CUFOA

Canadian Unlicensed Firearms Owners Association
Association canadienne des propriétaires d’armes sans permis

Even before the implementation of the Firearms Act, now commonly referred to as, the “long gun registry” or “firearms registry,” farmers, hunters, and sport shooters were growing accustomed to being kicked around like a political football.

The latest installment in their ongoing ostracism is the Conservative’s Bill S-5, following close on the heels of Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz’s private members Bill C-301.

The registry of firearms is only a small part of the Firearms Act, both in its content and cost. Close to two billion dollars has been spent on the implementation of the Firearms Act, for the most part due to the licensing component of owners, not the registration of firearms.

However, politicians of all stripes, and in most cases the media, continue to attribute all of the problems with the Firearms Act to their globular registry of firearms.

Despite the Firearms Act’s assaults on the civil liberties of responsible, innocent citizens, while by its own administrators’ admission, leaving criminals outside of its scope, the Firearms Act continues, inexplicably, to cling to life. Both bills, S-5 and C-301 do not even do so much as eliminate the long gun registry.

Not content to let the Conservatives, through S-5, play their cruel joke on hapless gun owners, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, sensing an opportunity for political gain, recently announced at a $1,000 a plate affair in Toronto, that his party would not support either bill.

The silver lining for long gun owners in all of this is that the majority of provinces promised to opt out of prosecutions under the Firearms Act some time ago, leaving this unjust law, for a large part, unenforced when the involved party is an innocent gun owner that has not broken any laws except for the infraction of their papers not being in order.

Thankfully, to this point our dysfunctional Parliament has done more to hold the hounds at bay than any phony promises or political grandstanding on the parts of our so-called leaders.

Al Muir
Stellarton, Nova Scotia
Canadian Unlicensed Firearms Owners Association
08 April 2009