Let’s Make It Happen – New Directions for Firearms Policy
For over a decade, Danielle Smith has worked tirelessly as an advocate promoting everyone’s fundamental right to own and enjoy property, including legally acquired firearms. She believes no Albertan’s private property should be expropriated or devalued by government action, at any level, without demonstrable public benefit, a fair process, and fair and prompt compensation. Danielle also believes that everyone’s Charter right to life, liberty and security of the person includes our right to protect ourselves, our families, our homes, and our property as expressly affirmed in sections 34 to 41 of the Criminal Code of Canada.
As for the useless gun registry, Danielle had this to say in a Calgary Herald column in 2006: “The government has it backwards. We should not have a registry of individuals who are allowed to own guns; we should have a registry of those who are too dangerous to own guns”. She also believes that the federal Firearms Act (Bill C-68) should be replaced with a gun control regime that works, one that respects the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces, one that has the support of front-line police officers, and one which respects the rights of responsible firearm owners. Real gun control should target those who commit armed crime, not Alberta’s law-abiding hunters and sport shooters.
As leader of the Wildrose Alliance, Danielle would be a strong champion for every law-abiding person’s right to own and enjoy legally-acquired firearms, and for the heritage activities of hunting, sport shooting and collecting. To achieve this objective, Danielle would:
• Appoint an owner-friendly Chief Firearms Officer (CFO) who answers to us – not to Ottawa. The PC government chose to leave law-abiding gun owners at the mercy of the RCMP and federal government appointees. A Wildrose Alliance government under Danielle Smith would exercise this provincial right.
• Re-assert exclusive provincial jurisdiction for regulating the non-criminal use of firearms, as described in the Constitution. The PC government bungled this in 2000 by only challenging the constitutionality of the long-gun registry and not the handgun registry. A Wildrose Alliance government led by Danielle Smith would revisit the constitutional question on behalf of gun owners and all Albertans.
• Aggressively prosecute the illegal use of firearms by real criminals, while instructing a provincially-appointed CFO to use common sense and the considerable discretionary powers afforded by the Firearms Act to mitigate the RCMP’s enforcement of made-in-Ottawa paper crimes of licensing and registration.
• Entrench property rights protection in law that would provide the right to a fair hearing, the right to appeal confiscation orders and the right to fair and timely compensation when legally-owned firearms are confiscated from law-abiding gun owners due to an arbitrary change in federal regulations (i.e. changing semi-automatic hunting and sporting firearms to a prohibited category).
Further background:
Gary Mauser, Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby BC
http://www.garymauser.net/papers.html
National Firearms Association
http://www.nfa.ca/
Canadian Shooting Sports Association
http://www.cdnshootingsports.org/
MP Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton-Melville) Saskatchewan
http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/issues/guncontrol.htm
