On my 14th birthday, I bought my first gun, a beautiful lever action Marlin 30-30. I had to sell my skis and use most of my savings to get the $100 for the gun, a box of shells and still have enough left over for licence and tags. I still have that gun.
Guns and hunting have been part of my life for 50 years. Most every weekend during hunting season in my teenage years would find me out wandering the mountains near home, looking for a deer or mountain goat, mostly with my brother who was one year older. Even though we weren't technically old enough to hunt by ourselves, we did. We had been taught how to use guns and with our parents' permission, off we went.
I never got caught by the game warden, although I'm sure he knew we were out there, but it was never all that important to him. We had our licenses and tags and followed the rules, except for the one about having an adult with us.
Gun ownership was easy in those days. If you had the money, you could buy a gun, some shells, a licence and tags and off you went. Once we got pickups, we even got those gun racks for the window behind the seat, so the gun was always handy (most trucks only had one seat in those days). Most everyone had these, as that was the rural way. When not being used, guns were usually found leaning up against the wall in the closet, with bullets close by in case some marauding bear came by that needed an attitude adjustment.
Since those early years, I have gone through all the successive steps and complications of owning guns and hunting. The gun rack went with the truck when I sold it and I never did get another one. I took the gun safety courses so I could get my Firearms Acquisition Certificate, registered all my guns when the feds thought that would make Canada safer, and re-registered them when things changed. I guess that made Canada more safer again. I unregistered them when that program was scrapped.
I yelled and complained when the feds of the day proposed gun armouries and that would compel everyone to place their guns in government warehouses, and when you wanted to use them, you would have had to ask for permission to take them out. That kind of fell apart when it was pointed out that rural Canada would need thousands of these armouries, and aboriginal people who needed their guns for their right to hunt would be exempted, and trappers couldn't comply and, and, and... that boondoggle soon ended.
I re-applied for my gun licence a few times and now its my Firearms Possession Licence. I guess this makes Canada more safe again. I bought trigger locks and chains to make sure they were safely secured until one day I realized I had spent the whole day hunting and had never taken the trigger lock off and didn't have the key with me. I guess that made the critters pretty safe that day. I finally bought a gun safe and now everyone is safe, including me.
That is me and that is my story. I'm pretty sure most people who have grown up owning guns, hunting, or having them around the property to keep the two and four-legged varmints at bay have similar ones.
Gun safes, trigger locks, and securely stored ammo are good things, as one never knows when an inquisitive youngster is tempted to play with a gun. This part is good.
I don't really have an issue with the paperwork of having a licence to own or purchase guns, and even the registration didn't bother me all that much, though I always did wonder if it accomplished anything other than giving some unemployed east coast people something to do.
Although I never did own pistols, automatic rifles, or other "restricted" firearms, I agreed with having their permit and registration systems. If one really wanted to have them, you could, as long as you follow the rules.
Now, I wonder what's next?
The crazies are getting the headlines with the "let's shoot everyone in sight" mentality. What are our politicians going to do with us next? Are they going to look at the mess the good-old U.S. of A has got themselves into and mess with our system? Will they think we just might have a few Canadian crazies who wish to be like our crazy American cousins? I hope not.
We have plenty of regulations. It's already against the law to own certain types of firearms and accessories. We need licences and permits to own others. Police can confiscate them if you break the law. The courts can prohibit one from owning or purchasing them, and so on.
So what is left to do? Anything to fix?
Yes. Fix those who break the law.
Now, all you good socialists, you may want to stop reading here, as what I am about to say is archaic -- so archaic that it worked before Canada was Canada.
Public executions for crimes such has mass shootings, killing of law enforcement personnel, etc., might help. And when I mean public, I mean done in full view of the public, with the public doing the job.
Remember the movies that had stockades in the town square? Remember the people lining up to throw stones while the criminal sat with hands and feat bound? It may have taken a lot of squealing, but never took too long.
And to think, with today's social media showing all the details, what would that do to every wannabe mass shooter? If they could watch how horrible a slow death can be as the aggrieved victims extract their pound of flesh, would they really want to be subject to the same?
Unfortunately, in the world that goes round and round, we are too civilized. That only worked back when the world was flat.
-- Evan Saugstad is a former mayor of Chetwynd, and lives in Fort St. John.
