, staff or students.
In future articles I will be analyzing school attacks in
specific national cultures and how these cultures respond.
We can cynically decide after all the facts are in that the
status quo, no matter how bad it gets, is merely one of the
costs we must accept if we are to live in a Post-Modern
society.
There is also, of course, the too-often used option of hiding
our heads in the sand, chanting “the sky is falling” and
passing out the candles.
In the next issue if CFJ, Clive Edwards explores school
shootings outside North America.
June / July 2008
37
Maritimers
in Cowboy Boots
Competitors wait their turn to challenge the saloon
stage.
Big smile on this competitor’s face after achieving a high
score with his “old 44”.
A
beautiful October
Saturday could not divert
a baker’s dozen western shoot
competitors from beating a
trail to the Atlantic Marksmen
Association’s outdoor range
for some cowboy style
competition.
competitors rifle action must be
left open and set aside in a safe
position i.e., “re-staged”.
The dress code of the day
varied considerably. Shooters
in Mexican ponchos gave their
best against the full cowboy
and cowgirl dress crowd
who’s boots were sometimes
fitted with spurs. As the
Shooter in conventional dress in “load and make
event unfolded, some of the
ready” mode – western style.
spectator’s remarks suggested
that the spurs would be of little
help in maneuvering the horse
proxy – a green 55 gallon drum.
In the next part of the stage, the
shooter must pick up a shotgun
and knock down several steel
“poppers”. When that chore is
finished, the shotgun is restaged
and the shooter must then draw
his/her revolver and engage five
cowboys (IPSC targets) from left
to right – and then repeat that
action one more time.
Many of the other stages used for
this cowboy shoot competition
have uniquely western features.
Stages used for the match featured a large percentage of
wood construction that gave some of them an authentic
western movie set look. Stage descriptions were not at all
what I am used to seeing in IPSC competitions but I have to
say that they gave everyone a sense of the old west.
For example, the description of one stage goes something
like this: “You are headed for the saloon for some “Who Hit
John” (Maritimer for “liquid refreshment”) when the Dalton
gang rides [into] town. You must stop them! Boy’s, could I
use a whiskey.”
The “On Audible Command” description that follows has
the competitor moving “down alley” to a part of the stage
where he or she must engage “5 yellow rifle targets, left to
right, double tap.” At the end of that part of the stage, the
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June / July 2008
Competitors gather after the shoot to swap some tall tales
about the highlights of the match.
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Cowgirl competitor holding her “tools
of the trade”.
A cloud of smoke shrouds the gun hand of this competitor as rounds
from his trusty 44 knock down a row of steel poppers.
In one of them, the competitor is sitting on a horse (a
55 gallon drum) with a loaded rifle resting across his/
her knees and with “reins in your hand”. On command
(audible signal), the competitor engages 10 rifle targets
from either the left or the right.
of “the action” compared to the casual dress seen in 3-gun
and IPSC matches (sorry, no points are awarded for the best
costume). Many of the western costumes struck me as an
unequivocal statement of the competitor’s interest in the
cowboy culture and its associated history.
The cowboy challenge is very much like a 3-gun
match in regard to the use of an array of pistols or
revolvers, shotguns and rifles. However, in the cowboy
competition flavor, large caliber revolvers, lever action
rifles and short double-barreled shotguns feature much
more prominently.
The shooting challenges themselves are on a par with both
3-gun and IPSC matches especially since the guns of choice
are, for the most part, production category hardware – and
definitely more affordable than some of the exotic “race guns”
used in IPSC competitions.
Also, cowboy shooter costumes cover a range of
personalized designs and are definitely more of a part
Is the western style of shooting the kind of activity that will
get you out to the range more often?
Even if it doesn’t, just a few competitions might have you
speaking a bit more like John Wayne – how about that
“pilgrim”.
The National Firearms Association has
approximately 130,000 members across Canada. If you would
like to reach each and every one of them, advertise in the
Canadian Firearms Journal.
Does your business card not say enough?
Contact us for information on our larger ad slots.
Rider takes careful aim with his double-barreled 12
gauge. The sound of the shots does not seem to bother
the horse very much.
www.nfa.ca
Interested?
Call Clive Edwards at (604) 250-7910
or e-mail us at
[email protected]
June / July 2008
39
Hideouts: Pocket Guns Of The Old West
W
hether for daily “dresseddown” carry or as a
“backup” piece in case
one’s main arm failed, pocket guns
were a common and defining element
of the Old West. Rifles have always
been more powerful, more accurate,
and more effective at long ranges,
and no firearm is more deadly than
a scattergun. The main advantage
of a hand-held firearm, then as now,
was it’s relative light weight and
convenient size, making it more likely
to be actually carried when the rare
occasion arises to put it to use. As
well as how much easier it was to hide.
Concealability has been a factor in
gun choice for as long as European,
Canadian and U.S. officials have
sought to restrict them. Gun control
laws that were long a reality in the
East, soon spread to the quickly
settling West. No less a notorious
shootist than Wild Bill Hickock was a
strict enforcer of an antigun ordinance
in his days as Sheriff, clubbing anyone
senseless that didn’t immediately
turn his in upon arrival in town. The
number one option for men was a
leather lined pocket with a medium to
full sized arm, thus the term “pocket
pistols.” But specially scaled down
models made it possible to sneak
some degree of protection even in
Summer dress. While lacking the
knock down capabilities of their bigger
40
June / July 2008
brothers, these “belly guns” made the
difference whenever a partying miner
found himself suddenly needing to
protect his hard earned gold dust, or
a school marm (teacher) needed to
defend her honor in the face of an
amorous and aggressive drunk. Many
of the situations calling for active self
defense occur when least expected,
and not always in the most obvious
places and situations. At such times
both the Henry hanging inside on the
wall or the shotgun stashed under the
buckboard seat are likely well out of
reach. The gun that counts most, then,
is often the one that’s carried every
day– on foot and on horseback, at
work and at play.
For scantily clad saloon girls and
bare armed faro dealers this would
have meant derringers and other
tiny, easily secreted pistols often
referred to as “stingy guns.” Many
of these were anemic .22’s, one of
the smallest of which being the
miniscule Remington Vest Pocket
“saw-handled” single shot. Early
multi-round .22 caliber derringers
include the two round American
Arms Wheeler model, the fiveshot double-action RemingtonElliot’s “ring-trigger” design, the
extremely rare Reid “My Friend”
with its revolving cylinder and
no barrel, the Bacon “pepperbox”
and Sharps models with four
fixed barrels and a rotating firing pin.
Only slightly larger were the host of
single-shot breech loading derringers
chambered for the moderately more
powerful .41 rimfire cartridge. These
generally featured barrels that either
pivoted downward or rotated to the
side for loading. The acknowledged
progenitor of this type is the Daniel
Moore, patented in 1861. Others
followed, including Colt’s National,
#1 and #2 models, the Wesson, the
Charles Ballard, the John Marlin
“Victor” and “XL’S,” the Stevens, the
Allen, and the so-called “Southerners”
made by Brown Manufacturing Co.
and Merrimac Arms. Loaded with a
130 grain conical bullet and stuffed
with 13 grains of black powder, it
could barely achieve 400 feet per
second velocity out of the typical three
inch long barrel.
Even Henry Deringer’s original
percussion pocket pistol had
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considerably more
penetration and
knockdown power than
the .30, .32 and .41
rimfire breech loaders
that followed (now
collectively thought
of as “derringers”– a
misspelling of Henry Jr.’s
name). These lilliputians
nonetheless contributed
to an owner’s sense of
security, and no doubt
their brandishing alone
was enough to calm
escalating disputes.
After all, no one wants
to be shot, even by an
underpowered round.
And the terror of being
wounded was justifiably
all the greater in the West
of the 19th and early
20th Centuries, with
it’s paucity of doctors, questionable
hygiene, and failure to fully appreciate
the importance of sterilization when it
came to dressings, hands and medical
tools. Many deaths by gunshot were
the result of subsequent infection,
rather than the size or location of
the wound. A .41 RF that barely
penetrated would still carry into the
body minute pieces of germ laden
material from the clothes one wore,
and the spectre of a long painful
illness and feverish death would have
made all but the most cavalier debater
reconsider his more provocative
arguments.
According to Capt. Joseph Bourke
one 1880’s Arizona lawman packed as
many as ten small derringers secreted
on his person at a time. Believe that or
not, anyone with a soft spot for early
Wild West Show entertainers, Western
www.nfa.ca
pulp fiction, movies or television
serials has some idea of how these
pip-squeak backups might save the
day. In his sunset years Buffalo Bill
Cody often relied on an ivory stocked,
nickel plated Remington over and
under .41 derringer with amateurish
engraving. The character Paladin on
“Have Gun Will Travel” packed the
same under the skirt of his revolver
holster. Special agent James in
“The Wild Wild West” had a similar
Remington rigged up on some kind of
mechanical device inside his shirt cuff,
and he could cause it to spring into
his hand on command. They make it
easy to imagine some hero, with his
hands in the air and an empty holster
on his hip, suddenly turning the tables
with a firearm the size of single Colt
Peacemaker grip.
Fiction was matched by reality in at
least one dramatic event, a surprise
shootout at a peace conference
between Modoc war chief Captain
Jack and U.S. General Canby. The
Indian warrior shocked everyone
by suddenly pulling out a hidden
revolver and shooting the General
in the head. When another Indian,
Schonchin pulled out his own
weapon, onetime Indian agent
A. B. Meacham wounded him and
brought him to the ground with a shirt
pocket .41.
There have also been some fascinating
arms created solely for the purpose
of disguised carry. Some of the most
fascinating are revolvers disguised as
handbags or “wallets.” Imported from
Europe or hand made by tinkerers in
the good ol’ U.S.A., they were made
of cloth covered metal, and could be
set off by a hidden trigger. No doubt
the women who bought them liked to
imagine the surprise of a robber– who
after asking a woman for her money
bag, gets either a bullet in the belly
or at least the scare of a life! Other
clever oddities included single shot
pistols that could double as “brass
knuckles” once fired.... plus revolvers
with built in folding knives, and even
pocket knives that “go boom.”
