PUBLICATION: The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
DATE: 2004.04.19
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Sports
PAGE: C6
COLUMN: Outdoors
BYLINE: Lloyd Litwin
SOURCE: Special to The StarPhoenix

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Seminar should trigger interesting discussion: Unregistered Firearms Owners’ Association addresses ‘billion-dollar boondoggle’

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Have you heard the conspiracy theory that the United States starts wars to deflect people’s minds from the real issues at home before an election as a ploy to stay in power one more term? Could those theories be applied to Canada? We have a huge sponsorship scandal in Quebec of a couple of hundred million to take the people’s minds off the billion-dollar boondoggle of gun registration.

Some people besides Gary Breitkreuz, Alliance MP for Yorkton-Melville, haven’t forgotten the transgressions into our lives this awful legislation has made. The Canadian Unregistered Firearms Owners’ Association is holding a seminar on May 1 at the Saskatoon Inn to enlighten anyone willing to listen.

The keynote speaker for the afternoon sessions and the evening banquet is Dr. Gary Mauser. Joining him in presentations are Carollann Remington and Richard Stevens. (Three people speaking against gun controls and their names are Mauser, Remington and Stevens. You couldn’t get three more recognizable names in a gun collector’s desirable gun list. All they need is a Winchester and a Colt and the list is complete.)

All puns aside, these people are here to give the facts about gun control and its supposed effect on fighting crime.

The idea for gun registration is not new. Canada is a distant fifth or sixth in the ‘let’s try this’ department. Canada also ignored the results of the other countries’ attempts to curb crime. The title of Mauser’s latest paper tells it all. His talk in the afternoon session is titled The Failed Experiment: Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales.

The anti-gunners don’t like Mauser as his credentials are impeccable. He is a professor at Simon Frasier University in the faculty of Business Administration. He studies gun control and criminology. One look at his impressive CV and you see he is amply capable of deciphering statistics and drawing conclusions. He is well respected by leading criminologists and is invited to contribute on high-level studies and symposiums. In layman’s terms, he knows his stuff.

Since we proudly acknowledge our parliamentary system, and recognize basic laws are descended from the British system, and that Bill C-68 tramples all over parts of our written rights and freedoms, the seminar will start with a history lesson. The speakers will discuss our right to self-protection by visiting the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, game acts, Peel’s Principles of Policing and gun control in Britain.

I find it particularly important that a woman is speaking on How Women can Protect our Liberty. When the Liberals asked for input on Bill C-68, they chose only one of four or five women’s groups which wanted to make representations. Funny how that group was dead against guns of all kinds. Women shooters of Canada weren’t allowed to submit a brief.

I expect it will be a thought provoking day.

The Unregistered Firearms Owners have been in the news in the last year, trying to force the federal government to charge them and bring a case to court. So far the feds have backed off. It seems they don’t want to take on a challenge to their laws. The arguments the gun owners have been making about the trampling of our rights seem pretty convincing to me and maybe to the justice department as well.

Support these guys and get your ticket to this event by calling Ed Hudson at 242-2379. Visit their website at www.cufoa.ca. Cost is $75 and includes an evening banquet.