BILL C-230: AN EFFORT TO CLARIFY THE TERM “VARIANT” (Daniel Fritter | Calibre | February 24, 2016)
Larry Miller, the Conservative MP for the riding of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, tabled a private member’s bill today (Bill C-230) in an effort to clarify the term “variant.” As it currently stands, although the term is without any clear definition pertaining to firearms in Canadian law, no less than 4,030 firearms have been classified and entered into the Firearms Reference Table as “variants.” As a result, numerous firearms populate the prohibited and restricted classes by virtue of being named “variants” of other firearms, without any justifiable reason for the term having been applied.
This new Bill C-230, aimed at bringing some clarity and transparency to the classification process, would see the term “variant” entered into the Criminal Code’s definitions in the following clear and concise manner: “variant, in respect of a firearm, means a firearm that has the unmodified frame or receiver of another firearm. (variante).” The press release on the matter reads:
This would be of obvious and immediate benefit to businesses that currently are forced to undergo the crap-shoot process of having firearms classified as unfortunate “variants” of guns with which they share nothing more than a passing resemblance (one of latest and most infamous of which is the downright ridiculous case of the Mossberg Blaze and Blaze 47 rifle’s simultaneous classification as a non-restricted .22 and a prohibited AK-47 variant).
Furthermore, the passage of this brief bill would also benefit the Canadian Firearms Program by hugely streamlining the classification process, and bringing a greater sense of openness and transparency to the federally-managed program; two key election promises tabled by the now-governing Liberal party during the last election.
HOUSE OF COMMONS OF CANADA
BILL C-230
An Act to amend the Criminal Code (firearm — definition of variant)
R.S., c. C-46
Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:
1 (1) Subsection 84(1) of the Criminal Code is amended by adding the following in alphabetical order:
variant, in respect of a firearm, means a firearm that has the unmodified frame or receiver of another firearm. (variante)
(2) The definition prohibited firearm in subsection 84(1) of the Act is amended by striking out “or” at the end of paragraph (c), by adding “or’’ at the end of paragraph (d) and by adding the following after paragraph (d):
(e) any variant of a firearm described in any one of paragraphs (a) to (d).
(3) The definition restricted firearm in subsection 84(1) of the Act is amended by striking out “or” at the end of paragraph (c), by adding “or’’ at the end of paragraph (d) and by adding the following after paragraph (d):
(e) any variant of a firearm described in any one of paragraphs (a) to (d).
See the full story: http://calibremag.ca/bill-c-230-an-effort-to-clarify-the-term-variant/
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CHILLIWACK GUN SHOW | MARCH 19 AND 20, 2016 | HERITAGE PARK, CHILLIWACK, BC | Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. | For information, please call Art Hoivik at 604-858-8039.
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“The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.” – Col. Jeff Cooper
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AN AMERICAN EXPORT CANADIANS DON’T WANT: GUNS (By Colbert I. King | Washington Post | February 19, 2016)
The United States is to Canada what Mexico is to the United States: the reason for border trouble. The U.S. gets illegal immigrants smuggled from Mexico; Canada gets illegal guns smuggled from the U.S.
But who, pray tell, gets the worst of it?
Much is made about the impact of illegal immigration on states along the southern U.S. border. But what about the impact of illegal weapons making their way into the country to our north?
Smuggled firearms from the United States are fuelling bloodshed in Canada. A couple of sentences from a story in The Washington Post this week by William Marsden said it all: “Homicides in Toronto spiked to 80 in 2005, from 64 in 2004, and the majority were shooting-related. About 70 per cent of the guns used were handguns and automatic weapons smuggled from the United States, police say.”
While the number of shootings has decreased, gun seizures by the Canadian Border Services Agency reportedly are up: 226 illegal weapons were seized in 2012, most of them handguns; there were 316 by 2015.
To be sure, gun-violence numbers in the U.S. swamp Canada’s: There were 156 gun-related homicides in Canada in 2014, Marsden reported, compared with 10,945 the same year here. That may be cold comfort to Canadians, who experienced a 16-per-cent increase in gun-related killings in 2014.
Alarmed by the increased number of high-powered handguns and semi-automatic and automatic weapons in his cities, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau indicated that he will seek tougher laws that would “get handguns and assault weapons off our streets.”
Folks in Washington should wish him luck. Americans know all too well about illegal guns, and are learning more about what those weapons can do, especially in young, undisciplined hands.
Canada shouldn’t want to witness a development of this kind, though there are indications that youth gangs in Canada are getting their hands on guns as well.
