I wasn't sure if they'd print it or not as it is a bit lengthy, but they did so here it is. I sent it in untitled and the editor pick the title. Seem fitting to me.
Stop harassing legal gun owners
By Jim Krug, The Windsor StarMay 16, 2012
I'm writing to express my concern and anger over the recent defiant actions of Canada's Chief Firearms Officers and other bureaucrats in charge of overseeing the Canadian Firearms program.
For years, law-abiding gun owners across Canada have voiced our concerns about being treated unfairly and being targeted by these officials who distort the laws and use them unfairly against us.
It didn't make sense to gun owners to spend millions and eventually billions of dollars to track and monitor law-abiding men and women for no other reason than their enjoyment of owning and using firearms.
For decades, firearms have been used legally in Canada for sport shooting and hunting and many other purposes. It made more sense to us to keep track of those who chose to use guns illegally and for criminal purposes.
In the long run, this would have been much less expensive to the taxpayers and done a lot more to truly enhance public safety.
Firearms owners fought hard against Bill C68 with all the legal tools available to us. We held support and information rallies and sent letter after letter to politicians and anyone else we thought would listen.
Those who supported this gun legislation and other antifirearms lobbyists shot down our fear of unfair treatment and persecution under these proposed laws.
Recently, the Conservatives succeeded in passing Bill C19, a law that basically gets rid of the need to register long guns. Firearms owners celebrated this small step in making Canada's gun laws a bit more fair and sensible, but the celebration was short-lived.
It seems the Chief Firearms Officers of Canada are intent on scheming and planning ways to circumvent this new law and find any way possible to work around it.
The CFOs have apparently forgotten that their job is to enforce, without bias or prejudice, the laws passed by parliament, not to make up their own or pick and choose the laws they will or will not follow.
If you or I were to stand up and openly disobey these laws, we would no doubt be knocked back down quickly by them using the full might of these very same laws against us.
This is very disturbing to me and should be a concern to every Canadian, not just gun owners.
The recent actions of the Chief Firearms Officers is proof positive that the current firearms legislation is not working and worse yet is being used to harass and mistreat law-abiding Canadians.
It has never been more apparent that we need to fully repeal Bills C68 and C17 and replace them with legislation that is fair, clear and simple to follow.
More importantly, these laws need to be clear and easy to understand so that those who enforce them cannot twist them and interpret them as they see fit and use them against the law-abiding gun owners in Canada.
JIM KRUG, Amherstburg
Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Stop+ha ... z1v51BRx2h
