A Quiet Friday Evening in the Country!
 
    I am feeling a bit down today and not very kindly toward Kim
Campbell, Alan Rock, Jean Chretien and all other well-meaning but naive
souls who are in support of the useless, senselessly severe gun laws
and police state tactics that are being rammed down the throats of
responsible citizens who have never committed a crime in their lives
and never will unless pushed a little too far by the prejudicial,
discriminatory democratic? process in this great free?? land of ours.
(How's that for an opening mouthful?)
 
    Last Friday afternoon (February 10/95) about two minutes after my
daughter, Audra (age 17) arrived home from school (around 4:50 PM) an
RCMP officer showed up at our place with a search warrant, displayed
his badge and told Audra he was there to search (if necessary) and
seize my Franchi shotgun (which they claim became a prohibited weapon
effective Jan 1/95 by Order In Council #11 enacted on Nov 29, 1994).
 
    We had been half expecting them to come for over a month, but of
course didn't know when or if it would really happen.  Audra
immediately phoned me at work and I told her to open the vault and give
the officer the receiver (frame) of the gun which is all I am required
by law to surrender. The officer was not happy with just the receiver
and was even less pleased when Audra on my instructions over the phone
told him that was the only part of the gun he was entitled to have by
law and to please take it and leave. He told Audra that he was entitled
to search for and seize all parts belonging to that gun (even though no
part except the receiver is either marked with any identification
number, or restricted or registered in any police record.)  (The legal
definition of a firearm is the lower receiver which has the serial
number stamped on it.)
 
     The officer then proceeded to tell Audra that his search warrant
gave him complete control of all our property, house, barn, vehicles
and everything else; that he had the power and authority to put Audra
out of the house and off the property (in about -10 deg.C
temperatures), bring in a search team and tear the house and anything
else that they pleased, to pieces until they found the other parts to
the gun which they suspected were still there on the property.  At that
point, the officer took the phone from Audra, and asked me if I was
going to give him the other parts to the gun; I told him that he
already had all he was entitled to by law, and to please get off my
property. He then said he was proceeding to call in his backup team to
take the house apart and he hung up the phone.
 
     I phoned my lawyer, explained what was happening and specifically
asked him if I was required by law to give up any part of the gun
except the receiver, his answer, "No, you are not, but it sounds like
the police officers honestly believe they have the right to search and
find the other parts".
 
     I said "Then you had better come and mediate this because I'm not
budging a hair beyond what the law requires except on your advice and I
have no intention of letting them tear my house apart either."  To make
a long story short, when my wife, Louise and I arrived home, there were
three RCMP vehicles there but they hadn't done any serious searching
except to order Audra to open up anything that looked like a gun
cabinet.
 
    My lawyer arrived, talked to the police, talked to their lawyer on
the phone for ten minutes, advised me that even though by law, I was
not required to give up the rest of the gun parts, that the police and
their lawyer believed it was their right to search for them and seize
them and tear down our house as required to accomplish that. So he
recommended that I give them the parts to avoid further immediate
damages on either side.
 
    Since I had previously decided to follow the lawyer's advice if he
came to mediate, I stalled a bit longer; then went outside and came
back in a few minutes with the parts.  The officers were relieved.
(With a large unfinished house full of all kinds of construction
"junk", a barn full of hay and 300 acres of land under 2' of snow to
search through, plus the fact they didn't really know what they were
looking for and had no way of positively identifying it if they did
find it, they could have torn the house to the ground with very little
chance of ever finding what they were looking for, and they knew it.)
 
    The real important questions in my mind are:  How much of our stuff
would they have rooted around through believing that it was their job?
And, in a so-called free country why should any group of people,
majority or otherwise, have the right to enact laws that allow the
police to go to the home of someone who never has, and never will
commit any crime (unless provoked beyond all reason), lean heavily on a
17 year old daughter who is an extremely responsible kid and a top
notch student, and threaten to tear the house apart to steal legally
acquired and responsibly owned and used private property.
 
   Why didn't I just hand over the complete gun up front and avoid the
hastle ?  Because I'm fed up, I'm stubborn, I'm not a criminal and I
refuse to be treated like one, I don't appreciate being robbed of a
valuable top quality collector's item which I enjoy, and more people
have to stand up and point out that what is currently happening with
gun laws here in Canada is wrong and will not make one bit of
difference in the crime rate except to cause it to increase.
 
   Taking away every last legally owned gun in Canada will make no
significant difference in the level of public safety.  Current laws
require all handguns in Canada to be registered.  Chretien says he will
greatly improve public safety by banning all handguns. However, there
is one slight unmentionned hitch in his safety plan - for every person
in Canada killed by a legally registered handgun, over 770 are killed
by motor vehicles.  Why then are we so intent on persecuting the honest
people who enjoy owning and target shooting with their handguns ? The
main reasons are ignorance, prejudice and discrimination against a
minority group of law abiding citizens.
 
   Anyway, my next step is either to forget the whole affair and accept
the fact that Canada has already become a police state and can seize
any piece of property it wants from any individual at any time; or, to
resist.  I have decided to resist along with a lot of others. We need
vocal support from all those who might be starting to think that maybe
the police should not have the right to force their way into an honest
person's house and traumatize a 17 year old girl for no other reason
than to steal private property.
 
   I am trying to see a positive side in all of this. The only one I
can think of so far is that Audra has personally experienced a small
sample of what invariably happens to innocent, responsible people when
any law, (enacted by majority approval or otherwise) is allowed to
override individual human rights for the sake of the intangible and
legally undefinable goal of "public safety".
 
   Audra is not a faint-hearted kid but she was extremely uncomfortable
with the "legal?" and intimidating police tactics she was subjected to
before Louise and I arrived home. After the police had left (they were
there for about two hours) Audra said that she has always felt many
times safer home alone with or without a gun than she did with the
police there telling her they had the right to put her outside in the
cold and tear the house down unless she gave them the rest of my gun
parts, when she had absolutely no idea where I had put them.
 
   I suppose another positive aspect is that it did create a little
unusual excitement for us on a February Friday evening in the country;
and Audra says that when we do go to court to challenge the legality of
OIC #11, and try to get our gun back, she definitely wants a chance to
testify!
 
PS - On Sunday one of our neighbours phoned Louise and said that she
     didn't want to be nosy but there was talk around the neighborhood
     that there had been three police vehicles at our place for quite a
     while last Friday evening. She wanted to know if we had had a
     burglarly and if everything was okay. Louise said "No it was not a
     burglarly, it was armed robbery and no everything is not okay! We
     lost a gun worth over $1000. It's the first robbery we have ever
     had at our place; but, by far the most alarming and serious thing
     that's wrong is that this time it's the police that are the
     robbers".
 
 
  Darrell McKnight
  RR#4 Carlisle Road,
  Fredericton, NB
  Canada, E3B4X5
 
  EMAIL: DMM@UNB.CA