To gauge the impact of illegal guns on youth here, I asked the District of Columbia Office of the Attorney General to total the number of gun-related juvenile cases it prosecuted between Jan. 1 and Nov. 1, 2015.
OAG reported that law enforcement presented 136 cases of juveniles arrested in the District in connection with gun-related offenses for that period.
Each case, the office said, involved at least one gun offence, such as carrying a pistol without a licence, possessing an unregistered firearm or unregistered ammunition, or at least one offence related to the use or ready availability of a firearm for crimes such as armed robbery, assault with a dangerous weapon or assault with intent to kill while armed.
Of the 136 arrests, the attorney general’s office brought charges in 100. The office said it “no-papered,” or declined to prosecute, 36.
Reasons for no-papered cases, OAG explained, included insufficient evidence, constitutional error by law enforcement, witness nonco-operation and a hold on bringing some gun charges in early 2015 because of questions regarding the charges’ validity, given litigation over the District’s gun laws.
Again, these juvenile gun-related statistics are limited to arrests. The count of unsolved gun-related cases by juveniles was not readily available.
Canada, faced with the possibility that illegal guns can reach juveniles more easily than legal guns, may take a page from D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine’s playbook.
Racine and city agencies have started a program to divert low-risk juvenile offenders out of traditional prosecution into a city-run program known as ACE (Alternatives to the Court Experience). This program is aimed at steering young people away from guns and the juvenile criminal justice system.
A January report from ACE shows significant success, according to the attorney general’s office. Of the 742 youths participating from its inception in June 2014 through 2015, 92 per cent had no further involvement in the legal system while in the program. Even after completing the full six-month intervention, 92 per cent had not been rearrested.
This kind of program is not a sidebar to the discussion of gun violence or the proliferation of illegal guns in this city, Canada or anywhere else. It is central to the effort to reduce the shootings and the crossfire on our streets.
Meanwhile, Canadians, fearful of the firearms smuggled from the United States, are planning to install devices at border stations to “detect and halt illegal guns.”
Calls to mind the proposed construction of a wall and fence along our southern border to halt illegal immigration from Mexico.
Because it appears Americans are doing to Canada what Mexico is doing to Americans.
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SAUDI ARMS DEAL EXEMPT FROM GLOBAL TREATY, OTTAWA SAYS (By Steven Chase | The Globe and Mail | February 9, 2016)
Canada’s controversial $15-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia will be exempt from a global arms trade treaty that the Trudeau Liberals promised they would sign if they won office, Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion’s department says.
This means Canada’s biggest military export contract, to supply weaponized armoured vehicles to a country regularly ranked by Freedom House as among the “worst of the worst” on human rights, will not be subject to what experts say are stricter export controls in the Arms Trade Treaty.
This matters in the Saudi deal because Ottawa must authorize exports of combat vehicles to Riyadh, and critics say it’s easier to do so under Canada’s current export control regime – where the government has the authority to override its own guidelines on shipping weapons to countries with poor human-rights records.
A spokesman for the department of Global Affairs said the General Dynamics Land Systems deal – first announced in 2014 but still in its early stages – is not covered by the 2014 Arms Trade Treaty because Canada has yet to actually sign on to the agreement.
“The Arms Trade Treaty does not apply to this specific contract as Canada is not yet a state party to the Arms Trade Treaty,” Global Affairs spokesman François Lasalle said.
Paul Meyer, a former Canadian diplomat with 35 years’ experience in the foreign service, said this doesn’t make sense. He said it’s standard practice for countries to begin complying with the rules of treaties once they make it clear they intend to sign them.
“The normal conduct in diplomacy is if a government says it intends to adhere to a treaty, that it conducts itself in accordance with those provisions,” Mr. Meyer, now an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, said.
Mr. Dion’s mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, made public in November, instructs him to formally commit Canada to the treaty.
But Mr. Dion’s department, Global Affairs, said this will take time.
“In order to accede to the treaty … Canada must ensure that it has put in place domestically all legislation or regulations that would be required to ensure that we can fully meet the obligations of the treaty. Officials are currently undertaking internal legislative and policy reviews in order to identify those changes that might be necessary for Canada to accede to the ATT,” Mr. Lasalle said.
Ottawa still has a big role to play in the Saudi deal.
Global Affairs must issue export permits to allow the shipment of the combat vehicles to Riyadh once they are ready to be transported abroad. It can only do so after it’s determined there are no risks to human rights in Saudi Arabia, where the government has dispatched armoured vehicles to help crush uprisings in neighbouring Bahrain and quell dissent in its restless Eastern Province. The Saudis also face fresh accusations of indiscriminately killing civilians in Yemen by air strikes.
