NFA Commentary

On September 8th, Stephane Dion and the Liberal Party of Canada announced a renewed attack on the rights of responsible firearm owners across Canada.

In his official press release made on the campus of Dawson College, Mr. Dion stated that:

"A new Liberal government will make our cities, our communities, and our schools safer by getting military assault weapons off our streets." Mr. Dion went on to argue that, "military assault weapons have no connection to hunting or sport shooting, and serve absolutely no purpose in our society. No one outside of the military needs these weapons and we would all be safer without them in Canada."

What Mr. Dion didn't bother to explain to Canadians was the fact that such firearms have been effectively banned since 1978 and that such firearms have not been available for purchase by non-grandfathered individuals in 30 years. Individual firearms, such as the much-maligned Beretta CX4 Storm, despite Liberal contentions, are low-powered sporting arms designed for target shooting and informal plinking. Under current Canadian firearms legislation magazine capacity for such rifles and carbines are restricted to five (5) rounds only.  However, to use the uninformed terminology of the Liberal Party, Mr. Dion considers such a firearm an "assault weapon"!

It has been quite an interesting couple of months since my last column. Toronto Mayor David Miller launched a broad attack on not just legal handgun owners, but all legal firearms owners, shooting sports, gun shops, gun clubs and any industry that promotes the lawful use of firearms in any way.

Miller and his gang are in this fight to win and if that means playing fast and loose with the truth, then they’re willing to make that "sacrifice."

Tonight, Dalton McGuinty's Liberals were returned to Queens Park with a majority and will govern Ontario for another four years. The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party ran a weak candidate who made a number of gaffes during the campaign, who failed to define the election debate, and couldn't offer Ontario voters a viable alternative to the Liberals.

Just what does this mean for the firearms community of Ontario? The last four years are an indication of just how the Liberal government of Ontario regards the firearms community in that province. To them, you are an intolerable source for the theft of crime guns, and thus you present a danger to the Ontario community at large. Your handguns should be banned and your long guns should remain registered and tightly controlled. The Ontario government wants to see "gun control" laws stiffened, and will continue to harass the federal government to this end. To the Ontario Government, if you own firearms in accordance with the laws of Canada in that province, you are the problem.

With great sadness and a profound sense of loss, we announce that David A. Tomlinson, President of the National Firearms Association, passed away the evening of September 18th, 2007, after a short illness.
 
It goes without saying that Dave had a deep impact on firearms politics and legislation, beginning in the mid 1970's with the FARO group, through the first incarnation of National Firearms Association in 1978, and from 1984 to present as President and Legal Advisor to the National Firearms Association of Canada.
 
Dave was one of the few Canadians to foresee the ever-increasing agenda of civil disarmament, identify it, and warn the Canadian firearms community of its implications. In the early days of this struggle, Dave was routinely marginalized and dismissed for his views. Gradually though, and especially after the Liberal gun bill of 1995 - Bill C68 - Dave's views became accepted as fact, and became mainstream thought in the firearms community.
 
His investment in study and analysis of government firearms control laws and the political system revolutionized the way the Canadian firearms community approached the courts and legislatures in Ottawa, and all across Canada.
 
His unique analysis challenged all of us to "think outside of the box" with regard to the legal and political challenges that faced us. He showed that there was another way, a light at the end of the tunnel, an alternative to the specter of a political and cultural end to the firearms community and the Canadian traditions of hunting and targets sports, the effective means of self defense, and the ownership of firearms in Canada.
 
Dave's massive legal library and guidance against unwarranted Firearms Act charges was routinely placed at the disposal of the firearms community, as was Dave himself. His selfless assistance to those who have run afoul of our punitive, misdirected and broken firearms laws was done not only to benefit individuals, but the firearms community as a whole in the pursuit of justice for firearms owners.
 
That massive legal library remains as Dave's legacy, and will continue to be put at the disposal of the firearms community.

When the horrors of  "Universal Registration" and the Chretien/Allan Rock Liberal agenda on gun control were visited on us during the dark days of 1994/1995, the fear and alarm that manifested itself in the firearms community was quite understandable. This was a day few thought would ever come, and all knew the implications if the firearms community simply accepted it as inevitable or irresistible.
 
Dave Tomlinson had foreseen those implications long before most gun owners did.
 
He rightly predicted that if the Liberals or any government actually went through with the idea of "universal registration" the resulting costs and bureaucracy would be so immense that a national scandal on the scale seldom seen in Canada would result. He predicted that any such scheme could not be delivered on time, on target or on budget. He was ultimately to be proved right.
 
After the C68 Firearms Act was passed by Parliament in 1995, Dave threw himself into picking it apart and analyzing every aspect of its convoluted and poorly drafted regulations. From this day, it was Dave Tomlinson and the National Firearms Association's firm mandate to fight back from the inside and the outside, in the courts, in the legislatures, and in the court of public opinion. He showed the firearms community the ways it could be effectively resisted, undermined and finally stopped.
 
