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[00:00:00] Travis Bader: I'm Travis Bader, and this is the Silver Core Podcast. Silver Core has been providing its members with the skills and knowledge necessary to be confident and proficient in the outdoors for over 20 years, and we make it easier for people to deepen their connection to the natural world. If you enjoy the positive and educational content we provide, please let others know by sharing, commenting, and following so that you can join in on everything that Silver Horse stands for.

[00:00:40] If you'd like to learn more about becoming a member of the Silver Core Club and community, visit our website at Silvercore.ca

[00:00:52] I'm joined today by Dan Fritter of caliber, meg.ca and Nicholas Johnson of the gun blog.ca. And we were requested to put together something talking about the proposed bill C 21, what that means, what it looks like. Uh, hopefully answer some questions that are out there from our perspective. Anyways, Nicholas, Dan, welcome.

[00:01:17] Thank you for availing, availing yourself to this 

[00:01:20] Nicolas Johnson: happy Travis for hosting this. 

[00:01:23] Travis Bader: So Bill C 21, we're getting a whole bunch of questions coming through. We're seeing some information, some misinformation, a lot of panic. Uh, we're seeing how it's already affecting businesses even though it hasn't been implemented yet.

[00:01:40] Uh, and we're seeing. Uh, some businesses, some organizations using it as a marketing tool and some political games as well being played. Hopefully, you know, the politics side of has never been my forte. I know you guys have more background there, more insight. Hopefully we can answer some of these questions and maybe, maybe shed a little bit of light on what's going on.

[00:02:05] Uh, Dan, you've been doing a lot of work with your magazine, putting together information for people. I know we put a link in our last, uh, newsletter that went out for people and some of the action that they can do. What have you been seeing? Where do you see things going? What can people do? 

[00:02:26] Dan Fritter: I. To, to break from tradition.

[00:02:30] Um, I'm gonna sound like a bit of an optimist and say it, it looks like it's working. Um, mm-hmm. , because what I saw over the weekend and growing into Monday with all the other stuff that was going on, like you referenced the organizations and whatnot, was, uh, with the most important of 'em, the NDP liberals.

[00:02:49] And the block is we started to see some splits come up. Um, we started to see Charlie Angus from the ndp. We started to see. You blache from the block actually respond directly to a journalist on Twitter saying they do take issue with some of these amendments. Now, obviously as a gun owner, we wish that they would've taken a a similar issue with Bill C 21.

[00:03:11] Since the foundation problem is the same, it only impacts licensed gun owners. But nonetheless, um, as a gun owner, you have to learn to take what you can get to a certain degree. Um, and in that particular regard, we're starting to see the NDP and the block come around. Uh, and I think that is probably.

[00:03:28] Direct result of a lot of the advocacy we've seen gun owners do. We've seen people sending out masses of three, 400 letters. Um, I know Offa has laid claim to a half a million letters going to On. Yeah. To, and when you consider that of a's Scope, offa clarified their scope and said they've sent a half a million letters.

[00:03:49] Their members have sent a half million letters to Ontario MPS and MPPs. So that's a huge footprint for a relatively small audience. And I think probably they're seeing similar things happen in the NDP and the block. So that pressure that's going out there, that, that, I think it's working. I think we're starting to see, um, hopefully some pushback taking form of that.

[00:04:12] Now, obviously it helps when Carrie Price steps into the ring and goes, Hey, this doesn't make a lot of sense. But I don't think gun owners should, should sell themselves short on this either. Like the NDP and the Block, were already starting to walk this back. Before Carrie Price ever made his, his post that was already happening.

[00:04:28] We, we were seeing that happening on Friday. So they're starting to feel the pressure. Um, and I think that is the, the fracture that gun owners should be looking for. We should be making guns a nonpartisan issue. We should be looking for practical solutions, not political ones. Um, and this is a great step towards that.

[00:04:45] I think personally, you know, that's the, that's the, the silver lining in this not very good cloud, but that's what I'm looking for. 

[00:04:53] Travis Bader: So if we back it up for the listeners, cuz some people will be following this day by day watching as new advancements happen. Some people are just getting into the fray right now and they're saying, hold on, what's going on?

[00:05:04] I heard they're coming after my hunting shotgun or my hunting rifle. Um, if we back this up a little bit of where C 21 kind of started and what it looked like and kind of what advance, what would that look like for the average individual? 

[00:05:20] Dan Fritter: What do you mean? ? 

[00:05:22] Travis Bader: Well, I, so C 21 initially started off with, uh, as an amendment for 

[00:05:28] Nicolas Johnson: some Oh, 

[00:05:29] Dan Fritter: gotcha.

[00:05:29] Okay. So C 21 started. Introduced, I mean, this is the second version of C 21 that's been introduced even so we could walk it back way farther, but for practical reasons, it was introduced as a bill aimed at freezing handgun sales primarily. Um, all, to be quite honest, it was a bill aimed at getting votes because freezing handgun sales doesn't really have any public safety aims whatsoever anymore than adding more red flag laws does when you've got existing ones.

[00:05:53] So it was largely a political bill looking for political solutions to political problems. And now they've added what is fundamentally the largest gun control act in Canadian history to it. It's a, it's a ban on all semiautomatic rifles. It doesn't include all Semitic shotguns by any stretch, but absolutely, pretty much any semiautomatic rifle is center fire unless you happen to be one of maybe the six people that own a sour S 3 0 3 with a two round integral meg and semiautomatic action, unless you own that one.

[00:06:23] You're kind of stuck with this. Yeah, so this is huge. I mean, C 68, all that other stuff, it didn't impact nearly as many rifles. Imagine if in C 68 they just said it's a Semitic rifle band. It would've been, it would've been way bigger. And that's what they're doing now. So they've bolted on, you know, to what was effectively a mouse.

[00:06:42] They've added an elephant. Um, and they're just trying to sneak it in that way. It's, it's, um, but I think also too that that sneaking it in is also kind of the weakness. Like you have to kind of pull back if you take yourself outta the equation. And if you were to say as a, as an objective observer, and this is the first time I've done this particular thought, observe experiment.

[00:07:02] But if you thought academically, if you bypass all the democratic institutions, um, and you bypass all the normal, the rules, Bringing an amendment like this in which normally it does meet some of the rules, but normally this would be asked, the minister would at least be asked to approach the committee and say, Hey, we wanna change some stuff.

[00:07:22] Here's why they didn't do that at all. Um, it gives you a bit of faith in that, you know, that's again, mm-hmm. . If you're looking for silver linings, you look at this and you go, their biggest weakness was they didn't consult, they didn't follow any process. And the process is what makes good law. The process is what creates consultation, creates committees, creates weaknesses, creates friction.

[00:07:42] So that one party in charge has a bit of friction, has to automatically. Make some concessions to the other people. Um, they didn't do that cuz they didn't want any of that friction. And now we're seeing that it kind of works. So I guess on the upside, you gotta think that maybe this is the system working in a really perverse and backwards way.

[00:07:59] Um, it, it shouldn't have to work this way. This feels like the safety net underneath the bridge that you already jumped off of catching you, um, more than it does any kind of real safety thing. But, uh, I think, you know, it's, it's quite the progression if anyone's looking at it and going, how did C 21 go from not affecting me to, I can't take my bar outside?

[00:08:18] Well, a Tuesday, a couple weeks ago, that's how it happened. 

[00:08:24] Travis Bader: at, at the last moment there. So C 21 essentially was, they're approaching pens now. C 21 hasn't been enacted into a. 

[00:08:34] Dan Fritter: No, it's, but the hand freeze in the committee phase, clause by clause. That's when they brought this 

[00:08:37] Travis Bader: in. Okay. So it's the hand and freeze has reached Royal Ascent according to the web?

[00:08:43] Dan Fritter: No. So C 21 as a bill, it's gone through first and second reading in the House of Commons. Um, generally untouched. So they first reading is when they just introduce it and it's the basic, like, I wanna make a law and this is what I'm thinking. And everyone goes, okay, that sounds like a good sentiment maybe.

[00:08:58] Sure, yeah. Then they do second reading where it gets a bit more serious. It's supposed to be more formal. They do that reading and then it's like, okay, we've adopted that, that's what they've done so far. Then it goes to committee. And the committee is comprised, the committee is, you'll hear it colloquially referred to as secu.

[00:09:13] It's the standing Committee on Public Safety in the house. Uh, there's another similar committee in the Senate that does the exact same job. The bill then went to the committee. The committee discussed it. They had a bunch of witnesses. Called Forward for two weeks, I think. Was it, it was a relatively lengthy witness period.

[00:09:28] Nick would probably no longer cause he covered that at length. Mm-hmm. , um, Couple 

[00:09:32] Nicolas Johnson: weeks. Yeah. Maybe even worth, I think, yeah, maybe three length. It was a length, not as long as C 71 a few years ago, but a lot of witnesses. 

[00:09:41] Dan Fritter: Yeah. So it was out there for a couple weeks with everyone out there kind of chatting about it.

[00:09:45] And then, then after the committee goes forward with it, they, they finalize what's called clause by clause where they go through the bill, literally clause by clause, and they propose amendments to it. And that's where we're at now, where they've called all the witnesses. Everything has been discussed, and they're supposed to be kind of like, it's an amendment.

[00:10:02] It's supposed to be a, a whittling, if you will, not a complete. Restructuring. They kind of had all these witnesses and they went, well, you know, handgun free sounds great, but you know, it'd be better if we just ban all semiautomatic firearms. That'd be way cooler. . And, and now they're really, I mean from a democratic perspective, we can't go witnesses.

[00:10:22] So the SEC committee, if you wanted to view it from this really naive perspective, that these parliamentarians that are in the secu are, are truly coming at it from an open mind. They can't call witnesses anymore. So if they wanted to discuss this stuff with you, me, Nick, rod, whoever, they couldn't, they couldn't ask us to come up there and be like, Hey, let's, let's chat about this cuz let's restart the witness phase cuz we're completely rebuilding this bill and we need to revisit it from the ground up.

[00:10:45] And actually, one of the big things that's really been concerning to me is that from a parliamentary standard, when you bring a bill about, you have to do various studies to make sure that it doesn't contravene the, the charter of rights and freedom. Um, a charter study was done on Bill C 21 was first introduced.

[00:11:03] It was determined to not break the charter because you don't have a right to a handgun. So of course it didn't, um, they didn't do another charter study. They haven't commissioned any consultation with indigenous people. They haven't done any of the things you would have to do when you write a new law, when they introduce this amendment, which effectively constitutes a new law.

[00:11:24] And in that regard, you know, it's if you, if you take a tiny law that does almost nothing, and you add a giant component that does so much more and you don't study whether or not that that additional component contravenes the charter, contravenes the digits rights. I mean, Dan Lloyd and the committee's made very good points that this entire law might contravene the UN declaration of indigenous.

[00:11:46] the right smid people like it's cause cuz they have to be consulted on this stuff and they just were right. Like it was just no, we, we, we, and the comical part is like, to put in perspective, this is the government that won on this perspective of them being the champions of all these Rights Day. And Lloyd asked the committee, has anyone in the liberal government asked anyone in the indigenous community if this law is gonna work or if it, you know, nevermind a full study.

[00:12:10] Has anyone even asked? And the witnesses from the Justice department who I say worked for the government, had the, had the gall, uh, to say no. We kind of decided for them in 2022 after all of this that's gone on. Wow. They literally said, well we kinda looked at it objectively, wrote a report as a bunch of white people that aren't indigenous.

[00:12:32] We kind of decided this was probably in their best interest. And it's like, wow, God. The hypocrisy, it's, it's, it is truly galling in that Oxford dictionary sense of the word. Like stainless screw, aluminum metal kind of galling . Just painful. No one likes it. It's awful. 

[00:12:53] Travis Bader: Okay, so you go in the public safety website and they talk about the different items of the amendment, and some are gonna be coming in through oic, through ordering counsel and some through Royal Ascent.

[00:13:05] So since we've established that, they're trying to approach us by Royal Ascent, but it has yet to reach Royal Ascent. One of the questions that came up was, how come the handgun freezes in effect right now if it hasn't gone? , 

[00:13:17] Nicolas Johnson: can I, uh, can I offer an opinion? Of course, Nicholas. Yeah. So, uh, first of all, I wanna, I wanna commend Daniel on his incredible, uh, optimistic tone and looking for the positive here.