Cane or walking-stick guns replaced
walking-cane swords the backup
of choice for 19th Century English
gentlemen. The earliest were muzzle
loaders, later models usually fired a
single rimfire cartridge, and eventually
rounds as powerful as the .410 shot
shell found there way into these
orthopedic aids and symbols of taste
and class. Particularly interesting are
June / July 2008
41
the British made air-canes marketed at
the turn of the century through various
New York distributors. The reservoirs
were refilled using an attachable
stirrup pump, took a long time to
charge, and fired what was usually a
.32 caliber ball with far more force
than you might think. Every cane type
included a muzzle cap to keep dirt and
debris out of the barrel, and the results
could be dramatic if someone ever
forgot to remove it before firing.
A few canes undoubtedly found
their way West, especially following
Remington’s introduction an American
made model. Available in either .22 or
.32 RF, they could be purchased with
either plain, ivory, carved claw-andball or dog’s-head handles.
Anyone with a real likelihood of
armed defense was unlikely to choose
a derringer anymore than a walking
stick gun. For this purpose most
people wanted multiple shots without
reloading, with the result being a
burgeoning new market in medium
powered, pocket-sized revolvers.
The highest quality examples of
this genre were produced by Colt,
Remington, Rupertus, Hopkins &
Allen and Forehand & Wadsworth. At
one time or other Pat Garrett owned a
.41 RF F&W “Swamp Angel” (serial
number #4318) featuring a gold plated
cylinder and a backstrap engraved
with his name, as well as a .38 S&W
CF caliber Merwin & Hulbert Pocket
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June / July 2008
Army revolver with a unique folding
hammer presented him by the favored
citizens of Uvalde, New Mexico. Both
featured ivory stocks and rudimentary
“New York” style scroll engraving.
All such arms sported similar profiles
to the early S&W tip-ups: “sheath”
or “spur” triggers (sans trigger guard)
with three to five inch barrels and
generally rounded, “bird’s head” grip
frames. Around 1874 Remington’s
added their “two cents” worth with
their Smoot patent line. The .30, .32,
and .38 rimfire Remingtons featured
simple ejector rods, while their .41 RF
variant did not.
Colt continued its tradition of
pocket arms with it’s
1870 release of their
“Cloverleaf” (deep
fluted) cylinder “House
Pistol,” a four shot
revolver in .41 RF, one
of which is provenanced
to Inspector of
Railroads and onetime
Confederate General
William Hardeman.
That same year they
began flooding the
market with the itsybitsy .22 “open top,”
churning out some
110,000 before finally
giving it up in 1877.
Both were essentially
made obsolete in 1874
with the introduction of five Colt’s
“New Line” series in five different
graduated frame sizes. Served
up in rimfire .22 and .30 rimfire,
plus .32, .38 and .41 centerfire.
The last of this configuration was
their New Police .38 CF. Like
the cleverly named “House”
pistol, its “cop and thug” motif
grips appealed to the need for
convenient personal and home
security. The New Lines often
served as back up guns, paired
with Colt’s ubiquitous large
bore Peacemaker. They were
effectively phased out by the mid
1880’s under market pressure from
the scads of cheap imitations such
as the two-dollar “suicide special”
removed from Hickock murderer
Jack McCall in 1876. Their niche in
the prestigious Colt lineup remained
unfilled until the 1896 release of the
double action New Pocket model.
Since the day Smith & Wesson locked
up the patents for the bored-through
cylinder (and thus for the repeat shot
breech loading handgun), their various
small arms have enjoyed a fervent
and faithful following. Beginning in
1857 with the introduction of the tipup models #1 in .22, the previously
discussed #1 1/2 and #2 in .32 rimfire,
S&W went on to even greater success
with a much stronger top-break design
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first introduced in 1870 in their large
frame, large bore Model #3 American.
This was followed in 1876 and 1878
with medium frame top-breaks in .38
and .32 centerfire.
The .38 S&W
CF cartridge was
more briskly
loaded with a
16 grain black
powder charge,
topped by a 145
round nosed
bullet. Smith
and Wesson
manufactured and
shipped in excess
of 130,000 “New
Model” or “Baby
Russian” .38’s
before finally
taking it off line
in 1891. This
medium powered
round went on to
be one of the most
popular calibers of
its time.
In 1892 a posse headed by Marshal
Paden Tolbert surrounded and
eventually blew up with dynamite a
recessed log “fort” manned by the
framed Cherokee outlaw Ned Christie.
In a photo taken shortly after the
raid, posse members are seen to have
Harrington and Richardson, S&W
and Colt New Line pocket revolvers
tucked into their vests and waistbands,
along with a large frame Colt 1878 .44
WCF and a hodgepodge of rifles and
shotguns. Needless to say, it was the
TNT that carried the day, and these
lightweight backups were unlikely
used in the fray. Sheriff William
“Billy” Tilghman helped bust up the
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Doolin gang and clean
up Oklahoma’s infamous
“Hell’s Half Acre,” and
his reputation alone was
enough to settle most
disputes. But it was
a hidden belly gun in
the hands of boozed-up
Prohibition Agent (!)
that ended both his life
and his career.
Yet another factor in handgun
selection, hideaways or not, has
always been rapidity of fire: how fast
one can get off repeat, aimed shots.
The single action revolver (in which
the hammer has to be hand cocked
each time) is nearly if not equally
quick for the first round. But the
double action (with the hammer
cocked and the cylinder rotated by
a single long pull on the trigger) has
a significant edge when it comes
to subsequent aimed shots, and is
considerably quicker to empty into
the belly of a close range assailant.
for the protection of its agents and
guards. These remained their primary
hideaways until the 1899 advent of
their now signature “hand ejector”
(swing-out cylinder) designs, currently
exemplified by the “Chief’s Special”
Model 36.
Other substantial .38 CF caliber
double action topbreaks were made
in the latter part of the 19th Century
by manufacturers Harrington &
Richardson, Hopkins & Allen and
Iver Johnson Bicycle Works with
their characteristic gutta percha grip
panels– featuring
the face of an owl
and ornamental
filigree. Long
barrels could be had
on most, but for
purposes of defense
and concealment
the preferred length
for this caliber
remained something
between three and
five inches.
They’re not
hideaways, after
all, if they leave
an outline or bulge
that’s easily seen.
Favorite places
for stashing small
arms include not
only pockets but
boot tops, shoulder
holsters and suspender rigs for those
on the move. And under pillows, in
Smith & Wesson’s first double
action topbreaks hit the shelves
in 1880, with over one thousand
of its Third models having been
sold to the American Express Co.
June / July 2008
43
bedstand drawers, and inside the cash
registers of folks at home and at work.
A purse was the most common way
for a woman to pack a sidearm, and
may still be today. Unfortunately it’s
a less than optimum arrangement,
given that it’s the first thing a snatchthief is likely to grab. One
can only speculate how
many times some gal has
has been surprised to find
herself relieved of not only
her money and her makeup kit, but also her primary
means of defense. More
effective would be an open
top belt holster worn high
on the small of the back,
or strapped above the knee
underneath a billowing
Western skirt.
Small caliber revolvers
were perhaps ideal for
daily concealed carry–
but those with no need to
hide their armament, and
anyone wearing enough
of a coat might pick a larger gun in
substantially more powerful calibers.
One of the smallest pocket canines
with real bite was the Webley & Son
Bulldog, an imported five shot, double
action revolver available in .44 Webley
caliber– roughly twice as powerful
as the prevailing .38 S&W. While
copied and altered here and abroad,
the original British models came with
bird’s-head grip frames, two and a half
inch barrels and unfluted cylinders.
They began showing up in the far
West as early as 1873, and one found
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June / July 2008
its way into
the hands
of Billy The
Kid’s patron
and employer,
John Tunstall.
It’s larger bore
and spreading
popularity
was no doubt
a factor in
Colt bringing
out it’s own
medium
frame double
action revolvers in 1877 and 1878: the
nicknamed “Lightning” in .38 Long
Colt, and the “Thunderer” in .41 Colt
caliber.
Awesome knock down power has
its own appeal. Merwin & Hulbert
brought out a bird’s head grip model
called the Pocket Army in both .44
M&W and .44 WCF (.44-40). With
it’s factory shortened three inch plus
barrel, it still weighed a good two
pounds, four ounces.... making it a
bit heavy for concealed carry, leather
lined pocket or not. But evidently
not too much for the unredeemable
Bass Outlaw, who had an open top
version (serial #195) recovered from
his person for waving it around in an
El Paso saloon “in a manner calculated
to disturb the inhabitants of said public
place.” Nor for unsuccessful girl
bandit Pearl Heart, who was allegedly
carrying another M&W (serial #645)
tucked in her pants belt when arrested
by Sheriff W. Truman in 1899.
Weighty large frame Colts and Smith
& Wessons are often found altered
by their original owners, obviously
looking to pack more power in a
somewhat concealable package. A
large number of S&W single action
Americans, surplus Schofields and
#3’s on the antique market today
have at one time or other had their
tubes reduced to four or five inches.
And sadly from a collector’s point
of view, so have all too many old
Colt SA’s– including the now rare
Artillery models. John Selman paid
for the burial of Bass Outlaw with
a confiscated, chopped Colt (serial
#42870) specially altered
for fanning by the removal
of the trigger assembly and
replacement of the cylinder
pin. In that condition a
revolver would be quick to
employ, but nearless worthless
beyond ten feet for so.
With its factory issued tube and
trigger, a competent pistolero
could hit a stationary man sixty
or more yards away a good
percentage of the time. An
1873 Winchester carbine was
reasonably effective out to one
hundred and twenty-five yards,
and double that for the same
company’s 1894 rifle. As I
write this, military weaponry
has “improved” to the extent
that tank gunners and fighter
pilots can deliver devastating payloads
of high explosives with pinpoint
accuracy at previously unimaginable
distances.... without ever looking
up from their computer screens, or
looking into the faces of those they
need to kill. This has resulted in a
depersonalization of armed combat,
and increasingly positions our soldiery
far enough away from the enemy
to dilute the emotional experience,
reducing any opportunities for
empathy or mercy, and making the
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taking
of life more of
a mechanical exercise in obedience
than a deliberate moral decision and
an act of passion. Of course even the
heavy single-shot “buffalo rifles” of
the 1800’s were capable of consistent
hits five times further than the shooter
could positively identify their target.