Even though Global Affairs says it needs more time to sign on to the United Nations-backed accord, the department insists its existing arms-control regime is already robust.
“Canada already meets most of the obligations of the Arms Trade Treaty,” Global Affairs spokeswoman Rachna Mishra said.
Critics disagree, saying the language of the Arms Trade Treaty is stronger than the Canadian government’s current rules for restricting exports of weapons. The global treaty came into force 14 months ago, but Canada didn’t sign on at the time; the former Conservative government argued Canada “already has some of the strongest export controls in the world.”
Ken Epps, a policy adviser on the Arms Trade Treaty with Project Ploughshares, an anti-war group that monitors arms exports, said current Canadian export regulations only oblige Ottawa to “closely control” the shipment of military goods to countries with a persistent record of human-right violations. He calls that a “loose arrangement” that gives the government too much leeway to override export controls and overlook findings on the risks to human rights in Saudi Arabia.
Under Article 7 of the Arms Trade Treaty, however, Canada will be obliged to “assess the potential that convention arms … could be used to commit a serious violation of international human-rights law” and other factors – and if there is an “overriding risk of any of the negative consequences,” the country in question “shall not authorize the export.”
Mr. Epps also said the Canadian government is wrong. He notes that even after Canada has acceded to the treaty, it has an ongoing responsibility to monitor events in Saudi Arabia and to suspend export permits or refuse to issue new ones if warranted by the human-rights risks in the Mideast country.
NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière said the Liberals are trying to dodge tougher rules on export controls and on transparency by saying the global arms trade treaty will not apply to the Saudi deal.
See the story: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/saudi-arms-deal-exempt-from-global-treaty-ottawa-says/article28688598/
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AACCA CANADA’S LARGEST AND FINEST GUN SHOW | MARCH 25 AND 26, 2016 | BMO CENTRE, STAMPEDE PARK, CALGARY, AB | Hours Friday 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. | Admission for adults: $10, ladies and children under 12 accompanied by an adult are free.
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CANADA IN THE ROUGH – THREE BROTHERS, THREE TOMS (Airing February 27, 2016)
Keith, Paul and Kevin Beasley all shake off cabin fever and head into the turkey woods with Eastern Canadian Outfitters. With the Tom’s fired up and looking for love, a few giant limb hangers hit the ground in this episode.
See the teaser: http://www.canadaintherough.com/three-brothers-three-toms/
Canada in the Rough can be found on OLN, WILD TV, and CHEX. For a full schedule, visit: http://www.canadaintherough.com/schedules/
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HIGH RIVER FLOOD RIGHTS VIOLATIONS – PETITION E-179 – FEBRUARY 19 2016
Click on the link below to add your signature to this important petition:
https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-179: To rebuild trust in the RCMP among High River residents 42nd Parliament – Initiated by Dennis R Young from Airdrie, Alberta, on February 19, 2016, at 3:49 p.m. (EDT) Sponsored by MP John Barlow Keywords: Alberta Floods, High River, Judicial inquiries, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Petition is open for signature until June 18, 2016, at 3:49 p.m. (EDT)
Petition to the House of Commons in Parliament assembled
Whereas:
The Interim Report into the RCMP’s Response to the 2013 Flood in High River, Alberta was released by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP on February 12, 2015 stating, “RCMP members entered 4,666 homes, and forced entries into more than 754 of those homes…”;
The RCMP Commission’s Interim Report failed to address the most serious unintended consequence of these 4,666 unwarranted entries by the RCMP, namely, a lack of trust in the RCMP’s duty of care for evacuated homes during an emergency as indicated by a scientifically valid, independent telephone poll conducted on August 6, 2014, showing that 53% of High River residents say they won’t evacuate in the next emergency; and
The RCMP Commission’s Interim Report reported only 754 forced entries, RCMP documents obtained by an Access to Information Act request showed that High River residents filed 2,210 damage claims with the RCMP totalling more than $2.5 million as a result of those “forced entries”.