[00:13:28] I I, and if I get down in negative, bring me back, man. Bring me back. . The, the, to your question about Bill C 21 and the origins, there were, there were a few things that happened on May 30th, 2022. That's when the government announced their intentions of the current version of Bill C 21. Part one was the intention for an order in counsel to kill the handgun market to make, to criminalize buying, selling, transporting, uh, bequeathing handguns.

[00:13:56] So they we're gonna do that by ordering counsel. That means executive decree. And part part two of that was they were going to do it in legislation that's Bill C 21. So they announced both of those three things on May 30th. They also announced a third thing on May 30th that they would add an amendment to expand their confiscations of shotguns and rifles.

[00:14:19] Remember back in May of 2020, they announced a big confiscation on, uh, I'll call it AR fifteens and other, a lot of other semi-auto center fire mag fed rifles and shotguns. They said, so that, they did that in May, 2020 on May 30th. The third component of, of the confiscations was they're going to expand that through an amendment.

[00:14:38] And that's what we're talking about now, is that giant, uh, amendment of, of uh, who knows how many hundreds of thousands I've seen numbers over a million of rifles and shotguns. So it's the expansion through that amendment, but that order in council to kill the handgun market that's already gone through.

[00:14:57] and now we're seeing into law the ordering council of May 20, 20 plus this huge expansion. 

[00:15:02] Travis Bader: Got it. It's a little misleading when you read the public safety website. 

[00:15:05] Nicolas Johnson: It's, it's really, well, also, this is really interesting. I, I, I think that it's to, to, to expand on or add to what Daniel was just saying. It's, I think this is, it's devious, it's sneaky this last minute stuff, whether it's legal or not, because I think it probably is legal by some interpretations, but even if it's le, even if it is legal, it's sneaky.

[00:15:26] This is not how it should be. And I also want to, to commend you again, for, for bringing this to your podcast, because just to give an anecdote on, on page [email protected] I was just looking at this after the May 30th announcement in the week after, I looked at the page views and my page views after this announcement of, uh, November 22nd when they unleashed the, they published the, uh, the amendment.

[00:15:51] I've got four times as many page views this time around. Wow. So just as an indicator of how broad the interest is, how broad the concern is. And another point that Wes Winkle made of the, the president of the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association. Mm-hmm. , he pointed out that the May 30th announcement, that was the Prime Minister, that was a, that was a Telegraph media announcement.

[00:16:10] There were press releases. The Prime Minister had lined up the media. They were all there with their cameras and their notepads to, to broadcasts. There was huge media coverage of the May 30th announcement, the November 22nd announce announcement. There was practically no media. So this huge interest that we're seeing is predominantly grassroots.

[00:16:28] It's people reading Caliber. It's the gun blog, it's Silver Core, it's it's Iko. It's, it's, it's, it's this grassroots and the organizations, you know, the other gun orgs, it's completely grassroots and the level of interest. Uh, the half the a h right, the half million letters to mps. It's, it's just staggering.

[00:16:47] It's unlike anything that I have ever seen personally. I've only been following this a few years, but from what I'm hearing, it's unlike anything anyone has ever seen. 

[00:16:57] Dan Fritter: And this is where like I'll interject and say like, it's interesting as someone that's been follow us for a long time, because I mean, Nick can probably attest and, and you as well, Travis from your background, that in a lot of these things, when we see these bad policies come out or we see these mistakes happen more often than not, it's.

[00:17:17] To be quite honest, it's usually something attributable to ignorance where it's, it's someone that's a, and I don't mean this, like people are gonna hear this misinterpret that I've got some like, I mean, no animosity, this is just people doing their jobs. You have a public sector employee who has worked their way through maybe agriculture, any other department, and they see an opening in the next classification of job up.

[00:17:38] Cuz I mean all these public sector stuff is incredibly hierarchical so they just kind of plug them into the next module up in the, in the earnings category. And it's over in public safety and it happens to be in the policy shop and it happens to be with firearms. Do you have any experience? Well no, but you've been in the, to be quite honest in the situation, I've never worked for the government, but I, I can see a situation where like, it's more important that you have knowledge of how the government works than how guns work to work for the government on guns, if that makes sense to people.

[00:18:06] Mm-hmm. , um, cause probably maybe the government thinks it's easier to teach guns than it is to teach the very complicated bureaucracy of it is public policy. And then you get these people to get into these roles that don't have the experience and they're being told various things by various people and they come up with something they think meets these goals, which is to be quite blunt, what I think this was.

[00:18:27] Um mm-hmm. and the politicians go, yeah, okay, well the experts say this will work. And I think basic group thing happens where the, the bureaucrats on the inside are referred to as the experts. For long enough, the politicians believed them, forgetting that these people were promoted in through agriculture and don't really have expertise per se.

[00:18:43] And then everyone just goes, yeah, this looks good. The experts say, so. And that's what we see in committee. I mean that last committee hearing, um, last week where we started to see Murray Smith and justice witnesses effectively, directly kind of going against what one another were saying with what would or would not be banned, where justice was saying, well, it's, if the gun was originally designed with a five round magazine, Which is not how Murray Smith has been interpreting these words, right, for his entire career.

[00:19:10] Right. You start to go, this doesn't, I know there's, and again, there's treads on some people. There's a lot of people who think there's victimhood and animosity and acrimonious. I think it's just the government kind of being dumb, to be quite blunt. I think they kind of went, Hey, bureaucrats, come up with a solution to help us ban these guns.

[00:19:27] This was the solution. They rolled with it and they never looked at it, quite honestly. Okay, so 

[00:19:33] Travis Bader: maybe, maybe, maybe let's, let's say being dumb, but this amendment that came on is what, 300, like 30 or 13, something like that. Pages long. That would take a while to put together. And the execution of putting that forward doesn't sound like it was coming from a place of ignorance.

[00:19:53] Like the idea of that we'll just tag this on at the very end where we can 

[00:19:56] Dan Fritter: bypass. But I guess that depends on who you're, who you, depends on who you call an expert. Cause I mean that the 330 pages is largely based on if we're being honest. Cause I also think that as gun, we've gotta be honest, it's a huge amendment.

[00:20:08] Three 30 pages. It's really easy to say they planned this out forever cuz the length, sure. We could distill this down to 10 pages if you wanted to, right? Like you take out all the AR 15 variance, you probably left to the document that's maybe 50 page. You take out the French side, that's 50% of it and while you're left to 20 and you take out all the other, you know, well Visa 58 known as you maybe got two pages, you know of an actual synopsis of here's what we're looking at banning.

[00:20:33] That's obviously Murray's head list. We've all known that it's from the 2020 thing, it's been circulated. It's also. Very much parallel to the list that's been circulated by Poly and the Coalition for Gun Control. The notable gun on the list that you gotta look for to draw that parallel is the Robinson Arms Xcr.

[00:20:52] It's never been involved in a shooting. It's, they're not common. They're, they're pretty uncommon. Even back in the day, they weren't common, um, never been involved in high profile shooting whatsoever. It's been involved in all of these bands ever since, and it's been on poly's lists and gun controls lists since day one.

[00:21:07] When you hear Marco Medino say things where he says like, oh, mark Lapine was captured by a gun registry at Polytechnic, no he wasn't, but that's what Poly San S had told him. So you can kind of just use some pretty elementary deductive reasoning skills. Go well, they're just consulting with Poly Scania, which is not an expert on guns or an expert on what happened at Polytechnic, which doesn't necessarily, you know, everything about a car crash is making a car expert.

[00:21:33] Travis Bader: Exactly. I've used used that one before, just cuz they've been hit in the face. It doesn't make me a boxer. Right. It's, yeah. Um, So what about the prankster? I understand I haven't read through the whole list. There is the prankster, not a little 22. Is that on the list? 

[00:21:46] Nicolas Johnson: There it is. That was on the May that was already listed in May, 2020, I think.

[00:21:51] The Mossberg 7 0 2 Prankster. 

[00:21:53] Travis Bader: So the 7 0 2. The seven 15 The Blaze previously, cuz that's essentially a prankster with a, um, AK style 

[00:22:00] plastic 

[00:22:01] Travis Bader: wrapper. Yeah, I just put a plastic wrapper on the thing I, from what I understand, the very original ones that came to, I've actually seen photos of 'em where they've taken 'em apart in videos.

[00:22:09] And you've had a 7 0 2 plink, sir, in the middle or, 

[00:22:13] Dan Fritter: yeah, it's, its like every other 22. You just, what do they, 

[00:22:16] Travis Bader: what do they have against that rifle? Now this rim fires are on there. 

[00:22:21] Dan Fritter: Well, and I gotta say some credit goes to Tim thoroughly over on Twitter, who's done some extensive work on the definition of variant and filed his own AIPs and whatnot.

[00:22:30] Okay. Um, so credit goes to Tim on that variant. Apparently can include guns that look like other guns. It's as simple as that. The government has decided that the ver variant includes guns that look like other guns. So if gun A looks like gun B, well I guess they're variance of one another. 

[00:22:44] Nicolas Johnson: So, and Murray Smith's testimony in the federal court case is also from, I think October of, I think it's 20, gosh, I'm having a unsure if it's 2021 or 2020.

[00:22:53] But his testimony under cross-ex examination, like Daniel's saying like variant is anything that Murray Smith and his colleagues want it to be. Right. It's not, you remember that, that huge issue that we've been dealing with for, uh, for years. 

[00:23:07] Travis Bader: Yeah. There was two terms. What was a variant and the other one was a modified version of, I think were the two terms.

[00:23:12] Okay. That would never be, uh, can't be defined. They can't be defined and they won't be defined because they wanna leave it open 

[00:23:19] Dan Fritter: to, but I think like, and this is again, not to interrupt, but like no screw to interrupt cuz I'm doing it. I'll own it anyways. Go ahead. Like this definitions thing, people get hung up on this cuz I know it's very.

[00:23:30] Common in the gun community to get hung up on the variant thing. People very, very insensitive in the gun community. I would ask people to also recognize like these definitions, the definition of the term hunting gun is equally nebulous. Like it is a gun that you hunt with. So when they say, oh, well it's banning hunting guns, well of course it is.

[00:23:49] Because any gun that you could legally take into a field and shoot an animal with is a hunting gun. Like it. It's as simple as that. Like when, when people say, well, what's an assault rifle? Well, assault rifle does have a canonized definition, a rifle intended for military uses primarily with a fully automatic fire switch that is a assault rifle.

[00:24:08] You detach a magazine, typically 30 rounds, et cetera, et cetera. If you look it up in the Oxford English Language Dictionary, it's there most crucially, if you look it up in the APA or the um, journalist one, what's that one? Canadian Press or Associated Press? Associated Press, yeah. Associated Press has a definition for assault rifle.

[00:24:24] It is a fully automatic rifle period. That's it. Hunting rifle has no such definition. And I guess the crucial thing, like when they say this is an assault weapon ban, we're not banning hunting rifles. There's no freaking difference. They're all semiautomatic rifles. The end. 

[00:24:40] Nicolas Johnson: I, I would also suggest that we not use those terms unless as acceptance specific circumstances, because today in 2022, now you guys are the technicians, so I'm stepping outside my lane here.

[00:24:54] But the, the idea that some firearms are different than other firearms, there's, well, I guess what I'm trying to say is they're all made in the same factories. They're all designed by the same engineers. They all come through the same, uh, well, factories, retail channels or I guess even who, um, and the people who use it might be different.

[00:25:13] But to make a distinction that, oh, this is a military gun. This is a hunting gun. This is a ranching gun, this is a farming gun, this is a self-defense gun. I don't think that type of language serves us or, or even. It might be useful for some purpose, but it, it doesn't have a, it's not, it's not a useful distinction, I don't think.

[00:25:34] Dan Fritter: No, and I think, again, to expand on that, I don't like the, this discussion around what guns are has been one that's been kind of problematic for me. It's been frustrating for me because, um, what guns are designed to do is to launch a projectile full stop. And I think a lot of gun owners, if anyone's listening to this, whenever someone brings that up and says, well, what's a, you know, we got a ban ease.

[00:25:55] They're designed to do blank. If whatever blank is is not throw a rock at high speed down range accurately and reliably, the answer is incorrect. Cause that's all, like, I know, I literally have talked to people that design guns. And if you go to Colt Canada, they say that, no, we don't design these to do anything other than go bang, make the, the bullet hit where it's aiming and do it reliably.

[00:26:18] And then the other added. Design parameters or things like light, like whether or not it's lightweight, is it heavy? How long is the barrel? It's basic stuff. But guns are designed to go bang and shoot. That's it. Guns are designed to shoot. What you shoot at is where the person enters into it. And that's, that's a whole different metric.

