A Political Action Plan for Gun Owners

I now believe, and I think you will agree, that the process of multiculturalism, secularism, hedonism and post-Christian progressivism is now so deeply embedded in metropolitan Canada it is unlikely to be winkled out with campaigns, slogans, and public relations. Rather than fix the disease with the antibiotics of truth and wisdom, I believe we have to adopt a different approach. I believe we have to amputate the affected organs before they kill the patient.

Self Defence Rights, Gun Ownership and Political Activism
By Frank Hilliard

Gun ownership and self defence are intimately linked because one needs the former to effectively exercise the latter. The problem for Canadians, generally, is that they have mentally divorced these two concepts; gun ownership is now widely considered anti-social while self defence is not. The principle problem for Canadians who believe, as I do, that our basic right to life and liberty is dependent on our ability to defend ourselves with a firearm is that we are in a distinct and diminishing minority. Most Canadians simply don’t see what guns have to do with them, their lives or their freedoms.

The Canadian gun owning community has been on the defensive ever since Gamil Gharbi, the deranged son of a Muslim immigrant to Canada, killed 14 women and injured ten other women and four men on Dec. 6, 1989 in what has become known as the École Polytechnique Massacre. The Firearms Act of 1995, which followed, targeted guns as the cause rather than a misogynistic, second generation Muslim immigrant.

What I am going to try and do in this document is to analyze how we’ve got to this defensive and deteriorating position, how the gun-banners succeeded, and what we can do to reverse the situation both for ourselves and for all Canadians.

The anti-gun pressure groups that formed after the massacre had a number of factors working for them:

1. Women engineering students were the principle targets so it had feminism on side. The fact the victims were working towards traditional male roles in society made this distinction even more effective.
2. They had the benefit of the enormous outpouring of public sympathy for the families and friends of the victims. Let’s call this victim empathy.
3. They represented the young urban elites; the metrosexual Generation X in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver that thinks driving cars and eating meat are destroying the planet. To people who reject steak, rejecting firearms was a very short step.
4. They used symbolism effectively. As Concordia University professor H. Taylor Buckner has shown, many women regard firearms as symbolic of male aggression. By removing firearms from the community (and Canada) they would reduce aggression against women.
5. They tapped into Quebec’s traditional anti-military pacifist sensibilities. Quebec has twice had riots opposing conscription and has always been leery of the English-dominated military. To Quebec separatists, firearms are a form of English power, so removing them from society, would diminish English power.
6. And, finally, they had the support of Quebec’s Liberal M.P.s who played a disproportionate role in forming Liberal government policy in the House of Commons.

When you put all this together, you can see the gun banners caught a wave of public sympathy, tapped into feminism and Quebec nationalism and used their allies in the House of Commons effectively. It was a triumph of grass-roots political activism with perfect timing and execution.

Indeed, the anti-gun movement was far more effective than even its critics realized. The Firearms Act not only made it more difficult to become a gun owner, it also made guns into a symbol of violence through a kind of public shunning. Since gun owners must keep their firearms under lock and key all the time, they generally do not show them to non-gun owners. Guns are put away like a crazy relative and are never seen.

What is never seen becomes mythologized. Guns, through their invisibility in society have become, in and of themselves, instruments of evil. Today—15 years on—the average Canadian has never seen or handled a handgun. If you show one to someone, they react with aversion and even fear. In a few short years, if this trend is not reversed, existing owners will die off, potential owners will be put off, and the gun banners’ long-term goal of ridding the country of legal firearms will be nearly accomplished.

This process has been aided and abetted by police forces across the country. Police, who have to face gun carrying criminals, are naturally all for reducing the number of guns in society. But they are also in favour of gun control for another reason. Armed self defence is in essence a competing public safety model. What need is there of a police force if the public can defend itself?

In the view of police officials, an unarmed public is more willing to support police budgets and police pensions than an armed public.

We can tie some of these threads together in a different way. Quebec society has always been more ‘statist’ than English society. It supports more state institutions and policies than are seen in English Canada. It was fervently Vichy during the Second World War and supported fascist policies and philosophy. One key to that philosophy is mass organization rather than individual initiative. Owning a firearm and defending individual rights runs counter to the statist perspective which supports group rights and group protection through police forces.

This philosophical difference is really the difference between competing views of the world; the traditional English liberal democratic view (conservatism) and the French social engineering view (progressivism). Gun ownership fits in with the former, but not the latter.

A Rock in the Stream

With the current running so strongly against gun ownership, one might wonder if there is a rock in the stream we can hold onto. Is there some way to stop rushing towards the falls, to recover our composure and to struggle back to dry land? Is there some way to head the other way?

