I am flipping tired of the unmitigated hubris that continues to spur Canada’s game-playing cops and court system in their indefatigable zeal to prosecute innocent gun owners with the same pesky, recycled sections of the Canadian Firearms Act.

In order to demonize gun owners to the hilt, the Government of Canada saw its way clear, at the behest of the United Nations, to dump the unlawful, unconstitutional, non-Charter-proofed Canadian Firearms Act of 1995 into the Criminal Code of Canada, ironically behind the Constitution Act 1982, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms centrepiece, which is supposed to be the supreme law of the land.

Turning ordinary citizens into criminals is obscene.

Under the Firearms Act, a person’s Charter right to be “presumed innocent until proven guilty” is turned wrongside out with a reverse onus provision: a gun owner is GUILTY until proven GUILTY.

Seldom, if ever, do the courts acquit a person tried for firearms infractions. The judges’ thinking is ‘if you’re not guilty you wouldn’t be here.’

Note: See Christopher di Armani’s excellent column herein for a list of 11 constitutional infractions committed between the covers of the Canadian Firearms Act: “Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant understands why gun owners hate the Firearms Act. Pity the Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, isn’t listening to her.”

In one example, No. 11, Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant said:

“...Bill C-68 allows for both military and foreign enforcement as well, but with no other part of the Canadian Criminal Code enforceable by the military, especially a foreign military. We wondered why that one was added. The truth is this provision was included to legitimize the future presence of foreign troops on our land.”

She then asked the salient question:

“Why would Canada ever need foreign troops enforcing Canadian gun laws?”

The “foreign troops” refers to militaries based in every country of the world that are in the process of being replaced with a One-World Military. It is part of the United Nations’ machinations to spread a One World Government around the planet. A global military will have the international power to ultimately confiscate firepower from the world’s total population, except for the police and military–a game plan which Canadian Firearms Act architects, Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his eager Liberals, salivated to enforce during their reign.

The rub is that Canada would stick its head in a fiery furnace if the United Nations told Canada to do so.

It wasn’t a weakness strictly reserved for Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s Liberals (1993 to 2003). Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives too willingly bow to the uniformity of de facto UN international policies, (they’re not laws) and UN Charter and Constitution rather than paying loyalty to Canada’s own Constitution and laws.

It’s through the UN High Commission of Immigration that Canada welcomes 250,000 immigrants annually while Canadians are losing their personal property rights to forfeiture, safe community and environmental laws due to the UN’s Agenda 21–the Agenda for the 21st Century that has been in the works for at least 60 years.

In keeping in step with the UN, Canadians soon will not have a choice of which light bulb to buy and where to shop or live. In keeping with the UN buzz word “sustainable”, Prime Minister Harper announced arbitrarily and prematurely that healthcare, Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement programs will be undergoing a reformation that has confused opposition members as well as the general public.

Same goes for the UN’s instructions about mandatory sentencing coming up under the Omnibus Bill that has the Canadian legal community and general public hopping mad.

The UN is the reason Prime Minister Harper signed a “free trade” agreement with U.S. President Obama in late 2011, even though Canadians detest and fear former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s signing of the expensive North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1992 that, for starters, authorized super-duper highways connecting Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

As well, Harper signed a border security deal that will see all of Canada’s private border-crossing data base fed to the Americas–not just the release of specifically requested “person of interest” information, as was the past practice.

In February 2012, Harper repeated the signing of “free trade” deals with China. There’s nothing free about these deals at all.

Somewhere in the North American Union equation Canada’s currency will be replaced or abolished, along with our sovereign nation, and everybody will be issued UN ID cards prior to being forced to swallow a microchip.

When the UN decides to go to war with a foreign country, Canada saddles up like the obedient NATO scout it is to go bomb the bejeezus out of innocent people who have never threatened us and are not our enemies.

I don’t want to hear any malarky from national journalists the likes of Financial Post’s Diane Francis speaking from the Davos, Switzerland World Economic Conference trying to sell the lie that Canada hasn’t declared war on any country since World War II.

It was following a unanimous vote that Canada declared a parliamentary-approved war against our non-enemy Libya in March 2011 and looks to be heading off on another bombing crusade as the sword-rattling UN/NATO rounds up its members once again. For this mission, Canada will have new fighter jets.

The list goes on ad nauseam of all the commitments Canada is making and has made to the United Nations. Why aren’t Canadians screaming for a withdrawal from the United Nations?

Canada can’t seem to operate under its own sovereignty any more. And those UN commitments have filtered down to influence our military bases, police stations and court rooms.

Under UN auspices, countries such as Britain and Australia, didn’t fare as well over their respective gun laws as did Canada, however.

Canada’s noisy gun community is still yelling and fighting valiantly against the abominable firearms legislation after 17 years, even though Prime Minister Jean Chretien promised his Liberal cronies that the gun lobbyists would, upon realizing their folly, shut up after six months of Bill C-68 passing into law.