[00:26:37] And I think this whole assault, assault style hunting gun, these definitions do a tremend disservice to distract from that, that they are just guns. They can be tremendously dangerous in the wrong hands. Absolutely. That's why we invested heavily in this massive system to keep them out of the wrong hands.

[00:26:54] Why are we now investing heavily in specific kinds of guns in the right hands? It doesn't make sense. 

[00:26:59] Travis Bader: They call it an assault vehicle. This one's an assault vehicle cuz it was used or it's got X weight or 

[00:27:04] Nicolas Johnson: capacity, it's painted black. 

[00:27:06] Dan Fritter: Mm yeah. Or like we've got leadership style government doesn't necessarily mean we've got a functioning government either.

[00:27:14] Nicolas Johnson: Travis. I'd also like to come, uh, just to also to zoom out here to, um, , I think a lot of gun owners were surprised by what happened, uh, when the, when this amendment to Bill C 21 was introduced or, or published. And I think that's also unfortunate because we had huge signs, both, both in the short term. We have a government under the Justin Truda, liberals and Justin Truda himself, who is very, uh, clearly obviously hostile to, uh, to gun owners.

[00:27:41] He's campaigned three times now. He's won three elections with a message of prohibitions and confiscations. So the, the fact that this happened shouldn't be a surprise. On May 30th, the government said they were planning an amendment to expand the confiscations, so it shouldn't be a surprise from that point of view.

[00:27:57] And bigger picture, back in C 68 of the ninth of 1995, the the Firearms Act, the the Anti Firearms Act has. Or let me rephrase that. C 68 has, uh, an amendment to the criminal code that allowed cabinet to ban any gun that it wants any time if cabinet doesn't think it's reasonable for hunting or sporting purposes.

[00:28:18] So the minute that was in the law, we should have known, and a lot of guys who paid attention back then did That's way before my time, way before I was interested. But I'm, I'm relying on stories that have been related to me. Anybody who was paying attention should know that, that the fact that that was in the criminal.

[00:28:35] And the fact that all gun owners are regulated by the criminal code meant it was not a matter of if, it was a matter of when. Right. So that plus Trudeau saying he's, uh, cracking down, he's adding prohibitions and confiscations. So I can understand people would be upset or angry about what happened, uh, on November and November 22nd, 2022 when the amendment came out.

[00:28:56] But nobody should be surprised. Right. The writing's on the wall. Yeah. It's been on the wall for, for either decades or months, but mm-hmm. . Yeah. There's also another thing that I just want to add to that, that, and, and this is being positive. I think that what we're seeing now, the thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands who are watching the SEC U committee in the House of Commons debate this bill and who are paying attention to the policy at all.

[00:29:19] Cuz there I think there are a lot of people who are paying attention. It's serving as a very valuable. Political education about how policy is made, how the legislative process works, and going back right to the beginning of the things Daniel was mentioning about this last minute amendment. After all the witnesses has come in, snuck in under the wire, all this stuff, um, introducing a massive amendment that was not presented to parliament.

[00:29:46] All this stuff is making people very suspect of this government and about government ethics and the political system. And I think that's actually dangerous because we need trust in politicians. We need trust in the system to function as a society. That's, that's my opinion. And this kind of stuff, the way it's being done, nothing to do with firearms, just purely the procedural aspect is undermining trust in politicians and the political system.

[00:30:14] I think that's dangerous. 

[00:30:16] Travis Bader: Well said, Nicholas. I, I want to talk about the, the terms, uh, hunting guns and. A assault weapon a little bit. But you know, one point on what you were just saying there, C 21 encompasses more than just firearms, doesn't it? 

[00:30:33] Nicolas Johnson: I, the only aspect I paid attention to is firearms. But it sounds like you, it sounds like you know something.

[00:30:39] Travis Bader: Well, I know very, very little on this, but I think Daniel probably has a little bit more information covers 

[00:30:44] Nicolas Johnson: before Airsoft. You talk of the Airsoft. 

[00:30:48] Dan Fritter: Yeah, I mean, it, it's obviously impacting Airsoft and then broader reaching kind of brackets or, or parenthesis around firearms is the red flag laws and all the additional work around, um, exemptions for things like nuclear facility guards to carry AR fifteens and stuff like that.

[00:31:05] Because apparently AR fifteens are the only tool that is acceptable for our nuclear facilities to be defended with. But you can't have one. Um, yeah, the biggest thing is airsoft. Um, it bans airsoft. Okay. That's all there is to it. There's no other way to put it. I mean, it doesn't ban it. I mean, being a big glib there, but, um, it basically bans anything.

[00:31:24] It's a replica firearm. And if anyone's familiar with Airsoft, uh, airsoft is all about, for most people, about Milsom, it's about the simulation aspect. Mm-hmm. . Um, but you can't really simulate, uh, those situations if you've got some funky nerf looking space do da that you, you stick the, the BBS in the side of, or something like it's, you know, kind of ruins it.

[00:31:47] So, and plus too, this is something that Canadian gunners have to realize cuz it's, it's where airsoft and gun owners overlap significantly. We're not a big market. Canada is not a significant airsoft market. We are not a significant gun market. Full stop. There's no other way to put it. I, I used to argue this point when I was 10 years ago and doing the industry, I was gung ho Canada's big, no we're not.

[00:32:09] Like they sell more guns in Texas than they do in Canada. Mm-hmm. . And in terms of Airsoft globally, there are other bigger markets by far. Um, what the liberals are looking at doing ostracizes, the Canadian market for both. Uh, it requires Canadian airsoft people to find a product that does not currently exist on the market today to practice Airsoft as they currently do.

[00:32:32] So they're either gonna have to change their behavior to, to meet the law, not that their behavior's currently criminal, they're gonna have to change their currently law abiding currently entirely unharmful behavior to be unharmful and law abiding some more with different stuff because no one's gonna build guns for them.

[00:32:50] And it's the same as Canada. I've seen a few people kinda say on social media, well, I guess we're gonna have to redesign Mag Wells. We're gonna have to, no, it's not gonna happen. Guys. Like, like designing a magazine. Is one of the most expensive parts of designing a gun cuz it's sees a ton of wear and tear.

[00:33:07] It's very diverse in terms of your metrics where things have to line up, measurements, you name it. It's very, very complicated. Like to the point where a lot of gun designers say designing a reliable gun is as important as designing a reliable mag. Then you wrap a gun around it. Mm-hmm. , you're gonna really expect people to go out there and design a whole new magazine format that cannot be replicated anywhere in the world to hold more than five rounds for a market of 2.2 million people.

[00:33:32] Mm-hmm. , how many of those 2.2 million people are buying new guns every year? Well, not all 2.2. Okay. So let's take those people. Now you're getting to the market size, it just won't happen. Right? These laws will not be adapted. By the market, they will meet their objectives in that goal of ever greening legislation that will prevent gun owners from circumventing it because there's no point.

[00:33:53] Mm-hmm. , but that's just the death nail of it. It doesn't, it's not, it's not like Airsoft is adapting, it's dying. Mm-hmm. , it's over. Like no one will make a semiautomatic rifle for the Canadian market. Yeah. If you're rich enough, you can go buy a sour S 3 0 3, someone will sell you one. They're custom mate.

[00:34:11] You call 'em up, give 'em your name, they'll put it on the side of the gun. Mm-hmm. . But if you don't have five grand, well, I don't know, go buy something else. I guess that's what your dad would say. Like it's something else that's equally good but worse. You know, like follow up shot with a bolt action rifle.

[00:34:27] Never as good , you know, as an animal advocate guy, this pisses me off to. . 

[00:34:34] Nicolas Johnson: I think also, Dan, what you're saying is incredibly important and it answers the question that, that I've seen on social media that, that some people are asking and say, oh, I don't have any guns that are on the list, so therefore this doesn't affect me.

[00:34:47] And that's, that's false. You might not be targeted by the confiscations directly yet. Yeah. But how are you affected? Well, every gun owner in Canada is affected because as the market shrinks, well, some manufacturers are going to simply say, you know what? The Canadian market is not worth it to us. That's gun manufacturers and that's ammo manufacturers.

[00:35:09] So what does that mean? Well, you're a gun owner who, who shoots whatever. Well, you're used to buying your ammo at your local gun store. Well, is your gun store gonna be able to make it through this? Maybe, maybe not. And let's say your local gun store makes it through it. And let's say you're used to going the day before you, before a hunt or the day before a a range event.

[00:35:27] A range day and, and stocking up on a couple boxes or, or dozens of boxes. Well, are the ammo manufacturers still gonna serve the country the way they do now because, and so we're talking about, um, some gun stores disappearing and dying. We're talking about gun clubs eventually disappearing and dying. So this, this confiscation is suppressing the, a huge gu there, the relatively, that's suppressing the Canadian gun market.

[00:35:55] And that has ramifications on everybody who is in the Canadian gun market. Every gun store, every gun club, every gun owner. 

[00:36:03] Dan Fritter: I mean, to put that in perspective, if anyone's wanting to noble context on that from an industry side, imagine going to the range with a Lee Enfield. How many rounds are you probably taking for an afternoon?

[00:36:16] Let's see. You get there after lunch, you're gonna leave before dinner. You probably, if you're me and you're taking, let's say my K 31, I'm gonna call 50 rounds ample. That's, I probably come home with half of them cuz I'm, I'm just there to. Plink away and, and practice breathing and all that. Now imagine you go into the range with an AR or WK 180 to practice three gun matches.

[00:36:35] How many rounds have you taken? Hundreds. Right? A lot more, right? Yeah. That's what the retailers are seeing. When you worry, when, when, when Nicholas says this is gonna affect your retailers. Think about that. Think what? Every gun owner, if you're listening to this in a big city like Toronto and you're talking about Al Fla or you're listening to in Red Deer and you're talking about a small shop there doesn't matter.

[00:36:55] Maybe the powder keg and Camloops could be Reliable Gun. This is a huge reduction in volume and that's gonna have dramatic effects. So even if you don't shoot these guns, let's say you're that guy that only shoots the lean field, well your box 3 0 3 is gonna go a hell of a lot more in terms of price because the lease that reliable gun, the powder, okay, everyone else has to pay, which has gone up tremendously cuz real estate under Trudeau, that lease still has to be paid.

[00:37:22] Except instead of being paid for on thousands of rounds of 2 23 or 7 62 like it normally would be, it's gonna be carried by guys shooting 20 rounds of 3 0 3. Got it. Every one of those rounds is gonna go from one to maybe five bucks. Even like we are looking at effectively, if people wanna know where this goes, the European gun culture where if you can afford it, it's a great sport.

[00:37:45] And if you can't try baseball, tough, tough . Yeah. Like, uh, fishing. Like it's really that there's no other way around this. It's, they're moving it into that for the rich. And if you're Joe Blow blue collar hunts for your food, you're Sol man. 

[00:38:01] Travis Bader: And I've spoken with numerous gun stores. You've listed off a few of them right there about the effects that they're seeing currently.

[00:38:09] And the same thing keeps coming back. The people who want to buy new kit and buy lots of ammo, those are handgun shooters, sport shooters, people who are shooting the semi-automatics. The handgun when that announcement came in, there was a surge on buying, but there's no new guns being bought. This has all been addressed before.

[00:38:26] It's the same number that would be sold over a year. It's just sold over a condensed period of time. Yeah, it was an untenable thing for the stores and now they're seeing the repercussions very quickly. If C 21 goes through, Dan, what you're saying will come into effect, is already largely coming into effect.

[00:38:46] You're gonna see layoffs, you're gonna see small stores shut down or really niche down and prices go way up. Um, one thing that we talked about earlier was about terms, and I know the lawyers were really keen on pushing, let's say Murray Smith on, on saying what a variant was or what a modified version was.

[00:39:04] I know earlier we had mentioned maybe not, let's not get hung up on these terms cuz there's a double edged sword there. Uh, legally sometimes if there's no legal definition of what, let's say, what an assault. Weapon is, or an assault rifle is, uh, they will, they'll go to the Oxford dictionary or they'll look at US law.

[00:39:21] They'll look at other places where it's kind of been defined and, and lean on that. Uh, I think the lawyers really wanted a definition of a variant to constrain future, uh, prohibitions and put a box around what it is they're looking at. And the very telling point is, is that nobody wants to put that definition on.

[00:39:40] If we move forward, and we're talking about, like you say, this is a hunting rifle or going after the hunting rifles, I don't know. I look at this two ways. Uh, number one, it's giving some, uh, context to those who are outside of the firearms industry and saying, well, that doesn't really make sense. Why would they go after, uh, indigenous groups who use this firearm predominantly?