You will recall at the start of this document I said gun ownership had become divorced from self-defence? While that is normally not a good thing; it may be useful in the current context. The public still strongly supports self-defence as witnessed by its view of instances in which individuals defend themselves against robbers, assailants and home invaders. There is not, to my knowledge, a Canadian currently in jail for assault, manslaughter or murder associated with defending him or herself. Indeed, most prosecutors don’t even bother with major charges because they know they won’t get them past a jury.

In the words of the Alberta Crown Prosecution Office, ‘there would be no public purpose served’ in proceeding with a prosecution of this type charge.

This leads me to ask why the public supports self-defence so completely. What is this belief based upon? I think the belief in the rightness of self defence is based on moral law, or if you wish, natural justice. The antecedents are these:

• Natural or moral law
• Religious law, especially Judeo-Christian belief (Exodus 22:2)
• Roman Law (dominium)
• English Common Law
• English Bill of Rights (Freedom for Protestants to have arms for their own defence)
• The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the right to life, liberty and security of the person)
• The Criminal Code (Defence of Person)

In short, self-defence is deeply ingrained in English Christian culture and from that in ours. Even children in the schoolyard know that if a bully knocks you down, you have the right to get up and defend yourself.

Indeed, the right of self defence is unique in that it is completely open-ended. In defending yourself, you do not have to take into account the extent and degree in which you do so. You can use anything from a frying pan, to an automobile, to a garden ornament, to a handgun; whatever you have, you can use. Unlike the law regarding defence of property; when it comes to your life, anything goes.

Consider the difference in moral rights: Canadians today believe the Government has no right to take the life even of a convicted mass murderer; but you, you lowly commoner, have the right to take the life of an assailant. This is a powerful right indeed!

And yet, what value to us is a right if the means to exercise that right is removed from most people, most of the time, by law? Is not a right restricted, a right denied? The Criminal code section on self defence, Section 34, uses the phrase “is justified in repelling force by force.” How is a 120lb woman supposed to repel by force a 200lb male attacker?

Let’s take this argument a step further. If I as a citizen can use force to repel force, am I not being imprudent not to multiply the force I can use in order to ensure the force I do use is sufficient to overcome the force used against me? Indeed, what sliding scale of force, or methods of using force, am I to refer to in deciding on the force I shall use? And in the case of smaller men and women, or smaller races, how shall my abilities and the ability to multiply my abilities, be measured, decided or selected?

Just reading the section again, I am struck by the macho, bar-room brawl images that permeate the Code. It seems to be written, and is written, as if all the force used is pure physical strength. If that is the case, is it saying that only the strong survive? Is it saying that if you have great physical strength and batter your opponent to death, good for you, but If you’re a woman, or a small, weak, sick or old individual; too bad? You can’t carry a gun, knife, stun device, or pepper spray? Just put up your fists and duke it out?

What kind of justice is it in a country where only the strong are protected by law and the weak are left to be assaulted, raped and murdered?

Law, Culture and Government

In reviewing the status of self-defence I’ve been using a very broad brush. I’ve talked about how the Firearms Act got passed, how firearms were demonized, and how they are no longer associated with self defence. I’ve said support for gun control is particularly strong in Quebec and in urban areas such as Toronto and Vancouver. On the other hand, I’ve described how strong the moral force of self defence remains in the public mind. I’ve suggested that prosecutions for murder and manslaughter when involved in self defence invariably fail, if they’re even attempted, in the face of jury opposition.

When I first started writing this document, I thought about launching a Charter challenge on the grounds that a right curtailed is a right denied. I eventually realized the Supreme Court would hardly support bottom-up law when it is the main proponent of top-down law.

I wondered about the possibility of following the abortion rights advocates who did things that were illegal, faced prosecution and won with juries. I also thought about the homosexual rights campaigners who used an in-your-face campaign of ‘pride’ in something that hitherto was an object of scorn and disrepute. Both campaigns succeeded, but both, you’ll note, succeeded with the new post-Christian secularists who now inhabit our cities.

The metropolitan areas of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver dragged the rest of the country kicking and screaming out of its traditional Christian moral position in favour of the family and procreation and created a new one of baby killing and anal sex. I’m sure no one 50 years ago would have imagined it would come to this, but it did, and the government went along with it sensing the public mood.

If I can put that another way, the culture changed and that then changed the law. This is the traditional route; law is simply culture codified.

I now believe, and I think you will agree, that this process of multiculturalism, secularism, hedonism and post-Christian progressivism is now so deeply embedded in metropolitan Canada it is unlikely to be winkled out with campaigns, slogans, and public relations. Rather than fix the disease with the antibiotics of truth and wisdom, I believe we have to adopt a different approach. I believe we have to amputate the affected organs before they kill the patient. The organs are Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal and the patient is the Rest of Canada (ROC).