And if an opponent is further away
than the length of a barroom there’s
probably an option for cover or retreat.
While I doubt my namesake Wes
Hardin would agree– if I’m far enough
away to avoid an incident, I’d just as
soon leave.
It’s true that President Abraham
Lincoln was shot in the head at close
range with a snub nosed percussion
derringer. But John Wilkes Booth
aside, pocket guns have seldom been
employed by intentional assailants.
There is therefore considerably less
moral ambiguity with arms primarily
designed for self protection and
generally unsuitable for offense. No
one in their right mind would bring a
hideaway to initiate a fight. They’re
more likely to be found in the hands–
or still stashed in the pockets– of those
who have been wronged.
Self defense is a justifiable and healthy
response to unprovoked aggression.
Since the primordial beginnings of our
kind, we’ve joined the rest of creation
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in
doing
everything
we can to
preserve and extend our mortal lives.
We are motivated and fueled by the
same source that provokes cells to
grow and multiply, rabbits to strike out
against a ravenous snake– or a snake
to fight off the hungers of the giant
eagle.... even if another few minutes
of survival means a deadly drop of
hundreds of feet! It is the Spirit-given
impulse to struggle again and again
into the light, and to never give up
the fight. No one can be faulted for
valuing their own existence over that
of an attacker. Complacency and
capitulation, like obliviousness, are
what make us prey.... not the mere
existence of predators.
Truly, personal survival is an inherent,
credible and honorable motivation,
qualifying our most insistent and
energetic defense. But then again,
neither is it necessarily the most noble
of all reasons for taking assertive
action. The desire to live is sacred as
well as natural, and yet the protection
of our narrowly defined selves isn’t
always the most important thing. For
a person of integrity and compassion
there are also people,
homes and beliefs
worth risking our lives
for. Once we recognize
that our families are
integral and vital
extensions of our very
beings, protecting them
becomes an act of
expanded self defense.
In time we may come to
realize
the
degree
to which our ideals, our friends and
communities, the forests, rivers and
land we stand upon are essential
elements of what it means to be
human.... and that to protect their
expression and wholeness is to defend
what it is to be “us.”
Pocket guns and hideaways are but one
demonstration of insistence and self
love, determination and daring. Of grit
and gravel, courage and caring! That
something really matters, none need
wonder... given the flashes of life and
lightning in our eyes, and the judicious
roar of hidden thunder.
June / July 2008
45
by Vin Suprynowicz
Every shooter crazy ’bout a gun-free zone
I
see where Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt
Rulffes has responded to the drive-by murder of a
15-year-old Palo Verde High School inmate by another
one of Mr. Rullfes’ young charges not by admitting a failure
of his own tutelage (the first responsibility of educators,
surely, being to mold character), but instead by whining
it’s difficult to prevent his young wards from shooting each
other given today’s “easy access to guns” and television
violence.
I’m not sure about the TV part — seems to me most of the
drive-bys I’ve seen portrayed on the tube have concluded
with the perpetrator going to jail, which Mr. Rulffes might
explain to his young charges as “just like school only it
doesn’t last as many years and you can’t take your boombox.”
But as for the “easy access to guns” part, since the
hoplophobes insist on referring to guns as “penis
substitutes,” anyway (never explaining why any male but
Hemingway’s Jake Barnes would need a “substitute,”)
I await Mr. Rulffes explanation that some of his young
darlings commit the crime of rape due to the currently
excessive “easy access to penises.”
Just as it’s true that there would be fewer shootings if
we “got rid of all the guns,” so would there doubtless be
fewer rapes if we “got rid of all the penises.” But — as
attractive as the scheme might seem to the disciples of
Andrea Dworkin — I suspect there might be some hint
of a civil rights problem with a society-wide program of
penis removal, even though the right to keep and bear those
organs is not protected as explicitly in the Constitution as
the right to keep and bear arms of military usefulness.
The point, if I must connect the dots, is that only an
infinitessimal percentage of those possessed of either, um,
tool use it to commit a crime, so we might want to look
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June / July 2008
beyond “easy availability” for an explanation of such
behaviors.
Once again last week, all our overlapping “gun control”
laws failed to work. On the other hand, if the young
perpetrator had been taught proper gun safety on the
school shooting range — such facilities were ubiquitous
through the 1960s; I was taught safe supervised shooting
at Eaglebrook in Massachusetts starting at age 12 — what
are the chances this young killer would have remained so
chillingly opaque to the likely consequence of his actions?
Meantime, on the subject of school shootings, surely I
wasn’t the only one to notice the befuddled opinion piece
credited to The Washington Post, right there on the Feb. 16
front page:
“DEKALB, ILL. — If there were lessons learned after the
Virginia Tech massacre, they were: Lock down and notify,”
the supposed “news” story began.
“School officials did neither until hours after the first shots
sounded across the Blacksburg, Va. campus in April,”
Post opinion writers Kari Lydersen and Theresa Vargas
continued. “Northern Illinois University officials did not
make the same mistake Thursday.
“But the actions could not stop a gunman armed with
powerful rapid-fire weapons and the intent of killing as
many people as possible, higher education and safety
experts said Friday. …
“By many preliminary accounts, the university did well:
Within 30 seconds of a report of shots fired at Cole Hall,
the first officer was on the scene. But he was too late. The
shooter, Steven Kazmierczak, 27, a former graduate student
who was armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and three pistols,
had already sprayed more than 50 rounds of buckshot and
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bullets at panicked students before
turning his weapon on himself. Six
people … were killed. …”
Let’s see if we can’t reconstruct
that story as it might be written by
anyone but a member of the Cult of
the Hoplophobes, pre-determined to
avoid considering the real and obvious
solutions.
(Hint: why do depravos like Steven
Kazmierczak never seem to attack
police stations or army bases? And
what do their psychiatric states
REALLY all have in common?)
Here’s the way that story would
read, if constructed by someone not
demented by anti-gun hysteria:
“If school officials and gun-grabbing
politicians thought the lesson of the
shooting deaths of 32 people on the
Virginia Tech campus last April was
‘Lock down and notify,’ they learned
the fruitlessness of such top-down
‘control’ solutions when another
depraved drop-out shot and killed
five students in less than a minute at
Northern Illinois University Feb. 14.
…
“What did Northern Illinois University
and Virginia Tech still have in
common, as of Feb. 14, 2008?” our
more useful version of this account
would ask. “They both remained
artificial ‘gun-free zones,’ where selfserving politicians have effectively
barred potential victims from
carrying the concealed self-defense
weapons that could have put an end to
Kazmierczak’s rampage.”
On their Web sites, the gun-grabbers
whimper sarcastically that “The NRA
www.nfa.ca
will absurdly insist the solution is
MORE GUNS! Ha ha ha.”
But to ridicule the obvious step of
“allowing” civilians to arm themselves
for self-defense — a right which all
levels of government on this continent
are barred from infringing by the 2nd
and 14th amendments — is akin to
saying “Why, to hear these madmen
tell it, the best way to eliminate
smallpox is to inoculate people with
cattle pox, spreading even more
disease! Hee-haw!”
In fact, it worked, just as armed
students and an armed vice principal
cut short would-be student rampages
at Appalachian School of Law in 2002
and at Pearl High School in Pearl,
Miss. in 1997.
“If there is a way where this tragedy
could have been anticipated and
stopped beforehand, we will find it,”
vowed Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich
on Feb. 16.
Actually, there WAS a link between
the first modern schoolhouse shooter;
Kip Kinkel of Springfield, Ore.;
one if not both of the teen killers at
Columbine High School, and most
of our other domestic mass killers of
recent years. A link that makes a lot
more sense than “the easy availability
of guns.”
Steven Kazmierczak had recently
stopped taking his Prozac, his
girlfriend told the press less than a
week after the NIU shootings.
Guns were far easier to obtain in this
country before 1968 — you could
buy them through the mail. But there
were hardly any such mass-shooting
rampages.
On the other hand, chart the frequency
of these mass shootings against the
widespread introduction of such
hallucinogenic drugs as Prozac,
Ritalin, and Luvox among the inmates
of the tax-funded youth concentration
camps — the kinds of drugs that Kip
Kinkel had been on, the kind that got
Columbine killer Eric Harris blocked
from enlistment in the Marines. Let me
know what you find.
Gov. Blagojevich could seek to have
all such psychoactive prescription
nostrums prominently re-labeled:
“Warning — May cause you to kill
people.” But he won’t, will he?
Meantime, there’s a second-best
solution — the one that “allowed”
congregation member and former
police officer Jeanne Assam to
cut short an intended rampage by
disgruntled former student Matthew
Murray — carrying two handguns,
an assault rifle and more than 1,000
rounds of ammo — at the New Life
Church in Colorado Springs in just
two months ago.
Until they get around to properly
labeling the depravity-inducing
drugs which have been prescribed to
nearly all these mass shooters, Gov.
Blagojevich could tell the Illinois
Legislature and sundry county
authorities it’s way past time to restore
the 2nd and 14th amendment right to
self-defense in Illinois by repealing
every one of their overlapping “gun
control” laws, ending that state’s status
as a de jure “gun-free zone.”
But he won’t do that, either. Will he?
Vin Suprinowicz is the author of
The Black Arrow and syndicated
Libertarian columnist.
June / July 2008
47
by: Dr. Gary Mauser
Monitoring the
United Nations
T
he NFA is a founding member
of the World Forum on The
Future of Sport Shooting
Activities (often referred to as the
World Forum). NFA members can
be proud of their involvement in the
battle for the rights of civilians to
own firearms, not just in Canada, but
around the world.
The World Forum (http://www.wfsa.
net) was founded in 1997 to promote
and protect firearm ownership on every
continent. The Forum is a pro-active
advocacy group that works in concert
with international bodies, national
governments and regulatory authorities
for the worldwide promotion and
preservation of sport shooting.
The World Forum is affiliated
with the United Nations as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in
Roster Consultative Status with the
Economic and Social Council of the
UN. This means that the Forum can
participate in UN meetings where the
world decides international firearm
legislation.
In order to promote sensible
firearms laws, the Forum formed a
legislative committee that monitors
and evaluates United Nations and
international meetings where firearm
regulations are discussed, and notifies
the membership, media and other
interested parties.