[00:40:03] Why would they go after the farmer or the hunter? And I can see some value into leaning on that. I do understand the gun owner standpoint of saying, the second we define hunting rifles, everything else is gonna be gone. And these are the only few until they whittle it down further. I, I, I'm torn on the two sides of that.

[00:40:22] It's kind of like saying, never call it a weapon, it's a firearm. Well, the criminal code actually calls it a weapon. Right. Even the receiver, a weapon isn't, anything that is used can be used, designed to be used to threaten, intimidate, or cause bodily harm to somebody else. And without precluding, the generality of the forego includes a firearm.

[00:40:41] Words are important. Where should people stand on this one? Should we be doubling down and saying, , look at what they're doing to the hunting firearms? Or should they try and distance themselves from that? I'd like to respond 

[00:40:54] Nicolas Johnson: to that. Okay. I would say I agree with you and that it's, it is a double edged sword and there's, there's pros and cons to each one.

[00:41:01] I think the. The advantage of using phrases like farming, gun hunting, gun ranching, guns, uh, target gun, is that it, it makes it sound nice and it's maybe appealing to certain people. The risk is that we forget that it's the same guns that are used by military, uh, self defenders, home defenders. It's, it's exactly the same tool.

[00:41:27] That's the first thing. The second thing is I, I've chosen to, in, in my [email protected], in my, in my presentations and, and discussions, focus on the confiscation from people. Cuz we have to remember, we, it's, it's simpler to say that they're going after X Ys at guns, but we have to remember that the confiscations are always targeting certain people.

[00:41:49] Right. At the end of the day, it's, it's not the gun that's legal or illegal. It's the possession, the purchasing, the acquisition, the, the, the, having buying, owning. And that's a human activity. It's to bring the people back into this and remember that they're not, I even prefer to say they're not going after guns.

[00:42:08] They're going after people. And Daniel said this for me in his opening sentences, government licensed firearm users. This is where we get to the coincide. That's a, that's a mouthful. That like, what the heck is the government licensed firearm user? It's much easier to call it. They're going after hunting guns.

[00:42:23] So rhetorically, if you have to make an ad or a meme, they're going after. Hunters is much, it's conceptually much center, much simpler. So there's a huge advantage there. Does it come back to bite us in the bum in our, in our policy discussions? I think it does. So, pros and cons, man, pros and cons. 

[00:42:42] Dan Fritter: And I think, like from my perspective, I, I echo Nick's sentiment entirely.

[00:42:46] Like I agree with everything he said. Um, I, I have no, there's nothing really to add beyond, like, I think maybe gun owners maybe just get too hung up on the terminology. Yeah, because I used to, I, I've been guilty of it. I think a lot of us have been at various junctures and at this point I can say like, my background is, is primarily in writing and English literature, so I kind of rely more on the, the language purity.

[00:43:10] A gun is absolutely a weapon. It can also be a tool. It can also be a fishing weight. It can also be a hunting rifle. It can be whatever you want it to be, you know, like you can strap it to the tire of a car and use it as a ski in the snow if you want to. It's, it's just a metal implement, right? Like it is a thing that's commonly called a gun.

[00:43:28] What you add to that is kind of secondary and is more projection, and this is how I viewed it and I think gun owners would be beneficial, is maybe get caught up on how other people refer to it less and correcting them less and maybe infer from their usage more. Like if someone refers to a gun as a weapon constantly, maybe instead of correcting them and being like, no, they're not weapons.

[00:43:49] Maybe in further, that person has a little bit of hesitancy around guns. They have a little bit of an acrimonious attitude. They're a little bit nervous. And the best way to address nervousness or ignorance, which is commonly what that comes out as, is not by just steamrolling over them being like, no, you're wrong.

[00:44:04] Right? So I just don't get caught up. And if someone's, cuz I've done tons of interviews or people call on weapons, rifles, guns, you name it, it doesn't matter If you've been in the army and someone calls it a gun, they'll bitch slap you back and say, no, that's, that's an artillery piece, that's a rifle. You know?

[00:44:17] Mm-hmm. So it's names are, are really more about who's using it than, than, than what it actually is. And I think gun owners get too caught up in that stuff. And I think we let our politicians get caught up in it too. Cuz it, and this is where this hunting gun thing, it exposes a bit of a mutual flank for both the conservatives and.

[00:44:38] because the liberals have to kind of admit that an AR 15 is just a semiautomatic rifle no different than a Browning B AR at some point. Mm. And at some point someone, and believe me, I'm sure that there is someone in a liberal war room, it's a little bit worried about someone holding up an AR 15 round and holding up a b ar 30 odd six round and going, oh, this rifle shoots these four of 'em as fast as you want.

[00:45:02] The other one shoots these. Um, so they're worried about that. The conservatives on the other hand are also worried about it because they want to be seen as defending hunting guns cause that's socially acceptable in Canada. But they also have to accept someone eventually. Reality has to accept that there's no difference.

[00:45:18] A semi-automatic AR 15 and 2 23 is just as good at hunting coyotes as a semiotic b ar, and 30 odd six s at hunting elk. They're just guns. And 

[00:45:27] Nicolas Johnson: uh, we should, by that, I agree also that we should be calling, um, in certain cases that we should be referring to the AR 15 as a hunting gun. Because in it's 

[00:45:37] Dan Fritter: most popular hunting gun in America in the world.

[00:45:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess cuz it's the largest hunting market. So, so 

[00:45:42] Nicolas Johnson: the ar all popular in the world. So we've, we've, we've, we've, uh, I I've, I I avoid referring to firearms as weapons because I think, uh, philosophically they are not. But I also agree, Dan wholeheartedly with you, that that's, that's, they can be's like that.

[00:45:55] That's a, that's a discussion that about three people are interested in. I'm people who like to splice hairs and three of us are interested in the, 

[00:46:03] Dan Fritter: the, but, but all three of us are in this one pot is, oh my 

[00:46:07] Nicolas Johnson: God. And that's, and that slippery, what are the odds? I think you're also pointing to a slippery slope of, of how this policy is, is being rationalized.

[00:46:15] First they say, oh, you can't use it for hunting. Oh. And part two, since you can't use it for hunting, you don't need it. Oh. And so let's just confiscate them. So the, it's, it's a minute. That's where those people who say No, we draw the line at the, the first step is where we draw the line. Cuz once they go take that first step, there's always the second and then the third.

[00:46:34] And that is, 

[00:46:34] Dan Fritter: and the fourth. Absolutely true. Like in committee, I remember vividly last week, justice Witness, and this is a, this is a non-political public sector employee working for the Justice Department who had, again, the gall, when the benellis were brought up to simply say, well, they were banded 92.

[00:46:53] So obviously they don't have any practical reason cuz they've been illegal since 92. Right. Like that somehow, like being banned 92 prevents them from being useful and, and Nick's right, they're gonna do this. They're gonna say these guns, they're gonna ban them. If they do ban them today, these guns will never be considered viable hunting rifles in the future because they'll simply say, well no, they're illegal.

[00:47:13] They have been, you have kinda like the air 15 in Canada is not a viable hunting rifle cause you're not legally allowed to hunt with it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy effectively. 

[00:47:20] Travis Bader: That's right. Same with handguns in the bush. You can't, 

[00:47:24] Dan Fritter: yeah. Yeah, exactly. 

[00:47:26] Travis Bader: I always figured Alberta, Alberta should come in because the only thing that stops people from shooting a handgun in the, in the woods is that your att, which allows you to transport it to a range, not out into the woods.

[00:47:37] And ATTs are given up. Provincially, although 

[00:47:40] Dan Fritter: you'd know more about this being the, the hunting and guy. The hunting, well definitely more than me like is could you be able to hunt in Alberta with a handgun if the CFO said so? 

[00:47:52] Travis Bader: Yeah. I mean, they do it in the States. I remember being down at the, well, 

[00:47:55] Dan Fritter: I, Massachusetts legally like could, oh, I see the CFO of Alberta legally without rewriting the f the firearms act like with the current framework issue, an at t to someone for like a, a 44 meg and then that person have a, a tag for a deer and go get a deer with a, a handgun.

[00:48:12] Would that 

[00:48:12] Travis Bader: be legal? So we have federal and provincial laws and provincial laws. Uh, if your province says you're good to go and use a handgun, then the federal laws say, I kick in mind you ATTs, and this would be great to have Ian on because I'm no lawyer, but the, uh, ATTs are issued provincially. From my understanding, that's one of the things we're trying to, uh, to change and have a federal oversight on all ATTs as as we move forward.

[00:48:37] ATCs Well, and ATC is also something that you can bring out, but it'll have conditions attached. 

[00:48:44] Nicolas Johnson: I think they're moving the ATCs to the RCMP federally for ATCs for Protection of Life. But the ATTs, I 

[00:48:50] Dan Fritter: think that's part of C 21. Isn it, yeah. Yeah. 

[00:48:52] Nicolas Johnson: But the ATTs, I believe are staying are, I don't think that the, the, the regulatory body for ATTs changes as, as far as I know.

[00:48:58] Again, hashtag not a lawyer. Um, the tribe on that question though, is, isn't it the, isn't it, and I'm not a hunter, not a lawyer, not a hunter. Is it not? Um, my understanding was that it's illegal in Canada federally to hunt or to use a quote unquote prohibited or quote, unquote restricted firearm for hunting, you can only use a non-restricted, and therefore handguns are automatically out.

[00:49:22] Travis Bader: So that would be a provincial rule, depending, I don't, I don't, I don't know every province, but the provinces govern the, uh, the use of implements for hunting, whether that be a spear or a bow or, uh, a firearm that would, that would fall under provincial rule. Municipally. They can put extra rules in place as well.

[00:49:39] But um, like they can say, well, not in our city. You ain't, you can't, no firearms or no single projectiles, for example, corporation of Delta. Mm-hmm. guess for a city now, city of Delta. And, but from the use of a firearm would come down to can you legally discharge it? Well, you can discharge a firearm anywhere.

[00:49:57] It's lawful to do so. Well That's then brings into, you know, have a loaded fire. Anywhere you're allowed to lawfully discharge it. Can I lawfully discharge my handgun out in the woods? And this is getting perhaps a little off topic. If ATTs, if, if what you're saying is that ATTs aren't gonna be affected, it's the ATCs.

[00:50:16] I must have misread that part. . But, um, the, from my understanding, not a lawyer, the only thing stopping you from using your firearm out in the woods would be an a t which is why many law enforcement can go out in the woods and shoot their pistols just fine. Mm-hmm. Because they've got that blanket 

[00:50:33] Nicolas Johnson: transport.

[00:50:34] I have, I have a different understanding the opportunity 

[00:50:36] Dan Fritter: for Alberta there. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , I mean, given they've been pretty clear. I mean, that's the other thing that I think we haven't talked about is probably the provincial. Like we were already seeing that you think back to, it's, it's funny now how, how thoroughly this shatters your, like there was, there's the before C 21 Amendment times, and then there's the after times

[00:50:54] Because before we oh's huge, the big talk was Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba. Mm-hmm. all saying, we're not gonna do this by. Um, 

[00:51:02] Travis Bader: Yukon and, and New Brunswick. Aren't they jumping on too? Yeah, 

[00:51:06] Dan Fritter: that's true. Yeah. It was five total, isn't it? And now, like this, this ban, I mean it's the, the, the compensate. Cuz justice has been pretty unequivocal by saying that if these ban goes through, these prohibited firearms will not be available for use.

[00:51:19] They've been, they've repeated that ad nauseum, so it doesn't sound like it'll be like a grandfathering. Like if you got a bar, you'll still be able to hunt with it until you die kind of thing. No, you won't. Um, so I think from that perspective, it's very interesting to. . And that's why we've included on some of the form letters that, you know, people should be emailing their provincial ministers of public safety because the bill to pay for this will probably most be felt by those provincial authorities.

[00:51:45] And it, there's so many wedges. Like it's funny that this one wedge, it's very obviously a, an attempt to create a liberal wedge for likely an election next spring has created, I think, probably a lot more wedges than they anticipated. So, I mean, Nick's saying, don't be surprised. I think, uh, he's right. But I think it might have surprised some people that it probably really shouldn't have surprised, like the people that wrote it.

[00:52:07] Nicolas Johnson: I'd like to add to, to that if I made that the, um, this bill is also quite nefarious because even though it's a federal, it would be a federal law ordering confiscation essentially because you won't be able to buy, sell, or, or pass on to your heirs. It's, it's offsetting the cost of that confiscation.

