Grumpy White Guys With Guns

Working through Canada's new gun laws
by Charlie Angus
HighGrader Magazine January/February 2001
Consider me the archetypical Canadian. If there are only four people in a restaurant -- myself and three waitresses, none of whom seem to notice me -- what do I do? I wait patiently. When dealing with cashiers and receptionists it's always "thank you" and "have a nice day". But when it comes to Canada's new gun registry I've turned into a raging, rural honky.
I've never hunted in my life. Nobody in my extended family has ever owned a gun. Like most Canadians I don't believe in legalizing handguns or AK-47s. But after some run-ins with rabid foxes and other unsavory critters on our rural residence, I realized that a rifle is just another tool for a rural lifestyle.
Ten years ago, I went down to the police station and filled out forms for the required Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC). It was a fairly straightforward affair. My mistake was letting the damned thing expire.
To get a purchasing license under the onerous new laws, there are pages and pages of forms to fill out followed by the kicker -- you can't get an FAC without having passed a course. The only problem is the gun course hasn't been offered in this part of the Province.
On a number of occasions I've tried to explain my situation to government people. But the irony of this Catch-22 has never impressed any of the low-level apparatchiks I've dealt with. And this is where the alienated white guy routine starts -- for the first time in my life I have found myself shouting into the receiver and tearing up the forms in disgust.
The new laws have been trashed as an ineffective and deliberately Kafkaesque system. The labyrinth of forms, certificates and licenses will probably have no impact on urban gun crimes but it certainly succeeds in bedeviling and alienating rural folk - few of whom are likely to go knocking off suburban 7-11s with pump actions.
Maybe I'm just getting surly in my medium age, but part of my frustration stems from the fact that it seems the whole enterprise was designed, not to be efficient, but to make it as difficult as possible for people to comply with the laws.
Now there is, undoubtedly, a good portion of the population who would think of this is as a good thing. "People have to register their cars," is the argument, "Why shouldn't they register guns?"
Sure, but if the only place you could register your car was a small government department in New Brunswick accessible only by voice mail, do you think the roads would be safer? Or would it simply mean that a lot of people who might otherwise get a license, simply gave up because of the difficulty and drove anyway?
As a fundamental question of social policy we need to ask ourselves -- do we really need to be criminalizing folks who otherwise would see themselves as law-biding citizens?
As I write this article, the deadline for the gun registry is looming and half the gun owners in Canada haven't complied with the new laws. The media would have you think this stems from some kind of organized resistance - bad ass farmers hiding their guns in the backyard and all that.
My attempts to phone the 1-800 hotline suggests another reason. The number was advertised as part of an intensive pre-Christmas radio campaign reminding unregistered gun owners they are on the verge of becoming criminals.
I tried phoning this line a number of times only to hear the message "Due to the heavy volume of requests to this line, we're not taking calls at this time."
Imagine - half the gun owners in the country are on the verge of becoming outlaws and this lame-ass agency won't hire some part-timers to handle the rush.
Finally after a number of calls I got through to a receptionist.
She asked me if I was phoning about obtaining a license.
"No," I said defeatedly, "I'm through trying to get a license. I just want to register the guns I have so I'll be in compliance with the law."
"I'm sorry sir," she explained, "You can't register the guns without first having a license."
Argghh!!!! What she meant was that even if I had lost hope of getting the acquisition license, I still needed to fill out the possession license.
She offered to send me some interim forms that would see me through the looming deadline.
Hopefully as you read this, your mild mannered editor will be in compliance with the gun laws.
After all, it's going to be a little difficult to handle a rabid skunk attack if I have to dig the damned shotgun up from oil drums buried in the backyard.
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