The World Forum holds its Annual
General Meeting in March each year
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June / July 2008
at Nuremberg, Germany. On behalf
of the NFA I attended the 2008 AGM
this November, and the legislative
committee reported there are several
UN meetings that pose important
threats to lawful civilian firearm
ownership. The most important is the
Biennial Meeting on Small Arms and
Light Weapons, and it will meet in
New York this summer.
UN Biennial Meeting on Small Arms
– the Programme of Action
The UN Biennial Meeting of States
on the Programme of Action (POA)
was discussed extensively. Every
two years, the “Conference to Review
Progress Made in the Implementation
of the Programme of Action to
Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the
Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light
Weapons in All Its Aspects” meets at
the United Nations Headquarters in
New York.
The next biennial meeting of the POA
will be held during July 14-18, 2008
in New York. These UN meetings are
important venues exploited by anti-gun
groups to put forth their demands for
ever tighter controls on civilian firearm
ownership. They are expected to do
the same this summer in New York.
As has been mentioned before in
the Canadian Firearms Journal, the
2008 meeting of the POA will be
held despite the strong opposition
of the United States in 2006. The
international movement in the UN
against civilian firearms ownership
would have been much more
successful had it not been for that
opposition. The US was the only
country to oppose these biennial
meetings.
Frequently, the US is the only country
with enough sense to refuse to accept
radical proposals based upon the wish
lists of anti-gun activists.
The World Forum will attend the
UN in New York this summer, and
I have been invited to address the
SALW meeting at the UN as the
representative of the National Firearms
Association.
In 2006, on behalf of the NFA, I
presented a brief report on the failure
of the Canadian firearms registration
at the previous meeting at the United
Nations in New York.
(See http://www.wfsa.net/
WFSANEWS/2006PDF/
WFSA2006Mauser.pdf)
UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT):
www.nfa.ca
The World Forum had a representative
at the recent meeting of UN Arms
Trade Treaty. This was the first ATT
Group of Government Experts (GGE)
meeting during the week of February 1
in New York. The Forum is concerned
that the ATT GGE is proceeding with
an unprecedented level of secrecy.
The ATT GGE will meet again in the
week of May 12, 2008 and for two
final weeks from July 28 to August 8,
2008, and the World Forum will be
present at both these meetings.
There had been little inclination on
the part of the participants in the ATT
talks to recognize the legitimacy of
civilian firearms ownership. Even
more alarming is the presence of antigun NGOs at the conference pushing
the idea that an ATT should be linked
to crime control.
The World Forum’s presence is very
important at ATT events and meetings.
At the Nuremberg meetings, the
Forum agreed to lobby the US and
UK governments to allow more NGO
participation in the ATT meetings. If
the ATT meetings are more open, then
pro-gun-rights organizations will be
able to participate.
www.nfa.ca
The United States plays a leading
role in defending individual freedom
because of its position on civilian
firearms. The US is the only country in
the UN that has consistently opposed
UN efforts to restrict civilian firearm
ownership. More worrying is that the
defence industry in the UK and some
of the US defence industry groups are
supporting the ATT effort.
UN Ammunition Stockpiles
The United Nations Group of
Government Experts (GGE) on
Ammunition Stockpiles held its first
meeting in January, 2008, in Geneva,
and this group of experts will meet
again in the week of March 31, 2008.
Reportedly, the GGE seems to be
concentrating on military ammunition
stockpiles.
The World Forum received an informal
invitation to make a presentation to the
GGE on March 31. Unfortunately, the
UN Ammunition GGE later reversed
its position and decided not to hear
NGO statements.
UN Firearms Protocol –
Transnational Organized Crime
Convention
The United Nations Trans-national
Organized Crime Convention will hold
a Conference of Parties in Vienna,
in the period October 6-17, 2008 to
discuss the UN Firearms Protocol.
At the Nuremberg meetings, the World
Forum discussed the UN Firearms
Protocol (UN FP). It was noted that
various jurisdictions are using the
UN FP as an excuse to change their
national legislation. It was also noted
that the UN FP will be discussed in
Vienna, from October 6-17, 2008 as
part of the “Conference of Parties
to the Convention on Transnational
Organized Crime”. The World Forum
is monitoring these events and will
also be present at this Vienna meeting.
Geneva Declaration on Armed
Violence Ministers’ Meeting
The Geneva Declaration on Armed
Violence is another UN meeting that
is important to attend. Firearms will
be discussed at a ministers’ meeting
to be held on September 8, 2008, and
the World Forum will make an effort
to attend.
G-8 Meeting
Small arms are expected to be on the
agenda as well at the G-8 Meeting that
June / July 2008
49
will reunite world leaders in Hokkaido,
Japan, on July 7-9, 2008. The World
Forum has not been invited to attend.
As is readily apparent, there are
bewildering numbers of international
meetings where discussions are held
of importance to anyone interested in
lawful civilian firearms ownership.
The Forum is concerned about the
International Action Network on Small
Arms (IANSA). IANSA continues to
be extremely active with its full-time
staff of nine and extensive government
funding. Rebecca Peters, the IANSA
Executive, made a major presentation
to the Organization of American States
meeting in Mexico City, on February
20, 2008. Important decisions are
frequently made at OAS meetings
about legislation pertaining to civilian
access to firearms.
The World Forum did not receive an
invitation to speak at this meeting.
Other International Concerns
The Forum is monitoring legislative
developments in various national
jurisdictions. The new European
Firearms Directive poses particular
problems for civilian firearms owners
50
June / July 2008
in Europe. The Forum’s Legislative
Committee members are also greatly
concerned with developments in South
Africa.
The Forum is continuing negotiations
with a number of international airlines
on standardizing rules for firearm
transport. Currently, hunters and target
shooters who fly with their firearms
face possible confiscation of their
firearms when they transfer from one
airline to another. This issue is of vital
importance to Canadians, particularly
rural Canadians, because of the large
numbers of European and American
hunters who fly to Canada for guided
hunts.
The Future
The world’s policymakers can
only base their decisions upon the
information they receive. This means
they follow the lead of those who are
present, so it should not be surprising
that the debate on guns is usually
non-scientific and strongly influenced
by the emotional claims of advocacy
groups.
presented to the policy makers. This
is the only way in which truth and
balance will be brought to international
firearms legislation. The World Forum
is well placed to keep an eye on
international threats to responsible
civilian firearms ownership.
While events at the United
Nations might appear unreal and
inconsequential, they are not. The
world is closely interconnected these
days so that people living in Red Deer,
Alberta or Port Alberni, BC must be
aware of what’s happening in South
Africa or Brussels.
The NFA will be with the World
Forum in New York this summer
to participate in the UN Biennial
Meeting on Small Arms and Light
Weapons. We will again ensure that
the diplomats and policy makers are
presented the facts.
Many Canadians remember that
previous Liberal governments have
used UN policies to justify their
imposition of harsher restrictions on
firearms.
It is the task of the shooting
community to ensure that the facts are
www.nfa.ca
by Stephen Buddo
Quebec Update
T
he Sûreté du Québec (Quebec Provincial Police - AKA “the SQ”)
is enforcing a portion of Bill 9 (The Anastasia law) wherein
legal firearms owners must hand over their restricted/prohibited
firearms to the SQ without financial compensation unless they comply
with at least one of the following reasons to possess: Target shooting,
firearms collecting, protection of life, exercising your profession.
The SQ will easily allow you to keep your restricted/prohibited firearms
if you join a gun club to go target shooting. Firearms collecting is a
little trickier in that you must successfully pass an exam. The exam in
question does not appear to exist, to the best of our knowledge.
As for protection of life, the SQ’s response to that is “Dial 911”.
Professional activity encompasses those in the motion picture industry,
security guards, etc. The strange thing about the SQ’s approach is that
there is no basis for this in law; this is purely the SQ’s interpretation of
the law and the consequent “regulations” dreamt up by the SQ.
It appears that this law has backfired. The SQ’s plan simply galvanized
those who received the letter - prompting them to join gun clubs
throughout the province, effectively growing club business.
Moreover, legitimate firearms owners in Quebec are quite irate and now
politically aware that the provincial Liberals are hostile towards lawabiding firearms owners.
L
a Sûreté du Québec (La SQ)
applique en ce moment une portion
de la Loi 9 (La loi Anastasia)
qui exige que les propriétaires légaux
d’armes à feu doivent remettre leurs armes
restreintes/prohibées sans compensation
financière à la SQ à moins qu’ils ne se
conforment à au moins une des raisons
de possession suivantes: Tir à la cible,
collection d’armes, protection de la vie,
exercice de fonctions professionnelles.
La SQ permet facilement la possession
d’armes restreintes/prohibées si vous
joignez un club de tir afin de pratiquer le
tir à la cible. La collection d’armes est
un peu plus difficile car ceci implique que
vous devez passer un examen avec succès,
un examen qui ne semble pas exister en ce
moment au mieux de nos connaissances.
Quant à la protection de la vie, la SQ
répond “Signalez le 911”. Les activités
professionnelles comprennent ceux qui
travaillent dans l’industrie du cinéma, les
gardiens de sécurité, etc. Le plus étrange
dans l’approche de la SQ est qu’il n’y a
rien dans la loi qui supporte leurs actes;
ceci est purement une interprétation
de la loi par la SQ qui ont inventé des
règlements par la suite.
Il appert que cette loi ait échoué. Le
plan de la SQ a galvanisé ceux qui ont
reçu la lettre en question - ce qui les
a poussés à joindre les clubs de tir à
travers la province, ce qui a effectivement
augmenté les affaires des clubs. De plus,
les propriétaires légitimes d’armes à feu au
Québec sont fâchés et très conscients que,
politiquement parlant, le Parti Libéral du
Québec est hostile envers les propriétaires
d’armes à feu respectueux des lois.
www.nfa.ca
June / July 2008
51
Youth Outdoor
Skills Camp
- An Idea Whose Time is Long Overdue
T
he Chilliwack Fish and Game Protective Association
created a program that is long overdue: a Youth
Outdoor Skills Camp for young people aged 13 to 15
inclusive.
