Vandenhoff: Why is Trudeau punishing law-abiding firearms owners instead of criminals?

We’re joined here today by Jordan Vandenhoff, the Ontario Director for the National Firearms Association. We’re talking today about the Trudeau gun ban that happened a few months ago. We’re going to be discussing the impacts and what gun owners and gun rights activists are feeling on this topic. So first off, Jordan, thanks for joining us, and maybe give us your thoughts on the ban itself, just generally.

“Thanks for having me. It’s good to get out there and talk to our viewers. The gun ban. Well, as everybody knows, you know, May 1 was a terrible day for Canada. Trudeau and Bill Blair basically dropped a bomb on sport shooters, hunters and gun enthusiasts and collectors by telling us that they’re going to take our property back and They made it so that right at 11:15, you could no longer use transport or sell your property. You’ve lost all value of it. And now we’re all stuck in limbo. But the biggest thing is, since then, they’ve also banned well over 300 different firearms. The FRT is changing daily and the biggest problem is, nobody knows about that. They don’t make an announcement, for example, the MK12, it just went prohibited a couple weeks ago. It was a non restricted [firearm]. You could be out in a farmer’s field hunting with it, clay shooting, and somebody in Ottawa says, hey, it’s prohibited, and you just happen to be on your way home, you have a taillight out, you get pulled over. A police officer says “what do you have in the back there?” Well, I got my shotgun, right? He looks at it. This is a prohibited device. Well, you don’t want to go down that road of being in possession of prohibited devices, especially a firearm, and have to go through all that legal fiasco. So there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of stuff that people don’t know about and it’s great that I get the opportunity to tell you about it.”

Wow. So that’s quite the news there. Do you expect more of those additional bans to happen? And is there anything the NFA is doing to help people out if they come in this type of situation you described?

“The NFA is fully supporting Cassandra Parker from KK Tactical where she has a court case going against Canada. The NFA is fully funding it with the lead lawyer of Solomon Friedman. We are also intervening with Guy Lavergne, and we will be going to court. We’ll be intervening and helping out Cassandra with that.”

Let’s touch on the impact this gun ban has had not just on sport shooters and hunters and gun enthusiasts, but also in particular small business owners, people who sell firearms or are involved in other ways in small business. I think you have some experience in working for a small business that’s involved in the firearms industry. Maybe touch on that impact for us? 

“Absolutely. So I work at Lanz Shooting Supplies. It’s located at the Silverdale Gun Club and the impact is great on small businesses. We’ve got a whole lot of AR-15’s sitting on the shelf we can’t sell. They have to sit there, the government’s given us no direction on what to do with these things. We can’t return them to our suppliers because they can’t take them back because they don’t want to get stuck with them. So we’ve got a lot of merchandise sitting on our shelves that we can’t do anything with. The businesses have to pay for their product upfront. And we have to sell them to make our money back and make a profit. So we’ve got quite a few firearms sitting there. The government’s giving us no direction. Bill Blair keeps coming on and saying, “hey, we’ve got to do it through legislation.” As soon as we come back to Parliament we’ll talk about a buyback but that’s for gun owners – they still haven’t said anything about businesses. I do know that gun owners are not going to get full value. So is that going to hold for that for the businesses or not?

On top of things, people, firearms owners, are getting really discouraged. We don’t know what guns are going to be prohibited next. So does somebody want to come into a store and purchase a $1,000 pistol carbine that you know it has an AR stock so tomorrow the government can say, “hey, that’s a variant of an AR. Let’s ban that right now.” Now that person stuck with that pistol carbine? That’s just more money out the door. So people are getting really, really scared about purchasing things. It’s the same with handguns – the government’s threatened a handgun ban, they want to start with municipalities. That’s just for show. I think it’s just for show, you know, they know it’s going to fail, and then they’re going to eventually go to a full national handgun ban.” 

You mentioned the legislation that’s being planned by the government, in your opinion, you’ve been closely following this obviously, do you expect that to pass and that the buyback will go in place? What have you been hearing from different politicians on this issue?

“Well, they eventually have to go back to Parliament. And I think if Trudeau had his way he would keep it the way it is, you know, they’ve closed down Parliament. All they can really do is talk about COVID right now. So we’re gonna have to wait and find out until they actually start sitting down and resume Parliament and get back to business. They’ll eventually go for a break again. So they’ll come out, they’ll go back and then go back for a break again. And I don’t think anything’s gonna get done anytime soon until this pandemic is taken care of. Unless they try to squeak something in on the backside.”

For gun owners like you, that are in support of the NFA and against this gun ban, what can they do to make their voice heard to help out to fight against gun ban?

“So what they can do is they can go to nfa.ca sign up. We have a full time lobbyist that’s currently working from home but is normally in Ottawa, lobbying on behalf of gun owners. And the thing is we need a voice in the government. So the more members we have, the bigger our voice is. We’re consistently promoting safe firearms activities. We’re trying to educate the public and show them that hey, gun owners are not the problem. You can take all the firearms away from legal firearms owners, and you’re still gonna have your thugs, your gangbangers up in Toronto and in the major cities, still continuing to do what they do. You know, the statistics are very off from what has been reported. They’re saying something like only 30% or so are coming from the States when it’s actually a majority of guns being smuggled in. They are being sold on the streets and it’s all criminal activity.

It’s the same thing with the Nova Scotia shooter. He was not a licensed firearms owner. He was not. He shouldn’t have had those guns, all those guns were illegal. The one gun that he did have and was the gun that he took off the constable. And that’s the only Canadian gun the rest were sourced from the States. So right off the hop, he should not have been in possession of a gun. That’s your problem, you know. Let’s target these criminals. Let’s put more money into our borders to stop the smuggling. Let’s put more money into keeping these criminals locked up. We have the rotating door service for the courts, right? You know these guys get caught with a firearm, they go to court, they get on bail, they get back out, they just go back on the street and rent another gun or purchase another gun and away they go, they’re back at it again. So we should really start concentrating on looking at the key point. And that’s the criminals not the law abiding firearms owners. You know, I get vetted every day. I work at a gun store. I have never committed a crime. Why am I being punished for ones that have? I just can’t wrap my head around it.”

That was very informative. Thank you for taking the time to join us here at The National Telegraph, Jordan, really appreciate it. We’ll catch you soon again with the NFA.