[00:52:28] There's no mention of who's gonna do the confiscating. Well, who's gonna do the confiscating is your municipal police force. So when Hunter Bill or, or Hunter Joe, uh, dies and someone has to come and collect the guns, well, who's gonna do that? Well, that's presumably gonna be the municipal police force.

[00:52:43] Well, municipal police forces keep saying, we don't have the budgets for this. There's, there's, this is a massive, massive, uh, we're talking about millions at this point between the handguns and the, the rifles and shotguns that are involved. Millions of firearms. It would be a nonstop job just to go around the provinces or the, the municipality and collect this stuff.

[00:53:02] Well, they don't, that's not no police force at the moment. I mean, it wants to do that or has the budget to do that, or they're responding to 9 1 1 calls. Right. They're, they're busy fighting bad guys. They don't, they don't wanna turn into, they don't wanna be turned into confiscation agents. Mm-hmm. . So this is, again, federally.

[00:53:21] Who's going to, whose defacto is my understanding is gonna be charged with execution. It's the municipalities and no one's talking about that. Well, the 

[00:53:30] Travis Bader: really interesting one for me, for example, Alberta, when they came out and they said, okay, we've got the RCMP here, we've got their tasks. They're under contract.

[00:53:41] We're not gonna use our money to fund the RCMP to do this extra duty outside of their normal policing duties to go confiscate the firearms. That was interesting. But they went further and they said, we're looking at enacting legislation to prevent the federal government from funding the RCMP or allowing them to confiscate these firearms.

[00:54:01] How do we have federal laws in Canada that provincially can be opted out of that I, you know, that's an interesting one. It's an untenable situ. 

[00:54:12] Nicolas Johnson: Well, what I understand from Alberta and Saskatchewan is they're preparing their own. I just took a very brief look at this stuff in the past few days, right.

[00:54:18] They're planning their own firearms acts to require licensing of any confiscation agent. So they're gonna, they're, I guess they're gonna have lawyer people who are actual lawyers, not, not some blogger, but who are finding very creative ways to say, we're not having your confiscations here. Mm-hmm. . 

[00:54:38] Dan Fritter: Well, I mean, that's a brilliant one because that, that licensing thing, I mean, you first read it and you think it sounds pretty harmless, but I mean, who, who currently administers those licenses?

[00:54:48] If you wanted to take a course, who would you take it from? Travis. Mm-hmm. . It's private individuals. Private sector businesses. They can refuse customers for various reasons. Mm-hmm. . So it'd be very easy for the instructors in Alberta to go, well, we're just not gonna take any potential confiscation agents on as potential students so they can't get licensed.

[00:55:06] And that kind of stalls it there. I love that. Which again, 

[00:55:09] Travis Bader: It all, you can be otherwise designated by a firearms officer. They do have a section in their That's true. 

[00:55:14] Dan Fritter: Yeah. But I, which has happened, but I mean, the Alberta Chief Firearms Officer ain't a boat to appoint anyone. Right, right. Like it's, it's Fortress Alberta as a, as a BC or that's halfway between Vancouver and Calgary.

[00:55:28] Um, it's basically Fortress Alberta. Like they, they've, they've got a pretty decent amount of buttress against it there. Mm-hmm. . Um, and I've heard for a long time people that have been around, For probably seven plus years might know that like non-compliance, when Trudeau was first elected, non-compliance was always discussed as the thing that the liberals feared most.

[00:55:49] Mm-hmm. . Um, we heard it from liberal party insiders back then that anything they looked at passing, they were always concerned that compliance would be low because the long gun registry compliance was never greater than 50%. And that was always what killed them on the costing. Mm-hmm. , way back when we went through all that, and I remember it vividly, it was you, you spent billions of dollars and you got 50% of the guns.

[00:56:09] It's pointless, right? Mm-hmm. . Um, so they're still sensitive about that and I think, you know, with C 21 and what's going on in Alberta, this, this semi-automatic ban is really stolen all the air out of the room for sure, for obvious reasons, cuz it's massive. Mm-hmm. . Um, but when you view it, when you kind of pull back and view the forest for the trees and you contextualize that this is an amendment to a bill that was already being opposed openly by the entire.

[00:56:36] Prairie provinces, Yukon, new Brunswick. Um, it does change the perspective a bit if people are starting to panic. Well, I don't know. It kind of changes the math a bit for me personally, like I work in the industry, it's a game changer for sure. Mm-hmm. . But looking at all those things, it does at least gimme a little bit of hope of going, yeah, you know what there is, the system might kind of work maybe.

[00:56:55] Mm-hmm. , there's enough pushback, enough feedback, enough political pressure, enough friction that maybe this won't go through. 

[00:57:02] Travis Bader: You feel they got a little too greedy, they threw too much on that boat and it's starting to sink? Or do you think it was by design? 

[00:57:08] Dan Fritter: Perhaps? I worry because I think that we can all conclude that the liberal party has access to better data than any of us have.

[00:57:14] Mm-hmm. , um, they are incredibly efficient. They have won two elections now by losing them, as in they get less votes than other people, but they win the election. That's efficiency. And I worry about that cuz this stuff does play in. And if anyone's, again, people gotta step, if you're, if you haven't step out of your echo bubble and just Google carry price on Twitter.

[00:57:38] Just Google it and look at not, not the results that you wanna see, but just scroll through 'em and read 'em all. Cuz you'll find that it's probably about 50 50 that mm-hmm. , there's a lot of people of Oh yeah. You know, happy to stand with him, happy to see him standing up for, for all that stuff. And there's a lot of people saying they're gonna throw his jersey in the garbage and stuff like that.

[00:57:56] So it's, it's pretty even. Um, and I think people should probably keep that in context. Um, so I, I don't know. I mean, I wanna say, so, um, ultimately I guess the, the pragmatist in me wants to say that on exit polling, gun politics never actually cracks the top 10 on why people cast a ballot. Mm. Um, so will this be the reason people vote for Justin Trudeau or don't?

[00:58:23] No. Will this be the reason that people volunteer for a political party? Yes. Will this probably create more, does this create exponentially more leverage within the NDP and the block way be wha for gun owners to create change within those party structures? Absolutely. That's the big takeaway. I think if gun owners are looking at this for the absolute, like what is the absolute best thing that could happen from this?

[00:58:49] It would be gun owners liaising with the NDP and the block and, and effectively taking guns off the political table by doing so by, by using this as an opportunity to recognize liberals of open the door for us to have a conversation here and for us to have that conversation with all of the other parties that want to, um, and clarify that, like I said, we license the people, we don't, we license who has.

[00:59:15] I wouldn't want to be in a room with someone with criminal intent, whether they were armed with a 22 or a 50 cow. It wouldn't matter. I'm probably not getting outta the room alive. So we control the people. Let's spend a lot less effort controlling the individual things. A lot less time, a lot less money.

[00:59:29] Um, I think that that could probably work for the block in the ndp. Those parties wanna spend a lot of money, um, which means they probably need to look at saving money right now. It's one of those things where you gotta look, the economy is kind of a perfect storm, or they gotta look at saving. If they wanna spend Trudeau's opened the door with this semiautomatic ban.

[00:59:48] I think that's the, that is the big thing. I'd love to see the NDP shift back to a jack, late gun agnostic perspective. Mm-hmm. , I think it'd be the best, honest to God for gun owners. I think it'd be the best for Canada. It'd be the best for the ndp. I voted for the NDP in the past. I'm not like it's, I voted for every party in the past at some points.

[01:00:06] Like it's, it's very important that we have a three party system and the health of that is, it relies on the NDP not being the liberals laps. 

[01:00:14] Travis Bader: So you bring up a good point about the communication carry price, getting up there and everyone's like, you know, I stand behind him. And I, it was gonna be one of the questions I'm saving, uh, to the end, but we're into it now.

[01:00:29] You guys are both media professionals. From your perspective, uh, how should those who are affected be communicating their concerns and communicating through social media, through their, uh, MLA's, through their mps? Like, what, what should, what should be happening on a communication standpoint? Because I, I see some groups, some businesses, some individuals even are trying to make hashtags popular, so it's used as a marketing tool for themselves.

[01:01:03] Which I guess is great for them to, to market in their way unless they come under some form of censure and everyone can make that association The, uh, the attacking point, which is what's happening right now with the ccfr and, and the, uh, the hashtag we sent with them and they didn't like the, uh, the code that was used.

[01:01:22] I just got some information on that. I don't know all the ins and outs, but I guess there is some, uh, hue in Christ saying they use a distasteful discount code. And, um, now the message is disappearing and everyone's focusing on the, that, I guess, marketing aspect of it. Should people be staying away from that?

[01:01:42] How, how should we be communicating? 

[01:01:46] Dan Fritter: I mean, 

[01:01:49] Nicolas Johnson: does it change? It's tough. 

[01:01:51] Dan Fritter: I don't know if it changed. That's kind of what I'm at is I think Carrie's Carrie price's point is unchanged. Mm-hmm. , I think, um, The discount code's. Unfortunate there's all you can do. Like, just to be blunt, cuz we can't, I'm not gonna dance around this subject for the entire conversation.

[01:02:07] I think the discount code was unfortunate. I see how they did it like it was two weeks ago. It was long before the anniversary. And, and in that sort of situation, poly say, and Su has taken the name obviously of kind of poly technique, which is where the shooting occurred, the similar component being poly.

[01:02:23] Um, so I can see both sides. I can see why the Ccfr used it. I can see why people think it's distasteful. Um, I don't think it distracts from any of this though, just like, I don't think like gun owners like this, gun owners love the drama. We just follow the drama. The Trudeau does the band. We love the drama.

[01:02:40] Then it's the organizations, the drama just distract from all that human nature. 6 21. The problem with it was in day one, it only impacted licensed gun. Gary Price makes a tweet saying they're banning a bunch of hunting guns. Again, the problem is fundamentally it only impacts licensed gun owners. No criminals are losing any of their guns.

[01:03:00] If you are a criminal without a gun license, you cannot be charged with the contravention of any of these laws. You just can't, you're not actually contravening these laws, so they can't charge you with it. All of this stuff is a distraction. Wow. And I think in, in that regard, like people are gonna make a lot of hay of the and, and I think from what the rumors are, we're gonna see it probably continue for the next little bit, that things are gonna continue to go poorly with this discount code and whatnot.

[01:03:29] Um, again, it doesn't really matter. Like we're supposed to be a country of serious people with a serious government spends a bunch of serious amounts of money on this stuff. Um, I'm a little bit personally, I'm actually like, again, Big. I'm not a hockey guy, so when I say I'm a big carry price fan, I'm a carry price fan for him standing up the way he has, I have tremendous amount of respect for the manner in which that man has stood up for mental health and gun rights in this country.

[01:03:56] Mm-hmm. . Um, for men, it's incredibly important. Um, but I'm also a bit insulted that this government produces a law that doesn't do anything good. Everyone says from police officers, chiefs, lawyers, gun advocates, industry members, even people that have had, you know, victims groups say, this won't work, government doesn't do anything.

[01:04:19] Anti-gun, criminal defense, lawyers, anti-gun groups say it's not gonna work. Government keeps going. They add a bunch of semi-automatic hunting guns to it. Everyone that's involved goes, this is banning a bunch of hunting guns. The government's response, you're lying, and NHL goal tenderer makes an Instagram post, and now the government takes it seriously.

[01:04:37] I find that, yeah. To use some extreme language, fucking insulting. Mm-hmm. because, , I count as much as he does, like mm-hmm. , I'm a citizen of Canada. I pay taxes just like he does. I own a business, just like I'm assuming Carrie Price probably owns a business at this point. Mm-hmm. , why is it that he makes an Instagram post and Justin shows suddenly has to reconsider his list.

[01:04:58] But when countless witnesses, countless police officers, countless lawyers and countless stakeholders stand up and say the exact same fucking thing to him. He doesn't say a goddamn word except, oh, that's misinformation. That's lying. Don't believe the hype. We're not banning hunting guns like that is fundamentally offensive.

[01:05:16] And again, the drama around this promo code, the drama on the organizations, it's just a distraction. We got a government that is literally governing by Instagram and it's freaking bullshit. Right? Like, gun owners should be pissed about that, not about this stuff. They should be pissed at the fact that an Instagram post is what made Trudeau take notice.

[01:05:35] Nicolas Johnson: That's the world. That's I totally agree. And unfortunately, that's the world we live in of, it's a, it's a. We live in a world of circus and superficial and appearances, 

[01:05:47] Travis Bader: right? So if we're gonna be governed by public perception, how do we comport ourselves or use that in order to be able to achieve an end that's gonna be beneficial for everybody?