It now appears that Dave may have achieved exactly that. The Liberal Firearms Act is widely recognized as a failure, it has been thoroughly marginalized politically with only its authors and the gun control lobby still championing it, and it is due for replacement by the present Conservative government when it is politically possible to do so.
 
Dave developed an alternative to the failed gun control agenda's of the past. Based on the "Sportsman's Principles" of the FARO group of the 1970's, Dave developed the National Firearms Association's "Practical Firearms Control System” - a system that takes the power of the bureaucracy over legitimate, law abiding firearms owners, and instead invests that power for training and vetting new firearms owners in the firearms community of Canada itself, where it belongs.
 
Many of you reading this will have known Dave a lot longer than I have. I first came to know Dave Tomlinson in 1995 as a result of Bill C68. His reputation preceded him. I recognized him as visionary in his assessment of the situation facing the firearms community of Canada, and his road map for defeating this most heinous piece of legislation gave me hope for the future. I think it did the same for you.
 
Today, we celebrate the life of Dave Tomlinson, and we all stand assured that as we go forward in replacing the Firearms Act and reclaiming our rights, it is Dave’s wisdom, guidance and vision which have brought us to this point, and which will take us the rest of the way.
 
Dave Tomlinson
National President
National Firearms Association of Canada
 
We will not see another like him.
 

Blair Hagen
Vice President, Communications
National Firearms Association

Rights. Freedoms. Authority. Control. Responsibility. Those are big and important words. We do not think about them often enough. That is a mistake..

Madame, Monsieur,
{mosauthorxtd noshow}

Dear
Sir, Madam :

Il
appert que Jean Charest, chef du Parti Libéral du Québec
et Premier ministre du Québec, a l'intention d'être
encore plus sévère envers les questions de sécurité
publique. Un article qui a paru tout récemment dans La Presse
mentionnait entre autre que les tireurs à la cible, les
collectionneurs ainsi que les propriétaires d'armes
semi-automatiques devront, dans un avenir rapproché,
entreposer leurs armes à leur club de tir respectif. La
National Firearms Association (NFA) s'oppose vivement à
cette mesure.

It
appears that Jean Charest, Leader of Quebec's Liberal party and
Premier of Quebec intends to be even stricter concerning public
safety. A newspaper article that appeared in La Presse mentioned
that owners of semi-automatic firearms would have to store them at a
gun club. The NFA is very much opposed to this idea.

This pamphlet was written as a political primer for those who see problems with Canada's democracy our defective political systems. It is a "how to" manual.

1995: Canada is a a democratic disaster area. Less than 3 per cent of our voters belong to any political party.

That tiny (under 3 per cent!), self-selected, and very unrepresentative minority has absolute power to choose every name on every ballot in every election--federal and provincial--and absolute power to set every policy of every political political party.

That is too much power in too few hands. If you want to help correct that dangerous imbalance, you need to understand our system of selecting and electing politicians.

This paper is addressed to the Canadian firearms community, a group with members from every walk of life.  As a group, you are above average in income, education, and sense of responsibility.  You are precisely the type of people who should be selecting the candidates for election and setting the policies of parties.

Download the complete Party Time publication in PDF format from:
 http://www.nfa.ca/files/partytime.pdf 2.90 Mb.

On some computers  you may have to right click on the link and select "Save As" in order to save the file to your hard disk.

Britain
is a horror story. Violent crime rates there are the highest in the
western world, and getting worse. There is no potential for
improvement in sight.

Canadian
governments have been copying British ideas for dealing with violent
crime for the last 50 years. In Britain, those ideas have resulted in
national catastrophe--Britain is now a country where the victims are
helpless and the police are ineffective. The courts, prosecutors, and
government seem to be on the side of the violent criminal rather than
on the side of the victims.

Britain
outlawed the possession of every privately owned handgun in 1995--and
now has more handgun crime than ever before. British laws have
disarmed British victims--and have been a total failure at disarming
British criminals.

We are now entering a new era in the firearms control debate in Canada.
The long years of hard work and dedication by the activists of the
firearms community have been key to the defeat of the former Liberal
government, and we now have a Conservative government that looks
favorably on the aims and issues of the firearms community.
 
Or does it?

The
most important work to replace the previous Liberal government's
failed C-68 gun control system has not ended. With the election of a
Conservative government in January, 2006, in many ways it has just
begun.

In
May we saw the Auditor General release another report on the firearms
registry program. Auditor General Sheila Fraser reported that the
former Liberal government misinformed Parliament about tens of
millions of dollars in overspending at the Canada Firearms Centre.
She also told us that the latest version of the planned computerized
firearm registry system is three years overdue and so far has cost
$90 million, three times more than expected.