The camp is held at the Association’s facility in the
Chilliwack River Valley, a beautiful 22-acre property
which contains three shooting ranges, a clubhouse with full
kitchen facilities and volunteers. Lots of them.
Bill Wimpney, Jack Novak and Sandy Ritchie are the
creators of the Youth Outdoor Skills Camp. They created
the Camp for one very simple reason: they were not seeing
youth in the field. Whether that be hiking, canoeing,
hunting or fishing, they were simply not encountering any
young people out in the woods.
“Everyone we ran into was another old gray-haired brokendown old cripple like us,” Sandy Ritchie explained.
“If our culture and heritage is to survive, we need to ensure
today’s youth have the same opportunities we did when we
were kids,” said Bill Wimpney. “We have been remiss in
our duties and that has to change.”
Participants in the camp are housed at the Chilliwack Fish
and Game Protective Association facility for the duration
of the course. The very first skill they learn is how to put
up their sleeping facilities. Once that’s done, they move
into their assigned tents and get settled in. Then follows a
series of intense classroom courses and hands-on practical
training.
The Youth Outdoor Skills Camp is designed to teach young
people:
52
June / July 2008
1. The Canadian Firearms Safety Course, which enables
each participant to obtain their Youth Firearms License;
2. The Conservation and Outdoor Recreation Education
Program, which teaches animal and bird identification,
hunter etiquette and ethics, and basic first aid. This
course is required for anyone in BC to get their Hunter
Number, which is required before you can purchase a
hunting license;
3. First Aid – an advanced one-day intensive course which
expands upon what they learn on the CORE program.
CORE allows the participants to get their B.C. Hunter
Number, a pre-requesite to getting their hunting license, and
the CFSC course allows them to get their Youth Firearms
License, and once they are 18, their Possession and
Acquisition License. Both CORE and a firearms license are
required to hunt in British Columbia.
Each evening participants learn to shoot small and large
bore rifle, shotguns and black powder firearms.
They spent a couple of hours on the range every night. It’s
the highlight of the course for most of the young people as
well as for the adults coaching them.
“I have no trouble coming up with thirteen people to run a
range for these kids”, says Wimpney. “They just come out
of the woodwork. Everyone wants to help out when it’s for
the kids.”
To ensure the firing range is a safe environment at all times
there are ten shooting coaches for the students, and three
Range Safety Officers oversee the the firing line. The group
of 20 students is split in two groups of ten (the number of
www.nfa.ca
positions on the firing line) and every
student gets one-on-one coaching
as the groups rotate throughout the
evening.
Young people have a fascination with
firearms, but without proper education
and training about their use or possible
misuse, young people can get caught
up in the mystique of firearms. We use
education to reduce accidents in every
other aspect of society, yet for some
reason when it comes to firearms,
education is viewed as bad, wrong or
immoral.
The Youth Outdoor Skills Camp is
an ideal venue for teaching young
people about the safe use and handling
of firearms. Education is, after all,
the most important tool we have
for preventing firearms accidents
or misuse. The Camp gives young
people the opportunity to use firearms
in a safe and responsible manner,
destroys the “mystique of firearms”
and replaces it with a healthy and
responsible attitude toward firearms.
“We’re promoting a lifestyle here,
a lifestyle that we’ve been proud of
all this time, but for some reason has
become out of vogue,” Bill Wimpney
explains.
Jack Novak said, “In three years we
have given 58 young people the skills
required to partake of our traditional
way of life: hunting, fishing, and the
conservation of the natural resources
we all enjoy.”
The overall package the Chilliwack
Club offers each year depends on
resources, primarily volunteers. When
there are a lot of volunteers available
they offer more modules, but the
minimum is always CORE and CFSC.
Everything else is a bonus.
us a couple of years to iron out the
kinks.”
The executive of the Chilliwack Fish
and Game Protective Association were
not content to run a successful youth
training camp alone however.
“It’s not rocket science, but it does
take planning and preparation,” said
Jack Novak. “As long as you have a
committed core group to get the ball
rolling, it’s easy.”
The Chilliwack Club has
approximately 800 members, and they
train a 20 youth each summer.
“If all of the fish and game
organizations in the province were
to train 5% new members every two
years like we have, I don’t think it
would be too many years in the future
before government would be listening
to us on our issues and realizing that
we really are a ‘silent majority’,” Bill
Wimpney explained.
“We want other clubs to run a Youth
Outdoors Skills Camp of their own,
so we created a step-by-step training
video to give other clubs a package
for starting their own camps. We
wanted other clubs to learn from
our experience, not make the same
mistakes we did. We have a very
successful program now, but it took
To that end they commissioned a
training DVD and manual to help other
clubs start their own Youth Outdoor
Skills Camp.
Our heritage and culture may well
depend upon it.
For more information on the Youth
Outdoor Skills Camp or to purchase
a copy of their video and training
manual “The Step-By-Step Guide to
Running Your First Youth Outdoor
Skills Camp” ($49.95), please contact
Fritz Atkinson at the Chilliwack Fish
and Game Protective Association.
Fritz Atkinson can be reached at
604-858-4202, or via postal mail
care of Chilliwack Fish and Game
Protective Association, P.O. Box 128,
Chilliwack, BC V2P 6H7, or you can
visit the association on the web at:
www.chilliwackfishandgame.com
The camp is intentionally designed in
a modular fashion. While the primary
focus is on getting the participants
certified in CORE and CFSC, there are
many other things that can be taught
at the Youth Outdoor Skills Camp if
the resources are there. Some of the
additional modules are:
Bear Awareness
Survival First Aid
Wilderness Survival Training
Canoing
Hiking
Fishing
www.nfa.ca
June / July 2008
53
by: Kathy Jackson
Keeping Guns Away From Little Hands
Few children can resist putting a rifle to their shoulders and a finger on the
trigger when opportunity arises.
“S
- Photo Credits: Bob Jackson
o, how do you keep your kids safe around guns?” The question
caught me off guard. I was sitting in a restaurant with two friends
of mine, a married couple who had gone shooting with me earlier
that day. The talk had turned to our families, and then, inevitably, to kids and
guns.
My friends asked what I thought about kids and guns because my husband
and I have five children, all sons. At this writing, the boys range in age from
9 to 14, and they are very normal youngsters with almost insatiable curiosity
and boundless energy. We have owned guns for most of their lives.
When it comes to keeping kids safe when there are firearms in the home, my
theory is that it generally takes two layers of safety. In this article, I am going
to talk about the first layer of safety: securing the guns away from little hands.
Next issue, I will talk about the second, and ultimately more important, layer
of safety: disarming children’s curiosity about firearms.
When my children were very small, I learned that I simply could not trust
“child-proof” anything. Every one of my children learned how to climb out
A travelling case designed to secure
firearms may be used in the home as
well.
of his crib before he was a year old, and
most of them figured out how to defeat
the cabinet locks not long after that. A
lock designed only to defeat a toddler,
I soon discovered, might slow down
a grownup but very rarely defeats a
determined tot for long.
My kids are regular kids and they will
do anything that strikes their fancies – if
they think it is worth it, and believe they
can get away with it. When it comes to
playing with guns, my job has been to
make sure they either don’t think it is
worth it, or don’t believe they can get
away with it.
While it may be a popular hiding place, a rifle under Mom and Dad’s
bed is easily found.
54
June / July 2008
As active as childish curiosity is, my
husband and I believed the boys would
www.nfa.ca
look for and find any weapons we hid from them. My siblings and
I always found birthday and Christmas presents my parents thought
they had hidden well, and I had no reason to believe that my own kids
would be any less nosy than I had been. And a toddler sitting atop my
refrigerator one afternoon convinced me that to put any dangerous object
on a high shelf “where the kids can’t get it,” is to engage in a fantasy.
I had to find a way to secure our firearms that did not rely upon locks
designed only to defeat toddlers, that did not require my constant
awareness of what my children were doing in the next room, and that
made allowances for normal childhood curiosity.
Securing the firearms
We took the obvious first step and decided that any weapon we didn’t
expect to need quickly would be locked in a gun safe. A good safe is
designed to defeat grown men using power tools, so we could rely on it to
keep the firearms out of the hands of our toddlers. As an added measure of
safety, we would make sure every gun in the safe was unloaded. And we
would store the ammunition somewhere else, behind another lock and key.
We decided to get a big, sturdy safe.
Fortunately, young Riley’s parents
know better than to hide firearms in
that high cupboard.
- Photo credit: Jeremy Jackson
A simple and inexpensive document-security box may be used to lock up
ammunition, provided the guns are also secured in some way. Here, a
Ruger revolver is secured with a cable lock, while a Marlin .22 rifle has
had its bolt removed for storage.
Especially in a household with young children, the most reliable way to store
firearms is in a safe designed for the task.
www.nfa.ca
June / July 2008
55
Cable locks are one good way to secure firearms
- but be certain not to leave the keys where the
kids can find them.
safe’s security features, and no matter how
heavy the safe may be, it is not properly
installed unless it is bolted in place.
For a full size safe that is both fire- and
burglar-resistant, prices begin around
$900. Without fire protection, expect to
pay a minimum of $500 for a good floor
safe.
At the low end of the price scale, there
are lightly-built, footlocker style “security
cabinets.” These offer almost no fire
protection, and are lightweight enough that
a pair of burglars could carry a smaller
one off without much ado. However, they
cost only $150 to $200, and they will keep
your firearms out of the reach of your
children.
Disarming kids’ curiosity
With the unloaded firearms locked in the
safe, I began to feel confident that the
weapons in our home were inaccessible to
the kids – at least, as inaccessible as they
could humanly be.
There was also another factor we hadn’t
yet considered: friends’ houses. No matter
how conscientious we were about securing
the firearms in our home so the kids could
not get ahold of them, sooner or later the
boys would be spending time in other
people’s homes.
A top-end safe can protect firearms
from both theft and fire. Prices are
generally based upon how well the
safe is designed to do one or both of
these things.
Generally speaking, safes are rated
for burglary resistance according
to how long the door can withstand
entry attempts with tools or torches.
Some safes are rated to be tool or
torch resistant on all sides, not just
the front, and are correspondingly
more expensive.