[01:05:58] Nicolas Johnson: I think so. All just a pine here that the, the one thing is that I've done is I've written to my member of, um, federal parliament and my member of provincial parliament legislature to say, I oppose this. I urge you to vote against this or to, to, in the case of provincial, they're not gonna vote against it.

[01:06:17] But to say, you know, thank you for, for what you're doing in standing up for gun owners, or basically to communicate with them to say that, Hey, this issue matters to me and I vote based on it. Mm-hmm. . So letters, I think letters are, are polite and, and, you know, professional letters are useful. I think also for me, another silver lining here is that Bill C 21 is unenforceable.

[01:06:39] There is no enforcement mechanism to confiscate all these firearms. And that is a sign of hope. It's risky because any single person can be targeted and your house can be raided and they can, they'll find what they find. But the mass confiscation is absolutely, is just unenforceable. It's entirely reliant on the goodwill of individuals, and I think that a lot of individuals don't have that goodwill at this point.

[01:07:05] And so they will, if they will, defacto become outlaws, not because of what they've done or any kind of harmful intent, but simply because they've been standing on one side of the line, they've played the bargain, they got all their paperwork, they follow all the laws, and the government arbitrarily capriciously, perhaps even with malice, redrew the boundaries, repositioned the line and put us on the other side of it.

[01:07:29] So it's unenforceable and I 

[01:07:31] Dan Fritter: take hope from that. Your earlier point though, of this legislation being incredibly harmful from the perspective of. It's ability to disillusion people. Mm-hmm. And the, the division that it causes and whatnot. Cuz I think the fracturing that all this is causing amongst society, the vitriolic, this didn't exist like for, for any new gun owners.

[01:07:51] Cause I, I forget that like, I am, I'm 37, I'm not that old. I've been in guns for 12 or 14 years I guess now. Um, long enough that I remember the old Long Gun registry fight and back then there was not this sacrimonious attitude. If you were a gun owner, it would be maybe, maybe one in 10 Canadians would be like really anti-gun.

[01:08:12] You know, like most of 'em were kind of just like, yeah, okay. Like if that's, I'm not really into it, but Cool. You know, that was the majority of people. Mm. Cause we kind of accepted that we didn't have the US' gun problem. That was the, that was Canada. If you think about growing up under crutch and then under Harper, most people would think, oh yeah, we used to think of ourselves as a country that didn't have America's gun problem.

[01:08:33] And now Canadians do think we have that problem, but. The number hasn't changed. Right? The homicide rate has remained largely the same. So it becomes more when you say like, how do we combat this? It's, is it, is it a case of public perception? Do we need to get more people to carry price on side to support us?

[01:08:49] I don't know, because we haven't really changed, like the perception has shifted for no reason. Mm-hmm. , and unfortunately I think gun owners kind of have to accept that. Like when I say no reason, we all know the reason the government has shifted the perspective by continuing to make guns sound more dangerous at every juncture.

[01:09:08] And I think you gotta be realistic as a gun owner go, how do you fight the government? How can we possibly beat the government at pr? Well, that's pretty tough. So you have to look at other alternatives. And I think that's the realistic option that is confronting gun owners now is it's not a case of we need to make guns acceptable in Canadian society because that's never gonna happen.

[01:09:32] Let's just get that right out the window. Let's, why do I say that? Well, let's look at the most gun accepting country in the world. America. Are guns controversial in America? Yes. Okay, so in the most gun contented world like country, with the most guns, it's still controversial. It doesn't seem likely that we're going to move from a gun that, or a country that generally is mediocre to disliking guns, to a country that loves guns, that seems unlikely.

[01:10:00] We're much better off just using our political leverage. The dairy farmers of Canada have been proudly propping up supply management for decades through nothing other than political will. They don't go out there and try and make people feel great about milk. That's actually the dairy Farmers of America with their milk campaign.

[01:10:16] They just quietly go about and do the political work they have to do. And I, and some people may hear this and go, well, that sounds like nefarious gun lobby backroom stuff. No. What I mean by that is just be freaking honest. Yeah, just stand up and go. Yeah. We're serious about public safety. Absolutely. This is what we want.

[01:10:31] We are the experts on public safety with guns cuz we own them all. We're the ones that keep them. We know the licensing regime because we have them. Nobody wants to 

[01:10:41] Nicolas Johnson: keep you lean on all those things. Families, nobody wants to keep our, our husbands wives, kids safer than 

[01:10:45] Dan Fritter: we do. And, and to be honest, if you take it back to, to gain, cuz people like to use analogies.

[01:10:53] This whole convince the entire public is, is kind of the equivalent of like trying to run like a student union election when you're trying to convince the, the principle of something. Mm-hmm. like two separate entities here. Mm-hmm. , like we can convince the public the guns are great. Yeah, sure. Or we could convince 338 people to not fuck with them.

[01:11:12] Mm-hmm. , that's it. There's 338 people on one side and 36 million on the other. Which one would you rather convince? Like it is literally less of 338. People like to be very clear, the gun community needs to convince 338 people in Ottawa. That the licenses they hold and the gun system we have works 338 people.

[01:11:35] There's 2.3 million of us. There's 3 38 of them. We used to work on that math and it used to work. Now we've got this whole, well, let's convince the public first and let it trickle down where we tell the public and then slowly over time, carry price hears about it and carry price makes Instagram post.

[01:11:51] And Carrie Price makes it and Trudeau sees it and then he changes the law. We were better off just talking to Trudeau when he used to get 6,000 emails and letters in one day go, oh Jesus Christ. No, nevermind. I'm backing off. That was better. 

[01:12:05] Travis Bader: So if we're governed by public opinion, how do we, how do we make this something that those who are unaffected, who don't own firearms or have no interest in firearms, how do we bring this on the table so that they actually have a stake in their interested in conveying their concerns to government?

[01:12:27] Dan Fritter: I don't think this should be to be clear. If you don't have a stake in firearms and you don't have the knowledge and you haven't taken it upon yourself to go and learn the existing infrastructure of laws and regimes, storage rules, regulations, I don't really give a shit what you're feeling on guns is cuz it's a feeling.

[01:12:44] It's not knowledge, it's a feeling like I'm scared of small spaces. There's nothing wrong with them, I'm just scared of them. It's a feeling. 

[01:12:52] Nicolas Johnson: I think we can, um, educate, and I don't mean pre-chat, I'm guilty of preaching that, but educate, uh, share information with our, uh, family and friends and colleagues about, and we don't even have to mention the word guns.

[01:13:05] Oh. And I don't know how this would come up, uh, but there are people in my own garage. I'm thinking of the person I live with. Really care about guns or know much about them. But she understands that a lot of everything Daniel just said, she would agree with that. It's, it's, um, not about the 338 individuals, but about the wrong headedness.

[01:13:25] The nefarious, the sneakiness of what is happening legislatively. Now, maybe this is a little very, again, back to this small self-selecting sample. Most people don't give a hoot about legislative policy or regulatory affairs. That's just not their thing. So to your question, how do you reach people? How does a non-gun person or someone who doesn't have, um, for whom guns don't really matter in their day to day life, how do we reach those people?

[01:13:52] I don't know, other than the old faithful, take them to the range and put a smile on their. . 

[01:13:57] Travis Bader: What, what about from the perspective of like Canadian Taxpayers Federation talking about the price involved and people say, well, I don't care about guns, but geez, that's a lot of money we could put elsewhere or, yes.

[01:14:08] Uh, people saying they're confiscating property doesn't, doesn't matter. It's not mine. But if there's a, uh, analogy that could be made that say, well, maybe your property could be confiscated like in real estate or without compensation. Without compensation. I mean, may, maybe talking about the firearm issue is ancillary, although of high importance of those who are affected, who own firearms.

[01:14:32] But maybe the bigger conversation is for the populace to be writing their letters in is something that's going to be how this is being enact. 

[01:14:40] Nicolas Johnson: Well, the, the example, one example, maybe it was one of you guys who, who mentioned it, so credit where credits due. But people have used the example of cars or, uh, cars.

[01:14:48] You know, let's say the government says we're banning, uh, we're, we're confiscating, um, fossil fuel engines. Cars with fossil fuel engines we're, um, date acts, let's say 2035. We're confiscating them all and we're not gonna compensate you. Is is that on the dock? I don't think so. Is it, is it imaginable? Well, it's not crazy.

[01:15:07] Or any object. Any object that the government decides we don't like these, we're confiscating them and we're gonna do it in a sneaky, devious way. Running a disinformation campaign saying that people who own these objects are evil people and past laws sneaking amendments at the last minute. It's, it's not, um, it's not hard to imagine this happening for other objects.

[01:15:31] Maybe that's a way to go. I don't know. 

[01:15:35] Dan Fritter: It's tough though, cuz you always think on the opposite side. Like if you do the old red team thought experiment thing, that there's gonna be like when you do that, you think, let's try and do the public sentiment thing. Let's try and get people frustrated with the process that this is an amendment instead of like the OIC thing.

[01:15:53] I tried that so hard to try and impress on people. This was not a democratic solution. It was effectively an executive order. No one cared. Um, it went exactly nowhere, unfortunately. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Which might color my response here, but um, with, I think also to, from a political analyst perspective, true to, has ushered in a new era in much the same way as the Fords.

[01:16:19] Um, with the Ford government in Toronto and Ontario, they've run incredibly effective grassroots social media campaigns that have been marked with incredibly low costs. If anyone follows politics, like they spend very little and they have incredibly large reach on social media and it's very popular and effectively is in some ways very similar to the Trudeau campaign.

[01:16:38] And that's why I say it's a new era because he's entered this era of efficient politics that is only attainable by social media because you have to have the ability to pull very tight geographic areas on very specific issues to get data that allows you to extrapolate this stuff out. And I worry that if gun owners try and do this political.

[01:17:00] I'm like, try and change everyone's mind thing first. That effectively will kind of be in a game of whackable against the opposition. And as much as we're constantly trying to whack the anti-gun mos down, be like, Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. There's gonna be a strategist out there constantly finding new populations of people in writings that we're gonna have to go and find.

[01:17:22] So until you kind of get like, you're kind of gonna need to get a, a decent, like, you know, a 20% message incursion into every given writing for that to be effective. And that's where these strategies start to fall down. I think this is where this gets into the larger discussion of gun owner politics in Canada where it's incredibly frustrating cuz 2.3 million people with gun licenses in Canada constitute one of absolutely one of the largest identifiable vote blocks in the country.

[01:17:53] Like if you can say there's a single thing that ties everyone together, that and Ford pickup truck ownership are kind of the two big ones, right? Like those are the big ones. But unfortunately because our country's so big, 2.3 million people spread out across 338 ridings does not equate to enough votes to sway most electoral outcomes.

[01:18:16] And especially, especially in this era of new efficient politics. Where I think unfortunately, unless there's a way, unless someone can come up with a PR campaign in the next three years is going to convert urban Toronto and GV RD voters to pro gun, like straight up more than 50% pro gun, um, I think that's effectively a waste of money to invest in, to be quite honest.

[01:18:40] Kinda like, cuz again, this. To add some context. Social media plays into all this stuff in a dramatic way, but social media is also incredibly censored for guns like all of us. Nick, you, Travis, we've all talked about Sure. That you try and put stuff on Facebook or Instagram and it's incredibly restricted by being gun content.

[01:18:59] Travis Bader: Yeah. Even if you're not gun content that you're putting up, but you're a gun business. I just got notice back from TikTok the other day. I said, sorry, you're not gonna be shown to the same audience. And I'm looking through what I have. There's, there's one video of me walking with a rifle over and one of a scope and not talking about guns, not promoting guns.

[01:19:20] The one that was looking at being promoters on survival equipment. They said, Nope, sorry. And I think that. 

[01:19:27] Dan Fritter: And that's like I get, I get, I used to run Father, my biggest one was Father's Day sales. I'd run Father's Day sales from magazine subscriptions, used to make a good amount of money off the Facebook ads.

[01:19:36] Now I can't even get the ad approved and we don't sell guns I guess, you know, but we promote the sale of firearms and ammunition apparently, so we're banned. When you consider like again, pulling back in five or 10 years time, where do we want to be? Well, we're probably not gonna be allowed on social media straight up the way things are going.

