Gun law has Canadian hinterland up in arms:

Source: Boston Globe
Published: 6/17/2000
Author: Colin Nickerson

Yesterday, the provincial governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan vowed to defy the federal law by refusing to bring charges against citizens who fail to register their rifles or shotguns…..

MONTREAL – Earlier this year, Charlton Heston – the actor-turned-firebrand head of the National Rifle Association – made an unusual appearance before a Canadian hunters group, urging the hard-pressed sports shooters to unite to fight ”antigun madness.”

The response was polite, with Heston’s talk occasionally broken by cries of ”hear! hear!” Still, the rally was hardly the barn-burner it would have been in the United States. Even among gun lovers in Canada, guns – much less ”gun rights” – just don’t provoke much passion.

But that shows signs of changing as a new federal gun law goes into effect, creating a mammoth National Firearms Registry that is bitterly opposed by Canadian shooters, especially in Western provinces and Arctic regions.

For the first time, mainstream gun owners are openly vowing to defy the government and refuse to submit to the stringent new federal registration requirements for all rifles and shotguns. (Ownership of handguns has long been tightly restricted in Canada.)

Yesterday, the provincial governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan vowed to defy the federal law by refusing to bring charges against citizens who fail to register their rifles or shotguns.

”We believe it is an onerous burden with no social benefit,” said Alberta Premier Ralph Klein. ”It is unworkable, extremely expensive, and does not prevent or discourage gun crime.”

Under the new law, all Canadian gun owners must complete detailed government forms to register their arms, pay a $60 fee, and obtain special photo identification. Their names go onto a central database, and they may be monitored by law enforcement authorities.

As of the end of this year, citizens who fail to cooperate will face criminal penalties, including prison terms and confiscation of firearms.

But a most un-Canadian campaign of civil disobedience is brewing in the nation’s vast rural areas.

”I’m going to jail before I comply,” said Bruce Hutton of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer who owns three firearms. ”I’m not a criminal, and I refuse to have the government treat me like one.”

Such rhetoric, commonplace among gun owners in the United States, is seldom heard in Canada, where there is no constitutional guarantee of a right to bear arms and little tradition of opposition to gun control. Canada started strictly regulating handgun ownership in the 1930s, when Americans were still debating whether they should be allowed to carry machine guns.

But now the anger of Canadian gun owners is booming off the prairies, mountains, and icepacks of the far west and great north, and it is even finding an echo among rural residents of the Atlantic Provinces.

”I’ve used my rifle for naught but hunting for 30 years,” said Josef Gunderson, a wilderness guide in Newfoundland’s Labrador region. ”Now comes this gang of bureaucrats wanting to put my picture on a plastic card and record every by-Jesus detail of my life.”

He added, sarcastically, ”I’m sure the real stick-up men, muggers, killers, and other villains will be rushing to comply.”

Canada, with 30 million people, is home to about 6 million legally owned firearms, mostly hunting rifles and shotguns. By contrast, Americans own more than 200 million firearms, including 60 million handguns. The rate of gun-related crimes committed in Canada is about 20 percent that of the United States.

Polls show that more than 70 percent of Canadians support strict gun laws, a demographic reality that goes a long way toward explaining why the country’s pro-gun groups are so much meeker and milder than their US counterparts.

Meanwhile, because mass murders and other especially heinous crimes involving guns are rare – at least compared with the next-door neighbor’s – Canadians are still profoundly shocked by them. The law coming into effect represents Ottawa’s response to the 1989 slaying of 14 women at a Montreal university by a rifle-wielding man named Marc Lepine.

The law creates a new federal bureaucracy charged with registering every firearm in Canada as well as licensing very gun owner. The cost of creating the registry has already soared past $300 million and is likely to eventually cost taxpayers $1.5 billion, just to register existing gunowners.

”This is Big Brother madly chasing after poor old Uncle George’s goose gun,” said Jim Hinter, vice president of the Alberta-based National Firearms Association. ”This is about politicians clueless as to how to deal with real criminals, so let’s just hassle the heck out of legal gun owners.”

Opponents of the law were dealt a blow this week when the Canadian Supreme Court threw out a legal challenge to the registry brought by the governments of Alberta and five other provinces, along with the Yukon and Northwest Territories. In a unanimous ruling, the country’s nine justices declared that ”all guns pose a risk to public safety” and can therefore be regulated under the criminal code.

This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 6/17/2000.

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