The most common way for a home
safe to be defeated by a burglar is
for it to simply be picked up and
carted off to where it can be broken
into at the burglar’s leisure. Almost
all safes come pre-drilled so the safe
can be bolted to the floor or walls.
This bolting is an integral part of the
56
June / July 2008
Red-faced when caught, this
youngster got into his mom’s
makeup while she was taking
a shower. This is the stuff
of family jokes - but if a gun
were involved, it would be no
laughing matter.
Asking other people whether they owned
guns – and if they did, how did they store
those guns -- seemed terribly nosy to
me. More to the point, if I couldn’t trust
their common sense to lock up their own
firearms, why would I trust their honesty
in answering my nosy questions? I had
to assume that sooner or later my children
would spend time in the homes of people
who did not lock up their weapons. And
that meant that securing my own guns
wasn’t good enough.
Next issue, I will discuss how we dealt
with these dilemmas and went beyond
simply making our firearms safe around
children, to making our children safe
around firearms.
www.nfa.ca
Dear CFJ,
Dear Ron,
Recently I have come into
possession of a Stevens #34
“Pocket Rifle”. My cousin has
been somewhat lax in her paperwork and
her POL expired. She received a somewhat
nasty letter stating that “they” were going
to relieve her of a “firearm”. Her brother
has a valid PAL, but not to acquire a
pistol, so I got a phone call.
The firearm in question was incorrectly identified by
the verifier. It is a common mistake, as it’s always
easier to use generic parameters to classify, and the CFC
generally doesn’t complain if you are more restrictive
rather than less.
The original registration slip was for a “nonrestricted” gun, so I took possession, along
with the slip, so that it was “legally” held, as I
have a PAL and the 12-6 thing. While I was in
possession of the original registration, I took the
old gun to a verifier. The result was mixed.
The casing has a larger diameter than the modern
ammo in spite of having the same diameter bullet.
Ammunition is no longer available for it, and it would
be extremely dangerous to fire any modern ammunition
in it. It is too small in dimension and the firearm was
designed for black powder only.
There apparently is no F.R.T. number for the
gun in “Stevens-Pope”, so the verifier gave the
number for a .22 WRF and an explanation so
I could talk to the people in Orillia. Later on,
they sent me a registration slip for a “restricted
firearm” in .22LR. We had hoped that the oddball chamber would leave the gun in the antique
category, but they insist it is an ordinary .22.
The cartridge was introduced in 1871 by Savage. The
22 Stevens and Pope ammunition that was suggested
to be the caliber is not in fact a caliber of ammo but
a brand of target ammunition manufactured by Peters
Ammunition Co. in 22 Short and 22 Long Rifle, and
was only introduced in 1902.
Chamber dimensions do not agree with any
cartridge known to me.
Is there any way you can assist with three things:
1. I need the straight dope on the gun. Is it a
pistol?
2. Is it an antique?
3. What is the correct cartridge?
Ron Lawrence
Cayuga, ON
www.nfa.ca
The caliber is .22 Stevens Long, which is similar
to, but not interchangeable with modern 22LR
ammunition.
This gun is found in the Firearms reference table V3.6
Sept 2007 in file # 40973 entitled “Stevens Hunters
Pet No. 34”. In Canadian Law Comments it says - for
the purposes of firearms registration in Canada most
variants are “Handguns” and some examples of this
model, when manufactured prior to 1898, are considered
“Antique” in Canada.
There should be no requirement to register this gun.
You should go back your verifier and have him assist
you in correcting this error with the Canadian Firearms
Center.
Hope that helps.
Bill Wimpney
June / July 2008
57
by Frans Diepstraten
Biathlon
Rifles
B
iathlon, the sport that combines
cross country skiing stamina
with the skill of quickly
delivering a series of aimed shots, finds
it roots in early Scandinavian societies,
where the ability to move on skis and shoot at animals was
a matter of survival. In the early 18th century Norwegian
military ski patrols were equipped with flint-lock firearms,
and later that century the first contests were organized that
combined skiing and shooting.
It wasn’t until the second half of the 20th century that the
biathlon sport as we now know it developed. Biathlon
became an Olympic sport in 1960. With its roots in the
military it is not surprising that centre-fire rifle were used
until 1978. The switch to using rimfire cartridges is credited
with a surge in both participant numbers and popularity as a
spectator sport - especially in Europe.
In biathlon races, the athlete is confronted with a series of
five targets that must be engaged from the prone and the
standing position. As time is of the essence and only bolt
action rifles can be used, the quicker and smoother the
action can be cycled without disturbing the sight picture, the
faster the athlete is back to skiing his next loop.
58
June / July 2008
Conventional bolt actions require that the bolt be lifted
upwards, before the back and forwards motion ejects the
spent cartridge and pushes in a new one; then down to
lock the action. The effect of bolt manipulation is that
the shooter needs to let go of the grip, and that the gun
is potentially pulled out of alignment with the targets.
However, in 1984/1985 a different type of bolt action was
put into production that would change the biathlon scene.
German gun smith Peter Fortner developed a new straight
pull action, which allowed the shooter to cycle a new round
with the use of trigger finger and thumb only, while the
rest of the hand remained its grip: the “Anschütz-BiathlonGewehr Modell 1827 System Fortner” was born.
This rifle produced and marketed by the German rifle
manufacturer Anschütz, would go on and conquer the top of
the competitive biathlon world by storm. Roughly 90% of
the athletes in the World Cup circuit now use a firearm with
this action.
A straight-pull action required a different method of
locking. Fortner came up with a system where seven
locking balls in the surface of the bolt get pushed to the
outside when the bolt is pushed forward with the thumb.
Pulling backwards on the bolt handle releases the pressure
on the locking balls, which allows the action to be opened.
www.nfa.ca
The
only competitor
to the Anschutz Fortner rifle that has a
similar action is the Russian Izhmash. Not a true straightpull action in the sense that it uses a horizontal lever action
to pull the bolt straight backwards, the pivot points in the
action are located in such a way that the bolt pull only
moves through a short arc (toggle action). The bolt is locked
into place by a spring loaded pin that prevents the toggle
arm, and thereby the bolt, from moving.
Though significantly less popular than the Anschütz, a
limited number of top athletes use the Izhmash. Most of
those may have been rebarreled. Common opinion seems
to be that the Izhmash rifles, as they come from the Russian
factory, do not pattern tightly
in a reliable fashion when
it is cold. Since biathlon
for the most part is done in
winter (not counting summer
biathlon matches), this is no
small matter of concern.
www.nfa.ca
The Norwegian company Larsen,
having recognized this fact, has
an arrangement with the Izhmash
factory that a better quality barrel
is installed in the rifles supplied to
him. Larsen also installs a different
stock that is better suitable for
the biathlon sport. These rifles
are imported into North America
by Marc Sheppard, of Altius
Handcrafted Firearms from West
Yellowstone, Montana.
Also not trivial for achieving low-temperature accuracy is
the choice of ammunition. Unfortunately for the wallet, the
cheapest bullets tend to give dramatically bigger groups and
more misfires when the temperatures drop, even when used
in good barrels.
Obviously a good fitting stock is of the utmost importance
for consistent hits under stressful conditions, when the body
is tired and the bloodstream is screaming for oxygen.
For the longest time the International Biathlon Union
maintained restrictions on the depth of the stock, making
that older biathlon rifles still looked remarkably like
a regular hunting rifle. Recent changes have made the
regulations a bit more lenient, which have lead to the
deepening of the stock around and below the trigger.
Extra material in this area allows the biathlete a better
contact between arm and lower body in the standing
position. Since everybody’s physique is different, custom
stocks can be ordered for a price not much higher than the
Larsen stock. The aforementioned gunsmith, also a former
competitive biathlete, is a custom gun stock maker that has
specialized on biathlon rifles.
June / July 2008
59
There have been other makers of biathlon rifles, but not
with the straight-pull action. The Canadian company
Lakefield had a biathlon rifle in their program for a while,
but according to some it suffered from the same problem as
the unaltered Izhmash: poor accuracy during cold spells.
Marlin sponsored the US National biathlon team for a
number of years by providing a good supply of biathlon
rifles. It is still possible to find a Marlin 2000 on the used
market.
If not already so equipped it is relatively easy to turn the
single-shot rifle into a repeater. The magazine well is
already there. All it takes is a hole in the strip that covers it,
and an extension that will allow engaging of the magazine
release. And of course a rail for the carrying harness
needs to be attached, a magazine holder, a handstop
and a biathlon sling. Before you know it, you’ve spent
$1500 on a race-ready conventional bolt-action rifle. That
doesn’t quite buy you the Larsen-Izhmash, and doesn’t
even get you close to an Anschütz., but how much more
performance will you get out of either of the latter?
ordered a Larsen-Izhmash with a custom stock. Let’s face
it; I won’t make it to the 2010 Olympics, not as an athlete
anyway. Those that do have that hope somehow seem to
find the cash for an Anschütz-Fortner.
Clearly, the finest weapon of them all is the AnschützFortner, and maybe one day I’ll own one. For now I’ve
Membership Application
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Address:_ _________________________________________________________________________
City:_ _____________________________________________________________________________
Prov:____________________________________________________P.C.:_____________________
Remember the first time you
went hunting?
Ph: ( _______ ) ____________________________________________________________________
Your children will also remember
when you take them hunting.
Get them involved in hunting and
target shooting. You’ll be glad
you did.
Your National Firearms
Association Membership will help
ensure the heritage is passed on.
The National Firearms
Association...
Canada’s firearm owners
association.
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June / July 2008
Fax: ( _______ ) ___________________________________________________________________
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Mail to: National Firearms Association
Fax to: (780) 439-4091
Box 52183, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2T5
www.nfa.ca
By Chris McGarry
April 21, 2008
Safe Storage Laws
and the
Obsession with Prevention
T
wo weeks ago I sauntered
into a local hardware store
and browsed the sporting
goods section. I had been planning to
purchase a rifle at some future date
for target shooting and got the clerk
to show me the different types of
mainly .22s and .17 caliber rifles on
display. Afterward I asked the young
man exactly what safe storage rules
one must follow to legally store their
firearms. I was a bit surprised to hear
that, according to Canada’s infamous
Firearms Act (C-68) firearms stored
in a private dwelling must either
be locked in a windowless room or
a heavy gun cabinet. “But it’s so a
criminal can’t break into your home,
steal your firearms and commit a crime
with them,” the polite clerk explained
to me.