[01:19:53] It's very unlikely that based on its current ownership change, Twitter may be an exception, but Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, there will probably be no gun content allowed, right? I mean there used to be a gun emoji. If you doubt that there was a straight up gun emoji, it's now a squirt gun, right? So we are getting kicked out of the social media circus where politics will be more and more important again, leading against the end conclusion that gun owners really need to invest in the politics side of things cuz we unfortunately have to confront the stacked deck.

[01:20:20] That winning the public debate is to be quite blunt, I think impossible. Uh, if the gun ownership, if, if gun ownership in Canada is going to become widely acceptable, it's going to do so organically. And I say that by way of like it's going to be, uh, to be quite honest in a circumstance that probably none of us want.

[01:20:41] Hmm. Through circumstances like a war breaking out or some sort of unrest where people feel so insecure that they feel that their only way of being secure is having a gun of their own. And some people may think that's a great thing. I personally don't. I think it'd be a bad situation. Yeah. Mm-hmm. . Um, but I don't think Canada, with our 2.3 million licensed gun owners and all the money that we donate to any organization is going to be able to sway the court of public opinion to 50% in favor of guns.

[01:21:09] Mm-hmm. . So if you view that as the outcome, then you have to go What are alternatives? Well, the alternatives are to work directly on the political actions, work directly with politicians, work directly with parties, and I don't. Again, it's not partisan, cuz this shouldn't be a partisan issue. We should be availing ourselves to every party to say, Hey, I'm here to provide you with the expert knowledge you need to know about gun stuff so that you can pass good policy and keep people safer.

[01:21:34] Mm-hmm. . And so it's really, it's, it's almost naively altruistic to say so, but I, I just don't see, I think we have to be realistic about our, our, you know, the first thing, whenever you have a plan, have a goal. What is our goal with this public? What is our goal with the, like, if someone can tell me what the goal is, like maybe you can, what's the goal?

[01:21:53] If we're trying to reach out to the, how, what is the goal of this public? Can we convince 50%? What's the percentage we're reach. I think, how many 

[01:22:01] Travis Bader: do we need to reach? How do you change a conversation? How do you find a public trend? That's something that you can jump on that is trending if we're gonna use the social media.

[01:22:11] Um, 

[01:22:13] Dan Fritter: but if you jump on a trend, how, how resilient does that change? Like this carry price thing, for example, right? Like a lot of people might be shifting their views, maybe some people have shifted their views going, oh, he's, he's my idol. And he says It's i'll changed my view. If that's all it took, it's not a very entrenched view.

[01:22:27] You'll probably shift back. 

[01:22:29] Travis Bader: I, I guess it's depends on what the trend is. I mean, like the, the trend of when we talk about hunting or, uh, selfsufficiency through C people wanted to protection. They wanted to be self sufficient. Uh, I, I think framing the conversation a little bit differently and having firearms just happen to be a part of it as opposed to from my cold dead.

[01:22:50] Hands and having the gun front and center might be the way, cuz you're right Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram and Google, which owns YouTube and they're, they're not allowing gun content in the way they have in the past. But there are, there is other content that they will want to see on there because it's trending and because that's how they make their money is through the views.

[01:23:12] Uh, maybe there's a way to just have the conversation change a little bit. Not that we want to, but just from a realistic standpoint, like you say. 

[01:23:22] Dan Fritter: Oh, I think it could. And I think that's one of those, it has to be reactive, like you said. It's gotta be, you gotta see the trends and respond to 'em, kind of grab 'em when you can.

[01:23:30] Um, and I think react to, to trends that are occurring in the real world and reflect them back. Um, I think that's kind of like maybe a bit antithetical to my personal nature. I tend to be a bit more like, I just kind of wanna plan and, and just get on those tracks and roll down 'em rather than kind of react.

[01:23:47] And, and that's probably where I do view a bit of the like, There are a lot of things that I think public sentiment is counter to what our politicians do, that our politicians just don't let get raised to the issue of any kind of debate because mm-hmm. , it's been settled. I mean, supply management is one.

[01:24:06] Most Canadians don't like supply management. It raises prices, you name it. But it's just a non-starter for the ndp, the liberals, and the conservatives because those people that are involved in SP punishment have effectively communicated their interest to politicians. And now the politicians have those interests in their best heart too.

[01:24:24] So, you know, we, we see a road there and it's kind of, I guess I also must say perhaps there's a bit of, um, unknown bias that I haven't recognized before this. But as a gun industry member, perhaps I simply draw more parallels with the dairy industry than. The ability to sway public opinion . Sure, sure.

[01:24:44] Nicolas Johnson: There's a couple aspects also that I think we haven't mentioned yet that I, that I think are worth mentioning, and one is that guns are, uh, unfortunately a terrible political. Um, thing like we don't align on gun ownership of those 2.3 million voters. There's, I suspect, as many who vote NDP as liberal, as conservative as other parties that I suspect the popularly the vote distribution is roughly equal to party votes.

[01:25:12] And there are lots of gun owners who voted for the liberals three times in a row and even after Trudo promised mass, confiscations voted for them because guns are not their number one voting interest. So one is a lot of gun owners actually vote liberal or for other prohibitionist. The second thing is in terms of convincing I, this is a, a complaint, uh, with a smile.

[01:25:36] Forget about convincing Joe Voter. We have gun owners who are in denial. And the, the gun clubs, just, just an example that was related to me in the spring, perhaps a few weeks before the May 30th announcement, uh, handgun Club near Toronto, the board is coming up for election or planning the year ahead, and they are in complete denial after the Prime Minister has said repeatedly, repeatedly for years, he wants to confiscate handguns.

[01:26:01] This handgun club was not doing anything different. Not stepping up. Its recruiting efforts, not budgeting differently. Hey, what if we get shut down, no change. Not talking about handguns, not promoting handgun ownership or handgun sports. Total denial. Total head in the sand. Total old school game of if we just keep quiet, they'll leave us alone.

[01:26:21] Dan Fritter: Doesn't work. And here's again, it's find that 

[01:26:24] Nicolas Johnson: terribly frustrating. 

[01:26:26] Dan Fritter: Mm-hmm. , real world examples of what Nick is talking about. You got two, let's say you're Joe Gun owner, you got two options. You belong to that Toronto Gun Club, right? You can. And again, I feel like I'm, I'm going to have to take it easy cuz I'm beginning to preach.

[01:26:41] But , 

[01:26:42] Nicolas Johnson: we've done really well. Preach. 

[01:26:45] Dan Fritter: You can try and convince the public and if you do so, you'll probably turn to social media cuz that's how most people broadcast right? These days. And you'll make your Facebook post and you may, if you're a popular person, get a couple hundred people interacting with you, right?

[01:27:00] Of those couple hundred, probably none of them will actually communicate if they have your concerns. None of them will communicate that to the legislator who's going to Ottawa, right? They'll all just give their happy faces and they'll say, this sucks, or That's too bad, or you suck. You name it. Um, if you went to your gun club with a hundred pieces of paper with letters pre-printed to the MP of that gun club and you just said, sign this, I'll mail it for you.

[01:27:29] You just sign it. That's it. I'll put the gun club's return address on it, so it's fine. You just sign it there. You're a constituent, you're good to go. Now the MP of that area has a hundred pieces of communication saying This law is bad. What's the actual, what is more likely to create the actual change we're looking for here?

[01:27:49] Because ultimately you can say that the end result of the social media campaign is that those people have commented may change their vote in the next election. Maybe it's pretty tenuous because we interact with social media a million times a day. So no remembers it. If you sign a letter, you remember it.

[01:28:05] So even if you've got a gun owner, like Nick said, that's maybe a little bit wishy-washy and he walks into that gun club going, well, we're just gonna approve the same budget cause nothing changed. Then you hold a letter up and they go, wow, like you actually took the time to print a hundred. This is a real thing.

[01:28:16] Oh yeah. Look at the law, you show them. Well now you've got a hundred votes and letter. Like that's where it comes into the, we gotta stop thinking about the public and stop thinking about social media and the media to be quite honest at large, and start thinking about are there letters on my gun club counter?

[01:28:34] Because if your gun club doesn't have three piles of letters for people to take sign and mail in with instructions printed right there saying you don't need postage, hell, they should have a bin right there where you just put the letter in, they mail it for you. Mm-hmm. . If your gun club and your gun stores don't have that, you shouldn't be posting anything about guns on social media.

[01:28:53] You should be taking letters to your gun club and you should be telling em by envelopes because in their best interests, like that's the real change here. Like that's, and and I'm starting to see it like, to be clear, like I'm sounding about ranty, but I'm starting to see it. I go on Reddit, I see the big stacks and like, to be very honest, I wanted a chance to say like, as someone's in the industry whose entire family, my livelihood is tied to this.

[01:29:12] Like it's a huge. Huge boost to see, to go on Reddit and see people with stacks of letters. Mm-hmm. being like, I'm gonna go bomb the mailbox, like 400 letters and it's mm-hmm , it's the senates, the mps, and all proud of it. Like it takes me right back to early long gun registry days, like when we were effective and it's awesome.

[01:29:32] And I think that's where people gotta like stop being distracted, you know? It's great. The carry price stands with us. That's great. Now go print a letter. Like that's what it comes down to in politics, they always talk about knock a door cuz door knocking is the basic, fundamental, grassroots political effort.

[01:29:49] So the running joke is, that's a great idea. Have you knocked a door? Gun owners be the same thing. It's a great idea. Have you sent a letter? It's free, it's a piece of freaking and paper. Your boss won't miss it if you print it off at work. They'll never know. Like, just print 'em off and get 'em in the mail.

[01:30:03] Like, it's that simple. You just, it's that easy, you know? Um, and that's where the change comes in. So I think that's, that's the big thing is really I. really impressing upon people that like, they can change things. They just gotta stop thinking about, you know, just talking to social media and Facebook posts and Twitter and all this and actually talk like, there are only three, again, there are 338 people who make these decisions.

[01:30:27] There are 2.3 million of us like this. Yeah. This shouldn't be difficult. This really shouldn't even be on the table if we were at all effective as a lobbying entity. When it's almost comical when these anti-gun groups talk about the strength of the pro gun lobby, cuz I mean, 2.3 billion. Yeah. It is comical.

[01:30:46] Yeah. What do, people are in the dairy industry, how 

[01:30:48] Nicolas Johnson: do you, how do you respond to the people who say, and I I think it's legitimate. I understand this, uh, this response. I, I'm not, no one's getting my guns. I don't wanna send a letter, I don't want to go on the record as flagging myself as being a concerned party or, you know, that I own anything.

[01:31:06] I just want, I'm just gonna go dark. I'm just gonna quietly not comply. What do you, uh, what's a good response to to, to tell those people 

[01:31:15] Dan Fritter: that you can quietly, non comply and voice your concern mutually. Like, they're not mutually exclusive whatsoever. There's no legal, like if you sign a letter, if you write a letter to the Prime Minister saying, I don't agree with this law, there's no legal thing saying that you're in contravention of it whatsoever.

[01:31:34] Like, and, and moreover, like, I'd almost kind of say like, that's a really weird moralistic perspective to take. Like, it's a very, like Anne Frank isn't my daughter kind of perspective to take like, like it's 

[01:31:47] Nicolas Johnson: very like, but, but I understand it because if they, if you don't trust the government, if you think that this government, if these, if this 300 they 30, they're 

[01:31:56] Dan Fritter: making social media post saying, I'm not sending a letter.

[01:31:58] They. 

[01:32:00] Nicolas Johnson: Absolutely. But so that, that's why they say we're staying off. So I guess, I guess I can understand it, people who say that if you don't trust these politicians and you believe that they are some version of nefarious, malicious, evil, bad, uh, disingenuous, dishonest, they're, they're up to no good. You're just gonna, quietly, you have a bunch of non-restricted guns that are now to be confiscated.

[01:32:21] You're just gonna quietly do your thing and, and not make, not essentially go dark, not send a letter, not go on social media and advertise the fact that you oppose this. I, I, I understand it and I wish I had a, a response. And I agree with you. You can still send a letter. If we live in a country where you cannot, where you're too scared to send a letter to your politician, then we are in deep trouble.

[01:32:43] I don't think we're there yet. I hope we never get there. Um, but I just also know that when I say that to people, they're not convinced. They, yeah. 

[01:32:51] Dan Fritter: And I guess that's where you get into the, like, you can't convince everyone, right? I mean, and I think. And I, Travis and I have talked about this before in, in the past podcast of, of like social media, is the tempest in a teapot, like I keep saying it's 2.3 million licensed gun owners out there.

