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Rights being lost without benefit

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The following is the viewpoint of the writer, a Saskatoon resident and member of the Canadian Unregistered Firearms Owners Association.

This week three members of the Canadian Unregistered Firearms Owners Association -- Joe Gingrich, Jack Wilson and I -- each paid $25 to attend an afternoon barbecue with Social Development Minister Ken Dryden, Public Works Minister Scott Brison, and John Godfrey, the minister responsible for infrastructure in Meewasin Park.

We also paid an additional $10 to have an "official" photograph taken of Wilson handing Dryden a video of Wilson selling Gingrich an unregistered shotgun.

The ministers' handlers didn't take at all kindly to my taking photographs of Gingrich talking to Brison about how the Firearms Act violates our rights and freedoms.

I pointed out in the past to the Saskatoon city police and the leader of the Liberal Party of Saskatchewan (who lives in my provincial riding and who arranged this barbecue within 400 meters of my house) the local news media knows full well my home contains more than 50 unregistered firearms, several hundred of rounds of ammunition, gun powder, primers, and rifle and shot-shell reloading components.

If three federal ministers, five or six federal Liberal candidates, the leader of the Saskatchewan Liberal party, his staff, Saskatoon's mayor, several city councillors, four aboriginal vice-chiefs, about 20 to 30 striking CBC pickets and, approximately 75 to 80 dedicated Liberal supporters, can safely congregate along with three openly proclaimed unlicensed firearms owners in a park so close to what the news media would routinely describe as a "virtual arsenal" of unregistered firearms and ammunition, what public good is served by the Firearms Act?

If three federal ministers are safe in an open park along our wooded river bank while the Firearms Act is ignored and not enforced, why do we continue to waste our tax dollars on it?

Our individual rights and freedoms have been violated for no public benefit. It is time to end this billion-dollar charade.