This got me thinking. In the past few
decades, much of western society
(not just Canada) has developed an
unhealthy obsession with going out
of its way by prevent either tragedies
such as mass shootings or accidents
before they ever occur.
In the past 30 years, this has meant
an endless barrage on our individual
liberties: seat belt and bicycle helmet
and life-jacket legislation, the banning
of certain traditional children’s games
deemed too “dangerous”, but worst
of all, laws making firearms virtually
useless for self-defense. But oh,
the soccer moms and professionals
such as pediatricians and especially
anti-gunners like Wendy Cukier
have convinced a large chunk of the
population that safe storage laws keep
firearms out of the hands of children
and others who shouldn’t have access
to them.
Then there are those who believe
using a firearm to protect one’s life
and property is immoral. “Guns are
ineffective because they are often
used against a defender,” they naively
chant. If this blatant lie were actually
true then no police officer would ever
be permitted to carry a handgun on
their hip.
I’ve heard of a case where a
homeowner was charged with unsafe
storage even though his stolen firearms
had been locked in a vault bolted to
the floor.
How dumb can our governments get?
Whatever happened to making real
criminals responsible for their actions?
With this misguided mentality, the
government would be wise to pass
laws making it mandatory for car
owners to lock their vehicles in
garages. (You know, criminals can
steal cars and use them in commission
of crimes such as armed robberies).
Hey, why stop there. Owners of
expensive video and photography
equipment should be required to lock
it up also, just in case it gets stolen and
used to make child pornography.
This assault on the property
rights and freedoms of lawabiding citizens has gone too
far. Generations of Canadians
have owned firearms without
having them locked up tighter
than Fort Knox and there
wasn’t a rash of children
shooting themselves.
A man’s home has been
acknowledged to be his castle
ever since King John signed
the Magna Carta way back
in 1215. All citizens have
the inalienable right to feel
secure in and protect their
castles if the need arises.
www.nfa.ca
June / July 2008
61
by J.J. Jackson
O
ne cowardly waste of human flesh terrorized the
campus of Virginia Tech. Hoping to avoid being
held accountable, Cho Seung-Hui eventually took
his own life. Only he forgot that there is a higher power
than any court of law to which he will answer. And as his
special place in Hell was being warmed up, the bodies of
his victims were being counted; over thirty people dead and
many more were injured.
It is easy to lay the blame for the carnage at the feet of yet
another lunatic. It was his actions, his choice, his evil that
terrorized the campus after all. And for this act, yes he bears
all responsibility.
But others are not blameless. Because there are others
that created the situation in which this horrific event
occurred. There are still others that perpetuated the situation
once it began because they were more concerned about
perceptions, feelings and even laying down their own rights
than they were about protecting themselves, their fellow
citizens, and the students in their charge.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Blame goes to the
school administrators and elected officials who ignorantly
thought that with the magical wave of a pen they could
make criminals and evil people obey “codes of conduct”
and create safe workplaces by mandate. Blame goes to
every person that came face to face with this coward who
themselves was not armed and laid down their rights hoping
for someone else to save them.
Hundreds of people had the chance to end these tragic
events and save lives. Hundreds of people stared into the
face of evil and cowered or even fled rather than confront it.
And because of their choices, actions and inactions thirtysome students and faculty lay dead.
That is not to say that the day was not without its heroes.
Liviu Librescu, who survived the Holocaust, knew evil
when he saw it. He sacrificed his own life to barricade the
62
June / July 2008
door to his class room as a coward shot him. He allowed
his students a chance to flee. But sadly there were not many
more heroes. Saddly there were far too few Librescu’s.
All it would have taken was for one person to stand up and
react to the warning signs given off by a troubled student
that had a history of unfit conduct. All it would have taken
was for one, just one, person to reject the belief that policy
and pieces of paper can stop evil. All it would have taken
was just one person to defy the insanity and refuse to lay
down their own responsibility and their own rights. All it
would have taken was one man or woman brave enough
to embrace their own power and their own obligation
to be armed as article I, Section 13 of the Virginia State
Constitution so allows:
“That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of
the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe
defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to
keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”
Where was that brave soul? The State Constitution clearly
says “shall not be infringed”.
However those words ring hollow with the documents of
a state run and publicly funded university that expressly
prohibited students and other law abiding citizens from
carrying guns openly and freely to defend themselves and
others. Those words ring hollow as thousands of students,
faculty and visitors willfully laid down their rights because
of the threats of punishment that would be levied against
them should they defy these unconstitutional rules.
Certainly it has never been fashionable to blame victims
of tragedy. But then again, I have never been one to be
fashionable. Fashion has throughout history lead to the
destruction of common sense and the rise of injustice after
injustice and the needless suffering of innocents. I have
always preferred reason and truth to whatever those that
seek to deflect blame may claim as being “fashionable”
www.nfa.ca
in order to shield themselves from
deserved scrutiny. It takes a lot more
courage to prefer this to the comfort
and convenience of “fashion”.
It is a shame that so many are dead.
But what is of equal shame is that
many are dead because they and
their fellow citizens never learned
the important lessons. Instead they
were taught and forced to learn the
unimportant and the meaningless in
pursuit of God only knows what goal.
They never learned that our rights
as citizens are insoluble even by the
arbitrary whims of public officials
and bureaucrats. They never learned
that our rights as citizens are to be
embraced and carried in our hearts
proudly and without fear of reprisal
by those in power who would seek
to erode them. They never learned
that when one attempts to revoke
their rights, it is their responsibility
to stand up and defy those men who
would be tyrants and defy them by
force if necessary. They never learned
that when they choose to wilt before
unconstitutional infringements of
their rights eventually good people
get hurt or sadly even killed. They
never learned that waiting for others
to protect them is a fatal decision in
many cases. They never learned that
the lawless and the evil will not be
assuaged by pieces of paper and talk of
“feelings” of safety.
must be laid at the feet of those that
obeyed insane regulations and were
unable to confront evil? And how
much of the carnage that will happen
in the future in similar and sadly tragic
passion plays put on by the wicked
will be placed in the laps of those that
will continue to think that paper and
words will stop the next massacre?
abridgement of liberty? If it was but
only one, it would have been worth it.
How many more criminals must break
your precious decrees of “safety”
before you realize that documents do
not make you safe and that only strong
and decisive action, vigilance and
courage will succeed in securing your
liberty and rights?
It would have been worth it to watch
the politicos wringing their hands
today over the horror that someone
would have dared to defy their policy.
It would have been worth it to watch
these same people debate whether or
not that brave soul should be thrown
off campus for saving lives despite
being against the glorious rules. It
would have been worth it to try and
watch them justify their own insanity
in the face of the facts. Because in
the end what stopped this horrible
situation? It was a gun.
Many innocents and one lunatic are
dead. Those who have as their motive
controlling we the citizenry will say
that it is because there were “too
many” guns on campus the morning of
April 16th, 2007. But the truth is that
the reason so many are dead is because
there were far, far too few.
Yes, it was the lunatic’s own gun, but
it was a gun none-the-less. But it could
have been the gun of a law-abiding
citizen. That is, if there were any brave
souls willing to defy their incompetent
masters. In the lasting words of
General John Stark, “Live free or die:
Death is not the worst of evils.”
Innocent lives could have been spared.
But they could not have been spared
by papers, policies and decrees. They
could have been spared if only lawabiding and noble citizens would have
embraced their liberties and defied
unjust laws and rules.
That is the lesson that needs to be
learned.
How many lives would have been
saved if but one courageous citizen
would have had the valor to defy their
J.J. Jackson’s weekly articles can
be found at Liberty Reborn (http://
www.LibertyReborn.com) and he
is a contributor to several internet
websites. He writes in the defense
of individual liberty and limited
government as the best way to secure
the blessings of freedom for all people.
Instead they proudly tout to the
criminal that they have no means of
defending themselves and invite evil
upon them. Instead they lie down like
lambs to be slaughtered by wolves.
Instead they allow their rights to be
usurped. Instead they scratch their
heads wondering how this madman got
a gun on campus.
Didn’t he read the policy?!? Didn’t he
understand that the campus had been
decreed as “safe”?!? Why would he
ignore that?!?
Because he was evil; that’s why.
How much of the carnage must be put
in hands of those that set such policies
in motion? How much of the carnage
www.nfa.ca
June / July 2008
63
Continued from page 9.
a conviction for excessive force and
establishing new precedent to solidify a
new social code; use of force would be
acceptable only under the authority of
agents of the state, no one else.
Une partie de ce mouvement
commandait que l’utilisation de la
force lors de l’application du code
Criminel du Canada serait de l’essor
de l’état seulement. La possibilité
d’employer la force pour l’autodéfense, ou la défense des autres sera
retirée des mœurs des canadiens. Des
nouvelles directives furent données à
la GRC et autres corps de police afin
de décourager ces actes d’autorité
et d’autonomie personnelle. Les
Procureurs de la Couronne furent
instruits d’appliquer des charges dans
toutes les causes ou la violence était
employée lors de l’auto-défense, en
espérant un verdict de culpabilité pour
force excessive tout en établissant un
précédent afin d’établir un nouveau
code social. L’utilisation de la force
ne sera acceptable que si elle est
déployée sous l’autorité des agents de
l’état, personne d’autre.
A new era was to be born, a new
and just society where fewer violent
offenders would be created, and where
those that were could be adequately
managed by the law enforcement
agencies of the state.
Une nouvelle ère devait naître, une
société nouvelle et juste avec moins
de criminels violents, et si malgré tout
il y en avait, ils pourraient être gérés
adéquatement par les corps policiers de
l’état.
This vision of Canadian society has
failed us. If it ever had a time, that time
is now gone.
Cette vision de la société canadienne
nous a fait faux bond. Si elle a déjà
existé, elle n’existe plus depuis
longtemps.
Governments must accept that they
alone cannot solve the problem of
crimes of violence against Canadians.
The courts and jurists must accept that
they have been failing Canadians for
decades in the pursuit of public safety.
64
June / July 2008
Law Enforcement must accept that
they cannot be everywhere, and cannot
guarantee that every Canadian will be
spared from becoming a victim of a
violent crime or tragedy.