[01:33:05] There's 5 million gun owners in Canada, and I'll say non-criminal gun owners is in like, they've never committed an actual crime in contravention the criminal code as in like violence or injuring someone, but they're in possession of a firearm illegally because they got it back in the FAC days. And I say it's 50% because the registry only captured 50%.

[01:33:22] So if you go with, well, let's go with even 4.5 million gun owners out there that aren't committing crimes. You know, it's just kinda like, I don't know, like we know that statistically speaking, they're older. . Yep. We know that the majority of 'em are over 45. We know the majority of people on social media are under 35.

[01:33:40] We know the people over 55 spend like five, two, and 5% of all social media traffic is people over 55. So the vast majority of our gun owners that we're relying on to said letters and be that grassroots are not on social media. So when, when that one guy goes, well, I'm not gonna send a letter, my response is like, I don't care.

[01:33:58] I got a hundred of 'em down at the gun shop. Right? I guarantee you they'll be gone. So one guy, like, and, and again, this is kind of the thing where gun owners have to get a bit more, I don't know, I don't know if it's like a business perspective or a capital's perspective of think about where you're expending your effort and your assets and your resources and do it efficiently.

[01:34:17] If some guy is, if you're spending four hours of your day arguing, or God knows, two years of your life, arguing with people on Twitter, like various well known anti-gun Twitter names, just block them. It's a waste of your time. Like literally. Go whittle a canoe. It's a better use of, don't do nothing about guns, be a better child to your, or father, your children.

[01:34:39] Do anything other than argue with people on 

[01:34:41] Nicolas Johnson: social media. The good news there, I think for I on Twitter, I'm not on Facebook or Instagram, but, but I think the good news there is that there's very, like the Twitter is is, I'm gonna say it's insignificant in terms of the gun debate. It's, it's, it's, uh, when I look at the retweets, likes follows, it's insignificant.

[01:34:58] Dan Fritter: Yeah. The numbers are just, the numbers are insignificant. Yeah. It's, it's a very lively discussion. I think that's, , it gets confused for the actual discussion cuz there's a few people that really, you know, it's a small community. People like talking about it. I like it. But it's definitely, I'm, 

[01:35:12] Nicolas Johnson: I'm there too.

[01:35:13] But in terms of, I guess it, it's insignificant I guess in terms of reach. We're very smart people who are on Twitter posting very infor important messages. But we're, we're not reaching things and that's where the Carrie Price thing comes in. Why was Carrie Price so remarkable? Because instead of reaching five or 50 or 500 people he reached, I don't know what the numbers are now, but, but thousands or tens of thousands.

[01:35:34] So it's, and the media pick on it, is it millions 

[01:35:36] Dan Fritter: on his, oh, I think his Instagram post, I think he's got millions of followers on Instagram. He's a popular guy. 

[01:35:41] Nicolas Johnson: Okay. So he, he, he reached, he reached a lot of people. That's why it's, that's why it's quite significant. But I can, I can, I guarantee you that nobody in my own garage has ever heard of Carrie.

[01:35:51] Dan Fritter: Well, my best friend would absolutely kill for his autograph. So Care, if you're listening, by all means, you can sign a coffee of the menu. . I had never heard of him 

[01:35:59] Nicolas Johnson: before two days ago. 

[01:36:01] Dan Fritter: Um, well, he got flack for those that, again, those that don't remember, he got flack years ago for, uh, a picture he posted on Instagram flying, tying a fly with his daughter, uh, with Anfa flag in the background.

[01:36:13] This would be four or five years ago. Might longer, it was maybe even the Sean Bevins days of the nfa. But yeah, it was, he, he was quite outspoken then. He took flack for it then, and he stuck. He stood by it. That's why I think this is an honest to God. He, he he does believe this. Yeah. 

[01:36:29] Nicolas Johnson: Yeah. And I think, I mean, I, and to, to correct what I just said, I, I have heard his name before, but I'm not, uh, I'm not a hockey guy, so I don't, uh, he's maybe the only hockey player that I could name now, 

[01:36:40] Dan Fritter: Sid.

[01:36:41] I've heard of him too. 

[01:36:42] Nicolas Johnson: Yeah. Now you got two, you 

[01:36:43] Dan Fritter: go two now you got two. So, and if you're from Vancouver, everyone knows Pav and, 

[01:36:47] Nicolas Johnson: and Wayne Gretzky. And, I mean, you know, I've, I've heard of Wayne Gretzky. So, so 

[01:36:51] Dan Fritter: let's just name hockey players for the rest of the podcast. . There'll be a lot. 

[01:36:56] Travis Bader: So we've gone through a number of different things.

[01:36:58] Um, we've put the question out through social media. A number of the questions that have been asked have been answered throughout this podcast. There is one here from Brock Fisher. He says, what will be involved in amending this bill or dissolving it if conservatives get in? So what, let's say they get in politically, everyone's on the side of getting rid of it.

[01:37:23] What would that look like? Probably not something that happens overnight. 

[01:37:27] Nicolas Johnson: Not overnight, but they would need a major. The conservatives would need a majority. And I would say that's, that's perhaps a hope that pr pev, I've, I think there's an incredible political movement around him. I'm gonna mark that.

[01:37:39] Okay. So coming back to that one would need a majority to be able to undo legislation and, and, and certainly not a, not a short term thing, but also I'm not, I'm not, um, I don't have much hope in the political process because whether this thing goes through or not, the liberals have shown their hands, and, and Daniel has said, uh, publicly, on, on, in an interview with me a few months ago, we're, we're some number of election cycles away from mass confiscations and perhaps an irrevocable end to mainstream firearm ownership in this country.

[01:38:12] Uh, that was at the time. Maybe things have changed dramatically now, but I think we know where this thing is headed without a major cultural, political, social change. We know where this gay ends and it's not good for us. 

[01:38:27] Dan Fritter: Now, I said there was a bookmark. And I agree with everything Nick's saying. So not, not disputing cuz again, we all get along famously

[01:38:34] Um, we actually do, that's not actually, that sounded like sarcasm and we actually do get along really well. You 

[01:38:39] Nicolas Johnson: said it man. You said I'm stealing your words. 

[01:38:42] Dan Fritter: We get along great and agree on pretty much everything. Yeah. Um, what I think is really interesting though is to game out. Cause I agree it needs a majority, like conventional thinking Absolutely needs a majority to, to rescind.

[01:38:55] Um, it'll take a full legislative act. This is one of the interesting things is, um, some of the previous stuff, littles did C 71, you name it, rescinded cuz people have forgotten, took away the ability for the governor in council to declare a firearm non-restricted. So we're can o I see things. So it's a one way trip.

[01:39:12] So effectively the liberals have almost forced pr poly's hands into a full firearms act rewrite because if he comes into office buoyed by a bunch of people going, well this act is bad and we want this rescinded. The only way to really give us back these guns, the, to be quite honest, the easiest way to give us back these guns at this point, because the law has been so, it's like a broken down car that people have fixed on the road and rolls into the service station with 14 different brands of parts on it.

[01:39:42] And the mechanic goes, this is gonna take a significant work. You should just buy a new car. Um, that's what Poly's walking into at the Firearms Act is this Jap of a broken down junker. And his easiest solution is to blow it all up and go, no, we're just gonna start from scratch and we're gonna get definitions.

[01:39:56] We're gonna throw this variant crap out. We're getting rid of this F frt, we're starting from scratch. Um, so I think it's interesting liberals of force hand's more interesting to me and again, why I've been so on gun owners to get involved in the party politics side. If you have any inclination to join the ndp, do so because we're probably looking at a spring election, that's the common rumor.

[01:40:22] Spring 2023. And what I'm about to say holds true regardless of when the election occurs. But for the reason of the conversation's, the easiest to have a time. Let's say an election happens in March of 2023. We don't know the outcome of that. Election. Polls will have all kinds of things, whatever. What we do know after that election is it is very unlikely that the next liberal and NDP mandates end with the same leader that they currently have is very unlikely that no matter if the NDP or the liberals, if the NDP won even, I mean, if they won Jag Med, probably stay, but that'd be the only way.

[01:40:55] Even if the liberals win, it's highly likely the Trudeau will probably step down. He's kind of intimated. This is the last one he runs in. You name it. Much like when Harper left the conservative. Trudeau will leave the liberals effectively rudderless when he steps down because it's not the liberal party that we all have known through our childhood.

[01:41:15] It is the Trudeau party at this point. It is much like the conservative party was the Harper party. It took on the personality leader. There's gonna be a massive change when a new leader steps in and that massive change brings with it massive opportunity. And I think both within the liberal party and the NDP gun owners would be very well to both communicate with if they have a liberal and NDP MP to communicate with them that no matter what happens in the next election, they're going to be facing an internal party election.

[01:41:43] And where they come down on this issue may be very important. Because if you are a member, again, I know I'm kind of spiraling here a bit, but the NDP does not have a large. So as gun owners, if you were to join the ndp, you could have a massively outsized impact on NDP policy. Like literally 10,000 gun owners could dictate NDP policy to the NDP because they're very small.

[01:42:07] Just like a hundred gun owners could dictate policy to a municipal election. It's very, everything changes. Mm-hmm. gun owners gotta think about this. Think not about the election's. Very important. We should all work very hard to make sure we get a majority, but also keep in mind that there is a goal beyond this election, and the goal beyond the selection is to take guns out of the political hands.

[01:42:26] And the only way to do that start interacting. And as the leaders of Jag Meat and Trudeau step down, these parties are going to be doing some serious internal reflection. And I think when you say a majority, I think there is an opportunity here to get the NDP at least back to a gun agnostic, or perhaps even pro gun side, because they are the party of blue collar union workers.

[01:42:48] This policy wastes a ton of money that would be better spent on numerous. Social supports that the NDP would otherwise support. I mean a billion dollars towards this gun ban goes a long way towards expanding that dental program. Yeah, these are very real points that people can be making and I think if gun owners think about, okay, the election is the next big thing, but there's going to be party elections after and start thinking about the role that cuz this election and the roll guns play in it will have a way bigger impact on how the parties shape up for the next four years than it probably actually will on the election.

[01:43:23] And what I mean by that, it'll have a larger impact on whether or not the NDP and the block K back are, the liberals are anti-gun program, the degree to which their anti-gun or program. Cuz we might see a liberal party come out this next election that is not the Trudeau urban centric, efficient Toronto.

[01:43:40] And they, they go, yeah, you know, we're, we're not really, we got creamed on, we're stepping back from. You know, we, we don't think, we don't have a lot of gun homicides. The liberals could entirely, it's within the realm of possibility. Dare I say, it's more realistic than changing 50% of Canadian's minds.

[01:43:54] Mm-hmm. , 

[01:43:56] Nicolas Johnson: it would be nice. 

[01:43:57] Dan Fritter: And we are going to be confronting the opportunity for that within the next year, realistically. And that's what I think we need to start working around now, is the election's one thing, but that, that's the larger issue, is to start recognizing that. 

[01:44:11] Travis Bader: Nicholas, you have anything to 

[01:44:13] Nicolas Johnson: add?

[01:44:14] Uh, that message gives me hope, actually. The, it makes, it, it's, I agree. It's, it's plausible, it's possible. It's, I don't know if it's probable, but it gives me hope that, uh, change is possible.

[01:44:30] Travis Bader: If we don't have anything else to add, we've been at this for a little bit of time, I'm sure there'll probably be more questions that come down the pipe after this podcast and we can probably address 'em through social media or perhaps through, uh, future podcasts like this. If we don't have anything else to add, perhaps we, uh, wrap it up here.

[01:44:48] What do you say to 

[01:44:51] Nicolas Johnson: Travis? Thank you very much for, for organizing this, for what you do and for having me on as your guest. 

[01:44:56] Dan Fritter: I would agree with Nick as always. With everything he says, I am in agreement. Uh, cause he got a lot 

[01:45:03] Nicolas Johnson: cause we get along. It's been 

[01:45:04] Dan Fritter: a great, it's been a great podcast. I've really enjoyed, um, always great with you Travis and it's fun to have, uh, Nick as well cuz I like talking with both of you guys.

[01:45:12] So having both you on one is, it's like a, it's like a threesome that I've always dreamed of. . 

[01:45:19] Travis Bader: Well, I don't know if I'd 

[01:45:20] Dan Fritter: phrase it quiet like that. One 

[01:45:23] Nicolas Johnson: note, 

[01:45:24] Travis Bader: I, I do always enjoy speaking with you, your perspectives. Both of you are fantastic. I, and. Nicholas, I mirror your sentiments on what Dan said there. It leaves me with some optimism and there is some direction that we can go.

[01:45:38] Thank you very much.