Canada –-(Ammoland.com)- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won the last election, in part, due to his promise to legalize marijuana in Canada.
That he smoked pot as a sitting Member of Parliament didn’t bother him, and he says it shouldn’t bother Canadians either. But Trudeau’s push to legalize weed for the average Canadian raises an interesting point.
Do we want the judgment of our police officers impaired while on the job? Absolutely not!
We already have too many cases where individual police have exercised poor judgment when deploying force – both lethal and potentially lethal varieties. The death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of four RCMP officers in Vancouver is the highest profile case in recent memory, but the Sammy Yatim case in Toronto (video) also springs to mind. And these were cases where the cops were supposedly in full control of their faculties.
How do we ensure that the men and women sworn to protect us, our police, aren’t high on the job?
It’s a reasonable question given these men and women carry firearms, tasers and other forms of “behaviour modification tools” to ensure citizens are compliant.
One Canadian believes we must have mandatory drug testing for police. As Mathieu Gaudette explains on his Change.org petition to have police drug testing made mandatory, oil patch workers have mandatory testing for drug and alcohol use due to potential dangers in the workplace. Gaudette correctly points out that oil patch workers don’t carry guns or other devices designed to “ensure compliant behaviour” from others.
Since police officers do carry lethal weapons and are ready to deploy them at a moment’s notice, it is imperative that the judgment of those officers is not impaired. The way to ensure this is by introducing mandatory drug testing.
It simply makes sense.
We at the Canadian Shooting Sports Association heartily endorse this measure but have only one request for the Prime Minister. Well, two requests actually. First, we respectfully ask that Prime Minister Trudeau implement a pilot program for police drug testing. Second, we respectfully ask that he start that pilot program with the staff at the RCMP’s Specialized Firearms Support Services (SFSS). That’s the real name of the RCMP’s Firearms Lab.
Our reasoning is simple and obvious.
Last week, the SFSS decreed – out of the blue – that all magazines designed for the innocuous Ruger 10/22 rifle which hold more than 10 rounds of .22 long rifle ammunition, are now “prohibited devices”.
Unlike the little Ruger, this is no small thing. A conviction for the possession of a prohibited device carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison! That’s a pretty harsh sentence for anyone who, like thousands of CSSA members, has lawfully owned +10-round Ruger 10/22 magazines for over 30 years.
The RCMP’s rationale for this decree? The magazines for the 10/22 rifle also fit the Ruger .22 Charger pistol and, therefore, they must be banned. However, the CSSA believes the RCMP’s judgment is impaired because of the rationale used to justify its decision.
The RCMP claims that “10/22 platform magazines are designed and/or manufactured for both rifles and handguns.” This claim is patently and verifiably false.
How can a magazine designed for the Ruger 10/22 rifle – decades before Ruger’s Charger pistol came into being in 2007 – possibly be “designed for handguns”?
The RATIONAL answer is obvious. The magazine was NOT designed for handguns. However, rational doesn’t appear to be a common commodity at the SFSS, hence our request to the Prime Minister to begin drug testing there – effective immediately.
When the RCMP decides with the stroke of its bureaucratic pen to arbitrarily turn hundreds of thousands of Canadians into criminals facing a potential 10 years in prison, we have to believe that the SFSS crew must be high on mind-altering substances or worse, simply crazy.
The following is transcribed directly from a recorded conversation with the RCMP Firearms Centre:
Question: Were .22 long rifle magazines originally designed for rifles?
Answer: No. A .22 long rifle calibre magazine designed for Ruger 10/22 platform rifles are also inherently designed for the handgun, for which magazines are prohibited.
The first thought that springs to mind is to question the use of the words 10/22 “platform”. This is a set-up to go after other firearm magazines by declaring different firearms to be the same because they were based on a similar “platform”. It seems that the SFSS lab techs never get tired of stoking the fires of animosity. By establishing this premise: “although certain firearms are different, any commonality makes them the same,” it is guaranteed to lead to more prohibitions.
The insertion of the word “inherently” is also problematic. Like being pregnant, a magazine either is or is not designed for a specific firearm. That a magazine fits into another firearm that it was never designed for – as is the case with the Ruger Charger pistol (and the bolt-action Ruger 77/22 rifle, the SR-22 auto-loading rifle and the Ruger 96/22 lever action) – is incidental and should not send someone to prison for 10 years.
Since the magazines were developed decades before the pistol was, it is very apparent that these other firearms were designed for the 10/22 magazine – not the magazine being designed for these firearms.
The Charger pistol was built on the 10/22 rifle frame. If you took the stock and barrel off a Charger pistol, you could conceivably attach them to any Ruger 10/22 rifle.
Does that unlikely possibility magically transform all Ruger 10/22 rifles into pistols and change their classification from non-restricted to restricted?
Of course not. That would be absurd. Just as absurd is the RCMP’s whim to classify over ONE MILLION Ruger 10/22 magazines (imported over 30 plus years) with a capacity greater than 10 rounds as prohibited devices, thereby subjecting hundreds of thousands of Canadians to a potential 10-year prison sentence.
If the folks making that decision were in the grips of “reefer madness”, we at the CSSA want to know. We hope a literal definition of “sober” second thought might be applied to this decision. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are being seriously wronged by the RCMP’s refusal to obey the same laws demanded of us law-abiding gun owners.
The law says magazines are adjudicated based upon the firearm for which they were designed.
The SFSS needs to quit torquing the law to suit their personal interpretations. The staff there is simply making fools of themselves.
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WHAT YOU CAN DO
Hang in there! We are currently examining several options with our sister organizations and members of the industry, and we will need your participation. An announcement of our actions will come within the next few days.
Meanwhile, write a letter (paper is best, but email works) expressing your outrage to the Prime Minister of Canada, The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau; to the Public Safety Minister, the Hon. Ralph Goodale; and, of course, to your own federal Member of Parliament.
Please don’t waste time with petitions. Direct communication is the only sure fire route.
Express (politely) how you feel about another unwarranted attack on our community by the seemingly incompetent SFSS firearms’ lab, and request that steps be taken to reverse this attempt to turn hundreds of thousands of Canadians into instant criminals.
You can find the contact information for MPs and Minsters here: https://www.parl.gc.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members
About CSSA:
The CSSA is the voice of the sport shooter and firearms enthusiast in Canada. Our national membership supports and promotes Canada’s firearms heritage, traditional target shooting competition, modern action shooting sports, hunting, and archery. We support and sponsor competitions and youth programs that promote these Canadian heritage activities.
For more information, visit the website at www.cdnshootingsports.org.