We, the undersigned, Citizens of Canada, call upon the House of Commons in Parliament assembled to:
- Debate and vote on a motion calling on the government to rebuild trust in the RCMP among High River residents by holding an independent judicial inquiry into the legal justification for the RCMP entering 4,666 High River homes;
- Determine how many of these unwarranted entries violated the privacy rights and property rights of these High River residents; and
- Determine if these entries were contrary to any of the provisions of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Sign the petition at: https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-179
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LOOKING FOR UPCOMING GUN SHOWS AND MATCHES? Visit our website at: https://cssa-cila.org/upcoming-events-matches/
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MULCAIR CALLS FOR BETTER ENFORCEMENT OF GUN RULES (By Elizabeth Thompson | iPolitics.ca | February 18, 2016)
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair is calling for better enforcement of Canada’s firearms rules in the wake of the revelation that the number of restricted guns in Canada rose 82 per cent during Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
Asked what, if anything, the government should do about the rise in restricted firearms, Mulcair pointed to the way the rules are upheld.
“I think that better enforcement is part of it and we have to have rules that allow police to better do their jobs,” he said.
Mulcair, whose son Matthew serves with Quebec’s Sûreté du Québec provincial police force, said firearms can pose a danger to police officers, citing Saturday’s fatal shooting of police officer Thierry Leroux in the Quebec community of Lac Simon.
“As a father of a police officer who works in a rural area, I am always concerned when I see events like the ones that we saw over the weekend in Lac Simon,” Mulcair said. “I think that at a minimum we have to bear in mind what police forces across the country have almost unanimously always called for – better protection and better information for the police so that they can do their job of protecting our lives and our property.”
“Our hearts go out to the families of those involved in that terrible tragedy in Lac Simon and I hope that the police are given the tools necessary to know when there is a gun waiting for them behind that door.”
For his part, Conservative Public Safety Critic Erin O’Toole says the rise in restricted firearms is not a problem.
“The people that are able to obtain a firearm of that nature are some of our most scrutinized people and generally some of our most law abiding,” said O’Toole who once had five hunting clubs or rifle ranges in his riding of Durham east of Toronto.
“The correlation of more of them being owned actually goes alongside the drop in the crime rate,” he added.
If the government wants to tackle a problem with firearms, it should crack down on the illegal guns that are smuggled in from the U.S. and are never registered in Canada, O’Toole said.
“In some years there have been real problems with illegal firearms coming over the border with no ability to track them. There’s a criminal network facilitating them because they can be marked up and sold on the street. That is where we have to have concern and that is usually front line police.”
“That’s why we armed CBSA because they were increasingly being asked to try and stop that flow of illegal (guns).”
The comments come after iPolitics revealed that the number of restricted firearms in Canada shot up 82 per cent between 2005 and 2014.
One of the biggest increases was in Alberta, where the number of restricted guns rose 140 per cent between 2005 and 2014, the last year for which numbers are available. The slowest rise was in Quebec, where the number of restricted guns rose only 28 per cent over that time period.
Overall, the number of restricted firearms such as semi-automatic rifles and handguns registered in Canada rose from 398,876 in 2005 under former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin to 726,705 in 2014, the last year for which numbers are available.
The sharpest rise in restricted weapons came after the Conservatives formed a majority government and after it ended the requirement to register non-restricted firearms in 2012. The number of registered firearms rose 25.6 per cent between 2005 and 2010 but jumped 45 per cent between 2010 and 2014.
Overall, the rate of restricted and prohibited guns per capita rose 19 per cent across Canada between 2012 and 2014, with the highest increase in Nunavut (37.8 per cent) followed by Manitoba at 29.7 per cent and Alberta at 28 per cent.
In order to possess a restricted firearm, an owner is supposed to prove that they need it for work, that they are a legitimate and knowledgeable collector or that they belong to a rifle range.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale has said he plans to take a closer look at the rise in restricted firearms.
“We’re going to obviously be looking at all of the statistics of this kind,” Goodale said. “We want to be an evidence-based government making sound decisions on the basis of hard facts. All of those statistics will be reviewed.
O’Toole attributed the rise at least in part to an increase in the use of private security guards.
“In recent years there has been a lot of outsourcing of security….There has been a real rise in close personal protection. Fifteen years ago you would not see celebrities or wealthy people with security people and now you do.”
A check by iPolitics reveals that the number of private security guards in Canada rose from around 80,000 in 2001 to 102,000 in 2006 according to Statistics Canada. In the 2011 census, 109,620 Canadians listed their profession as security guard and by October 2015 the number had risen to 114,276 – a 12 per cent rise since 2006.
O’Toole said some firearms may be classified as restricted when they shouldn’t be.
“The guidance and regulations should not be based on appearance, they should be based on function. I think there has been some arbitrariness to this by the RCMP because there is no definition in the regulations on how best to treat some firearms that they say are connected to another.”
