CUFOA

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

The Honourable Lynne Yelich, PC, MP, CPC, Saskatoon-Blackstrap
Minister of State (Western Economic Diversification)
2325 Preston Avenue, Unit 71 Market Mall
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7J 2G2

Dear Ms. Yelich,

Re: Mark Your Target!

We have a very fine associate, Willy Floyd, in Rock Creek, B.C., whose father served as an artillery spotter with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Flanders in 1917. Willy often quotes Sergeant Floyd as admonishing him to, “Face the Front; Mark your Target; Hold your Fire!” When I asked Willy what this command meant, Willy replied that “face the front” should be self-explanatory even to a stubble-jumper like me. What was important, Sgt Floyd told his son was, in the dust, smoke, and terrifying confusion of battle with moving ill-defined shapes and shifting shadows, to be sure to identify one’s target – mark the target - and then to conserve one’s limited supply of ammunition until the optimum opportunity to fire.

Some ninety years later the Conservative Party of Canada would be well served by adhering to these three artillery commands.

While fighting against the Firearms Act, Mr. Harper and his advisors in the Office of the Prime Minister seem to have become totally confused in the ‘heat of battle’ on Parliament Hill. Although they may be ‘facing the front’, Mr. Harper and his advisors have failed to properly ‘mark the target’.(1)

The ‘target’ that Mr. Harper needs to be assaulting is not the so-called “long-gun registry” that is causing such a tempest in the news media now.(2) While the registration of firearms is indeed a major irritant to a large host of firearms owners, the recent hue and cry the Conservatives have raised is simply a red herring to distract firearms owners from the real target.

The real target that needs to be “marked” – and marked with precision - is the licensing of firearms owners. The licensing mandate of the Liberals’ 1995 Firearms Act destroys our Right to have ‘Armes for their Defense’ by turning our innate Right of self-protection into a mere privilege.(3) Note well what the federal government can do with licensing:

The Governor in Council may make regulations (a) regarding the issuance of licenses, … respecting the purposes for which they may be issued ... and prescribing the circumstances in which persons are or are not eligible to hold licences; ... ?(c) prescribing the circumstances in which an individual does or does not need firearms (1) to protect the life of that individual, ....(3)

This unjust federal licensing scheme - that your Government inexplicably plans to “enhance” - is no different from the 1928 “gun control” laws which the Nazis used to disarm the citizens of Germany.(4)

Last Sunday in Saskatoon at the Holocaust memorial service we heard Auschwitz survivor David Stentow describe in horrifying detail what happens when a government controls the access to firearms.(5) Who in 1930 would have imagined that a cultured, well-ordered state like Germany could descend so quickly into Hell? Yet former Liberal Minister of Justice Allan Rock believes, “Only the police and military should have firearms.” Should we naïvely ignore history and submissively surrender our Right to have ‘Armes for their Defense’? Can we docilely trust upon the Canadian government never to misuse a state-monopoly on firearms? Are we so vain that we think Canadians are immune to what befell the Germans?

In this vitally important national battle for common sense, personal self-protection, and logical, effective, just firearms laws, versus state-ordered licensing, please urge your Conservative cabinet ministers to mark the real target. We must repeal licensing or six million murdered, innocent men, women, and children will have died in vain.

Sincerely,

Edward B. Hudson DVM, MS
Secretary

Ref:

(1) Letter from the Office of the Prime Minister, dated 15 April 2009
http://www.cufoa.ca/articles/primeminister/pm_15_apr_2009.html

(2) Federal bill to abolish long-gun registry stalls in legislature
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&q=http://www.parrysound.com/press/1241194998/&ct=ga&cd=_vbGBdPo-Bw&usg=AFQjCNHueLw-oqRyMxLurQbcaAzfejA5dA

(3) The Canadian Right of ‘Armes for their Defense’, para 29, – Ed Hudson
- http://www.cufoa.ca/articles/armes/armes_17_sept_2007.html

(4) Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews
17 Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, No. 3, 483-535 (2000)
Stephen P. Halbrook
http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/article-nazilaw.pdf.

(5) Holocaust survivor speaks to students, The StarPhoenix, 25 April 2009,
- Janet French
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/Cars/idea+what+hell+about/1533074/story.html

CC: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
The Honourable Peter Van Loan, Minister of Public Safety
Conservative Senators and Members of Parliament
National Council of the Conservative Party of Canada

Canadian Unlicensed Firearms Owners Association
Association canadienne des propriétaries san permis
402 Skeena Crt. Saskatoon
Saskatchewan S7K 4H2
(306) 242-2379 (306) 230-8929
edwardhudson@shaw.ca
www.cufoa.ca