Les gouvernements doivent accepter
qu’eux seuls ne peuvent résoudre le
problème des crimes violents envers
les canadiens. La magistrature et les
juristes doivent accepter qu’ils ont fait
du tort au canadiens depuis des décades
en poursuivant la sécurité publique.
Les corps policiers doivent accepter le
fait qu’ils ne peuvent être partout en
tout temps et qu’ils ne peuvent garantir
que chaque citoyen canadien ne
deviendra pas une victime d’un crime
violent ou d’une tragédie.
At some point Canadians themselves
must step up and provide that first line
of defense. That doesn’t always require
use of force, but when force is required,
Canadians must be assured that they
have the support of law enforcement,
the courts and politicians in its just
and lawful employment. This is not
vigilantism, but rather good citizenship.
The duty of supporting one’s fellow
citizens. A positive affirmation of
citizenship and participation in a just
and orderly society. It doesn’t get any
more Canadian than that.
Un moment donné les canadiens
eux-mêmes doivent se prendre en
main et prodiguer leur première ligne
de défense. Ceci ne requiert pas
toujours l’utilisation de la force, mais
lorsque requis, les canadiens doivent
être assurés qu’ils peuvent compter
sur le support des corps policiers, la
magistrature et les politiciens lorsque
la force est employée d’une façon
juste et légale. Ceci n’est pas du
vigilantism, mais plutôt agir en tant
que bon citoyen. Le devoir d’aider ses
concitoyens est une affirmation positive
de la part d’un citoyen qui participe
pleinement dans une société juste et
paisible. Il n’y a pas plus canadien que
cela.
ourselves, our families, and Canadian
Society. Where do the responsibilities
of government, the courts and law
enforcement end, and where do the
rights and responsibilities of average
Canadians begin?
Dans cette édition du Canadian
Firearms Journal, nous désirons
provoquer la pensée des gens
concernant ces sujets d’importance.
Nous aimerions que vous pensiez en
quoi consiste la légitime utilisation
de la force pour votre auto-défense
personnelle, de votre famille ainsi que
pour la société canadienne. Quelles
sont les limites des responsabilités des
gouvernements, de la magistrature et
des corps policiers et ou débutent les
droits et responsabilités du citoyen
canadien?
The coming years will shape the future
of Canadian society. We can choose
to continue down the dark path of
social disorder and chaos started by
the political and cultural elite of the
governments of the 1970’s, or we can
choose to reform our laws and reinvigorate our institutions so we can
return to a kinder, gentler Canadian
society where self-reliance and
personal responsibility is, once again,
our national identity.
Les années à venir vont façonner
l’avenir de la société canadienne. On
peut choisir de continuer sur la piste
de désordre social et de chaos entamé
par l’élite politique et culturelle des
années 1970, ou on peut choisir de
réformer nos lois et de renouveler
nos institutions afin de retourner vers
une société canadienne plus gentille,
plus paisible ou l’autosuffisance et
la responsabilité personnelle fera,
de nouveau, partie de notre identité
nationale.
In this issue of Canadian Firearms
Journal we wish to provoke thought
on these important issues. We want
you to think about what constitutes
legitimate use of force in defense of
www.nfa.ca
Why Did it Have to be ... Guns?
O
ver the past 30 years, I’ve
been paid to write almost two
million words, every one of
which, sooner or later, came back to
the issue of guns and gun-ownership.
Naturally, I’ve thought about the issue
a lot, and it has always determined the
way I vote.
People accuse me of being a singleissue writer, a singleissue thinker,
and a singleissue voter, but it isn’t
true. What I’ve chosen, in a world
where there’s never enough time
and energy, is to focus on the one
political issue which most clearly and
unmistakably demonstrates what any
politician—or political philosophy—is
made of, right down to the creamy
liquid center.
Make no mistake: all politicians—even
those ostensibly on the side of guns
and gun ownership—hate the issue
and anyone, like me, who insists on
bringing it up. They hate it because
it’s an X-ray machine. It’s a Vulcan
mind-meld. It’s the ultimate test to
which any politician—or political
philosophy—can be put.
If a politician isn’t perfectly
comfortable with the idea of his
average constituent, any man,
woman, or responsible child, walking
into a hardware store and paying
cash—for any rifle, shotgun, handgun,
machinegun, anything—without
producing ID or signing one scrap of
paper, he isn’t your friend no matter
what he tells you.
If he isn’t genuinely enthusiastic
about his average constituent stuffing
that weapon into a purse or pocket or
tucking it under a coat and walking
home without asking anybody’s
permission, he’s a four-flusher, no
matter what he claims.
What his attitude—toward your
ownership and use of weapons—
conveys is his real attitude about you.
And if he doesn’t trust you, then why
in the name of John Moses Browning
should you trust him?
www.nfa.ca
If he doesn’t want you to have the
means of defending your life, do you
want him in a position to control it?
If he makes excuses about obeying a
law he’s sworn to uphold and defend—
the highest law of the land, the Bill of
Rights—do you want to entrust him
with anything?
If he ignores you, sneers at you,
complains about you, or defames you,
if he calls you names only he thinks
are evil—like “Constitutionalist”—
when you insist that he account for
himself, hasn’t he betrayed his oath,
isn’t he unfit to hold office, and
doesn’t he really belong in jail?
Sure, these are all leading questions.
They’re the questions that led me to
the issue of guns and gun ownership
as the clearest and most unmistakable
demonstration of what any given
politician—or political philosophy—is
really made of.
He may lecture you about the
dangerous weirdos out there who
shouldn’t have a gun—but what does
that have to do with you? Why in the
name of John Moses Browning should
you be made to suffer for the misdeeds
of others? Didn’t you lay aside the
infantile notion of group punishment
when you left public school—or
the military? Isn’t it an essentially
European notion, anyway—Prussian,
maybe—and certainly not what
America was supposed to be all about?
And if there are dangerous weirdos
out there, does it make sense to
deprive you of the means of protecting
yourself from them? Forget about
those other people, those dangerous
weirdos, this is about you, and it has
been, all along.
Try it yourself: if a politician won’t
trust you, why should you trust him?
If he’s a man—and you’re not—what
does his lack of trust tell you about his
real attitude toward women? If “he”
happens to be a woman, what makes
her so perverse that she’s eager to
by L. Neil Smith
render her fellow women helpless on
the mean and seedy streets her policies
helped create? Should you believe
her when she says she wants to help
you by imposing some infantile group
health care program on you at the
point of the kind of gun she doesn’t
want you to have?
On the other hand—or the other
party—should you believe anything
politicians say who claim they stand
for freedom, but drag their feet
and make excuses about repealing
limits on your right to own and carry
weapons? What does this tell you
about their real motives for ignoring
voters and ramming through one
infantile group trade agreement after
another with other countries?
Makes voting simpler, doesn’t it? You
don’t have to study every issue—
health care, international trade—all
you have to do is use this X-ray
machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to
get beyond their empty words and find
out how politicians really feel. About
you. And that, of course, is why they
hate it.
And that’s why I’m accused of being a
single-issue writer, thinker, and voter.
But it isn’t true, is it?
Four-time Prometheus Awardwinner L. Neil Smith has been
writing about guns and gun
ownership for more than 30 years.
He is the author of 27 books,
the most widely-published and
prolific libertarian novelist in the
world, and is considered an expert
on the ethics of self-defense.
His writings may be seen on the
following sites:
http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/
lneilsmith.htm
http://www.lneilsmith.org
http://www.ncc-1776.org
June / July 2008
65
By Christopher di Armani
Public Safety or
Recipe for Disaster?
I spoke with a co-worker today who believes in a total
ban on firearms. This is an intelligent person who
wants a safer world for her children, a legitimate and
laudable desire.
Our differences arose over her belief that I would be
safer if I was disarmed. She trotted out the “48 times
more likely to be harmed by your own gun” statistic
and scoffed at my reply that her statement had been
discredited by peer-reviewed research years ago.
When questioned about the effect of taking away my
ability to protect myself and my family, she conceded
quite readily that criminals will always have guns, and
that they will use them whenever they want.
Still she held the belief that the world would be a
better place if I (and all the rest of us law-abiding
Canadian gun owners) had no guns.
Her disconnect came in the form of her belief that
fewer guns would make us all safer. “Sure,” she said,
“criminals will have guns, but I still believe the fewer
guns there are, the better off we’d be.”
Even if the only guns available are in the hands of
criminals?
Yes.
That is a recipe for disaster, not public safety.
Jurisdictions that ban firearms from the hands of
law-abiding citizens have missed the boat. The high
violent crime rates of these jurisdictions on both
sides of the border exist precisely because their
governments are incapable of trusting honest, lawabiding citizens.
66
June / July 2008
Washington, DC, for example, insists that it’s high
violent crime rate is someone else’s fault. It’s the fault
of the lax gun laws in New Jersey or Maryland or any
other state in the nation that doesn’t prohibit firearms.
Their policy of a “gun-free zone” can’t possibly be at
fault, can it?
In Toronto it’s no different. Mayor Miller will blame
anyone and everyone for the city’s gun crime problem.
He blames Ottawa, he blames gun collectors, target
shooters and hunters. But will he blame the violent
criminals? Will he actually order his police force to
go out and arrest those violent criminals?
Of course not.
Why should Mayor Miller actually solve the problem
when he can scapegoat you and I instead? It’s far
easier, that’s for sure. Safer too. We don’t shoot back.
Violent criminals do.
Charlton Heston, that Beacon of Freedom’s Light who
left us recently, said:
“Please, go forth and tell the truth. There can be
no free speech, no freedom of the press, no freedom
to protest, no freedom to worship your God, no
freedom to speak your mind, no freedom from fear, no
freedom for your children and for theirs, for anybody,
anywhere without the Second Amendment freedom to
fight for it. If you don’t believe me, just turn on the
news tonight. Civilizations veneer is wearing thinner
all the time.”
Mr. Heston, thank you for everything you did to fight
for your freedom and ours while you were here.
Thank you for a fitting and appropriate “Last Word”.
www.nfa.ca

CFJ June-July 2008 Proof - National Firearms Association

Transcription

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