O’Toole said the Liberals could run into problems in their own caucus if they try to take steps to curb or further track the growth of firearms in Canada.
“The Liberals are in a really interesting spot. Before, in the last Parliament, they had virtually had no rural MPs – they were pretty much an urban party,” O’Toole said. “Now, I bet in their caucus they have several sports shooters, hunters and anglers and this used to be the issue that would confound them in the past.”
See the story: http://ipolitics.ca/2016/02/18/mulcair-calls-for-better-enforcement-of-gun-rules/
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CT: LAWSUIT FILED TO TAKE DOWN GUN MAKERS AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT (By Dean Weingarten | ammoland.com | February 23, 2016)
In Connecticut, a cynical lawyer is attempting to destroy the Second Amendment for money. Josh Koskoff, a medical malpractice and personal injury specialist in Connecticut, is taking advantage of the grief of parents and staff from the Sandy Hook massacre to attempt to destroy innocent firearm manufacturers.
He has filed suit against gun manufacturers who make the AR-15 rifle that was used in Sandy Hook, the wholesaler, and the retailer, Riverview sales. It appears that the shooter, who I will not name, has claimed another innocent victim. Riverview sales, who had done nothing illegal, is now defunct. Josh Koskoff is attempting to claim more innocent victims. This is the ploy that was hatched by disarmists that led to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
The stated purpose was always to bankrupt innocent companies through frivolous lawsuits. The PLAA forbids that, and allows for the rewarding of court costs and lawyers fees if the attempted lawsuit fails. There are exceptions in the law for the usual problems of negligence. One of those is negligent entrustment, where a person supplies a gun to someone who they know is not allowed to have one. As the gun manufacturer had nothing to do with supplying the AR-15 to the shooter, who, after all committed murder of his own mother to obtain it, this is an enormous stretch.
The theory that Josh Koskoff attempts to make is this. From courant.com:
In a 48-page brief arguing against dismissal of the case, attorney Josh Koskoff is trying to establish that the common law theory of negative entrustment applies to the introduction of the AR-15 into the market by the Bushmaster Firearms International, the manufacturer of the weapon used by Adam Lanza in his shooting spree inside the school that left 26 people, including 20 children, dead.
“Their argument is what is negligent here is not selling the gun by the gun shop but what is negligent here is releasing the weapon into the market in the first place,” Georgia State University Law Professor Timothy Lytton said.
In his brief, Koskoff argues that the AR-15 has no business being sold to civilians, that it was made for the military and “is built for mass casualty assaults” and to deliver “more wounds, of greater severity, in more victims, in less time.”
There are so many holes in this argument that one wonders why Koskoff is bringing the case at all. Has he notified his clients that they are liable for the other sides’ court costs and legal fees when he loses the case, which seems most likely?
First, one of the main purposes of the Second Amendment is to insure that military arms suitable for a militia are available to citizens. Such was clearly ruled in the U.S. v. Miller case that established precedent before the Heller and McDonald cases. Miller was not overturned by those cases.
Second, rifles such as the AR-15 are seldom used in crime. Murders with all rifles are only about 2-3% of homicide victims. To claim that these rifles, among the most popular in the United States, and the most suitable for militia service, should not be made available to the public because they are used in disproportionately less crimes than other firearms, is insane.
Third, it is exactly the characteristics of the rifle that make it useful to the military that make it so well suited for defense of self, neighborhood, and community if the need arises.
Fourth, nearly all firearms have military origins.
This is precisely the type of emotional, abusive case that the PLAA was designed to prevent. Most observers believe that the case will be thrown out. Even when that happens, the plaintiffs are likely to be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs and lawyers fees.
A similar case happened in Colorado where a couple who filed a lawsuit against Lucky Gunner in the Aurora Theater shooting, was required to pay the legal fees, amounting to $202,000 dollars. The award is under appeal.
Society cannot operate under this sort of insane theory. If this theory was allowed to stand, no car company could sell cars, no gasoline company could sell gasoline, no lumber company could sell lumber to build stairs. All of those things result in more deaths annually than occur from the use of AR-15 rifles in criminal hands each year.
I hope that Josh Koskoff has informed his plaintiffs of the financial risk that he is putting them in. It would only be right.
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THE CSSA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
The CSSA is the voice of the sport shooter and firearms enthusiast in Canada. Our national membership supports and promotes Canada’s firearms heritage, traditional target shooting competitions, modern action shooting sports, hunting, and archery. We support and sponsor youth programs and competitions that promote these Canadian heritage activities.
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