The Canadian firearms owners didn’t shut up and didn’t give in, even though they were the first specialty group the government demonized absolutely as an easy target.

The dense-minded general public bought the goopy policy wholesale: Government good; guns bad.

The highly-trained police and military forces, who are capable of protecting ordinary citizens, are the only ones who need to own firearms, so said the Liberals. Since lunkhead individuals are too stupid to be trusted with firearms, the government chose to ride tyrannically to the rescue and steal their legally-owned personal property.

It’s just a matter of time until the naive, non-gun-owning public will also lose their personal and real property to confiscation without compensation under the United Nations’ Agenda 21.

Since highjacking gun owners in 1995, all the cheerful helpers in Ottawa’s war department, where legislation is penned for churning out of the parliamentary factory upstairs, has kept with the spirit of the United Nations’ nose-thumbing of Canada’s rules of law.

If it’s any consolation to gun owners–and I doubt that it is–lawmakers have burdened all subsequent legislation with the same type unconstitutional trash that found its way into the firearms Bill-C-68.

In the latest high-profile firearms debacle, the press is reporting that Ontario provincial Judge Toby Colvin has adjourned the trial of Ian Thomson till May 5. The judge wants time to review case law and give the Crown and defense ample time to produce additional materials to better support their arguments of what constitutes “safe storage”.

Let me help you out, fellows.

Ian Thomson should never have been charged with any bogus firearms infractions any more than Whitehorse resident Allen Carlos should have been charged back in 2000.

When the Ontario police decided, without legal excuse, to drum up business for the courts, Judge Colvin should have fired that culpable paperwork right out the courtroom window and dismissed the case posthaste rather than cluttering up his docket with nonsense.

Impossible. The courts need the business and all gun owners need to be prosecuted.

Thomson and Carlos are only two of many innocent and unfortunate firearms owners who have been caught in the grinders of a labyrinthian and discriminatory legal system.

Before attending court, both gentlemen were required to be interviewed by a shrink because the government assumes people who choose guns as part of their personal possessions are automatically mentally ill. A psychiatric assessment assures the court that the accused is fit to stand trial rather than having to whisk him directly to a mental ward.

Every gun case is complicated. And, unless a person sits through every minute of the courtroom proceedings, listening to the innuendoes, accusations, truth-twisting and can observe body language and facial expressions, it is impossible to know accurate details.

Whereas I had that opportunity to sit in on the Carlos case, I have had to rely on abbreviated –and possibly inaccurate–press reports covering the Thomson trial.

Regardless, I feel compelled to comment on the vacuous cops and courts repeating the same mistakes over and over and over.

Thomson, a mature environmental engineering student attending Brock University, lives in a rural area of southwestern Ontario near the town of Port Colborne that hosts some 20,000 people on the shore of Lake Erie.

He was under siege about 6:30 Sunday morning, August 22, 2010. Three masked, trespassing yahoos and would-be murderers, hollering ‘you ready to die?’ lobbed a half dozen lit bottles of gasoline through the window panes and set his house ablaze with him inside.

The arsonists also hurled Molotov cocktails into the dog kennel where at least one of several howling huskies, who could not escape their confines, had his fur scorched.

Thomson, a well-papered firearms owner, instructor who holds a myriad of other credentials, grabbed a .38 Smith & Wesson and ammunition, as was his lawful right to defend himself and his property against attackers.

The crackerjack shooter hurried outside to put the fear of God into the detestable creeps by firing a few volleys above their heads. The cowards were convinced to vamoose in a vehicle.

In between scaring off assailants and dousing pockets of fire, he was phoning emergency services.

At some point, Thomson handed over the good-quality video footage from his personal surveillance cameras to the Niagara Regional Police.

Note: See: Right Interviews – Lawyer Edward Burlew Discusses Gun Issues, YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lu0NnyDYoA&feature=player_embedded#at=371

Ridiculously, the police were too lazy to be interested in chasing the lawbreakers who were subsequently identified as Randy Weaver, 48, of Port Colborne; Justin Lee, 19, of Welland; Richard Coulthearst, 46, of Welland; and Michael Theberge, 20, of Port Colborne.

Typically, the police were too busy charging Thomson and confiscating his five handguns, two rifles, ammunition and paperwork–none of which he can likely reclaim regardless of the outcome of the travesty of justice being heard in Welland, Ontario.

The perverted trial seems to have boiled down to the standard, recycled, ad nauseam charges of careless storage of a firearm, Criminal Code Section 86(2). An acquittal will only serve as a speed bump for a Crown, which is a poor loser endowed with a bottomless-pit of resources, and will keep pushing the defendant to the next tier.

If ever a charge was laid that should never find its way into court–much less be won by the Crown–it is anything pertaining to the nebulous “storage” infraction.