Given the differences in approach, the distances between the various hinterlands, the problems of communication and language; this concept won’t work due to the size and disparate nature of the ROC. Therefore, to make a stand at all, we need a unified jurisdiction which has the potential to be an independent legal entity. Such a jurisdiction is Alberta.

Alberta is, by and large, not yet urbanized. It is, by and large, not yet post-Christian. It is also not impressed with ‘environmentalism’, particularly when that means losing tens of thousands of Alberta jobs. Alberta is, in many ways, the new Katanga, or the new Niger Delta. The difference is that unlike Katanga, or Niger Delta, there is a route to independence already agreed upon by a smug Liberal government in Ottawa. It is the Clarity Act.

The Wildrose Alliance, when it becomes the next Alberta government, could use the threat of a provincial referendum under the Clarity act to get quite a lot out of Ottawa by way of concessions. One of these would surely have to do with provincial resources and tax revenues. But another, not even a costly one, could have to do with provincial powers under the Criminal Code. Currently Quebec has control over immigration into Quebec through various ‘agreements’ with Ottawa. Alberta could extract control over some aspects of the Criminal Code through similar agreements.

It could, for example, demand carry laws for Albertans and a return to the death penalty, just like neighbouring Montana. Neither of these items is currently in its program, but referendum legislation is which could be used to bring these federal responsibilities into the play. Given a conservative membership and constituency, given a traditional Christian bias in its support base, I believe the Party might be ready to add these issues to its debating posture with Ottawa.

Given all the variables I’ve mentioned, I believe the efforts of gun owners in Canada should be directed towards supporting the Wildrose Alliance and Gun owner associations in Alberta. Ten dollars spent in Alberta is likely worth $100 anywhere else when it comes to advocacy and political clout. Canadians gun owners outside Alberta can support the Wildrose Alliance with donations. Gun owners inside Alberta can join the party, become leaders, attend policy conventions and help make policy.

Summary

Moral law trumps man-made law. This means that self-defence is deep in the heart of most Canadians. Unfortunately, the new post-Christian secularists who dominate our cities have managed to find a way to deny the rest of Canada access to the means to exercise the right of self defence. Given the unlikelihood of re-Christianizing the cities, I believe the best option for Canadian gun owners is to aid Alberta (and Quebec too of course) in separating from Canada.

Getting rid of Montreal and its secularist statists would isolate the infection Quebec can inflict on the Rest of Canada. It would not, however, swing the balance over to traditional liberal democratic Judeo-Christian norms of behaviour. Freeing Alberta from Canada, on the other hand, would provide fertile ground for reinstituting armed self defence and capital punishment, both essential pillars of any safe and peaceful society.

Even threatening to free Alberta might be enough to win provincial access to Criminal law in these areas.

That’s all we need really.

Archimedes said, "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth." I say, give us Alberta, and we can move Canada.

Q & A On This Post

q: You can't be serious threatening to break up Canada?
a: Is the Bloc Quebecois serious? Are any of the Quebec separatists serious? I don't know; but what I do know is that Quebec has gained a lot of benefits from threatening separation. Two can play at that game, which is what I'm suggesting.

q. You seem to have it in for Quebec. Why is that?
a. Well, where to start. Quebec gave us Pierre Trudeau who rewrote our form of government in the French top-down model. Quebec gained control of immigration which they used to gain new French-speaking citizens, like Gamil Gharbi's father. He, in turn, gave us the Montreal (in Quebec remember) massacre and the Firearms Act. Why stop there? Quebec is statist in philosophy, liberal democrats (conservatives) are not statist.

q. What makes you think Ottawa would give up the Firearms Act to Alberta, and part of the Criminal Code?
a. If you threaten Ottawa with separation, it'll probably give more than that.

q. What makes you think a Canadian political party would support concealed carry?
q. The Christian Heritage Party already does; check their platform document, clicking on the last link at the bottom of the page.

q. The Wildrose Alliance is a tiny party with little clout; you're dreaming.
a. The Wildrose Alliance is a powerful force that will almost certainly form the next Government of Alberta. My proposal is to get in now, support them, help with policy. It's time for gun owners to stop moaning and start doing something useful. I'm a democrat in that I believe in the democratic political process. That's what I'm proposing; get into the process. Get off the couch. Act.

q. No one is talking about succession for Alberta.
a. Wrong. Check out this post and click the links. It's where political debate is going in this country. Quebec separatism is so yesterday.