The words “store” and “storage” have never been legally defined in the Firearms Act or the Criminal Code.

Allen Carlos was abused by the Establishment over “storage” for 30 months in a trilogy that cost him about $100,000 to wind his way through three levels of the court system–winning in territorial court and the Crown appealed; winning in appeals court and the Crown appealed; losing in the Supreme Court of Canada to a law that did not exist on April 17, 2002 and still doesn’t exist to this day in 2012.

However, the seven Justices hearing the case shirked their duty 10 years ago. They refused to accept the tough responsibility of writing a legal definition of the word “store” which the gun community totally expected as a bonus to reward Allen Carlos for his troubles.

Instead of deliberating for six to 12 months, as is normal before receiving a Supreme Court ruling, within ten minutes of defense lawyer Richard Fritze uttering his last word, the scam artists presented a pre-ordained, tailor-made, five-paragraph decision written in two official languages–typos, poor punctuation, et al – that convicted Allen Carlos of three counts of improper firearms storage.
Some poor soul–maybe Ian Thomson–will be forced into the highest court to untangle the obfuscation created by an incomplete ruling of what constitutes “storage” as opposed to “in use”.

Since the law doesn’t exist, the best the Crown and defense can do for now is engage in a philosophical, university-style debate which has no definite conclusion.

At one point, the squabble seemed to have deteriorated into whether the ammunition was too close to the gun for Thomson to have accomplished a quick-load. If so, the court should take up the argument with the companies who build the regulation gun storage safes, not with the guy who purchases them in good faith.

If the Crown’s point is that the gun was already loaded, then it was legal.

Time after time after time it has been proven in court that as long as the lawful, registered gun owner is at home, a loaded firearm can be “in use” parked in the corner, slipped into the drawer of a bedside table, on a work bench undergoing maintenance, or wherever.

It’s only before the lawful gun owner leaves the house that the unloaded gun must be trigger-locked and returned to a regulation storage facility and the ammunition placed in a separate compartment.

Trigger locks were another overblown vexation. When the Firearms Act was passed, guns were not legally required to be locked, except in instances when a restricted or prohibited gun was being transported.

The requirement for trigger locks was contained within a message zinging its way down from the Supreme Court to police detachments across the land on April 23, 2002. To my knowledge, the trigger-lock requirement has never been inserted into the Firearms Act or the Criminal Code.

In keeping with the spirit and “intention” of Section 86, from April 23, 2002 henceforth, guns barricaded inside a government-approved regulation safe needed trigger locks.. That decision was made on the back of Allen Carlos regardless that trigger locks were not mandatory at the time the Crown forced him into the top court.

Stepping back one court case, Whitehorse, Yukon was on the British Columbia appeal’s circuit court schedule for May 28, 2001. Justice Catherine Ryan, flanked by two colleagues, was nonplussed when she addressed the appellate.

Why was the Crown appealing the Carlos case for a hearing before her court?

Recalling previous National Firearms Association cases, she said, “I thought it was legal to have loaded guns in the house as long as the owner was home.”

Smart lady.

But from there, the university-style debate disintegrated into whether a gun was “in storage” or “in use” when hastily hidden due to a surprise raid from a four-member RCMP fishing expedition with a search warrant authorizing the hyped plainclothesmen to confiscate the owner’s guns, albeit, the police didn’t have a clue what guns, except for handguns, were behind that closed door.

The trial judge wouldn’t accept the Constitution as defense. She warned the defense lawyer that her courtroom was not the proper forum for debating the Constitution!

If you can’t debate the Canadian Constitution in a Canadian courtroom where in the hell does one debate it?

You don’t. The United Nations wants Canada weaned off its Constitution and has sent word through the politicians for judges and others in the so-called Justice department to ignore it.

However, the trial judge did acquit Carlos on grounds that the Crown failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. That decision was a mere speed bump for the Crown that continued to elevate the case to the next level until obtaining an express-service conviction from the Supreme Court without having to make verbal presentation.

But no legal definition of the word “store” was forthcoming.

Since the word “storage” has never been legally defined, the law doesn’t exist, other than to say it’s the opposite of “in use” which hasn’t been legally defined, either.

Judge Colvin would be well-advised not to overlook what I consider to be the best legal investigation over the ambivalent word “store” because I can understand the report.

Alberta Provincial Judge Don Demetrick conducted a meticulous study of “store” before rendering his sound verdict in the landmark R v. Joe, [1996] A.J. No.1120.

Section 86 of the Criminal Code carries jail time. It reads to the effect that any person who “stores” any firearm in a careless manner is guilty of sin and will burn at the stake day after tomorrow in the courtyard of Red Square.

“But what does the word ‘stores’ as used in that context mean?” asked Judge Demetrick.

“The Criminal Code doesn’t define the word, therefore, it should be construed in its ordinary, common or popular sense unless that would result in manifest and gross absurdity…

“The concept of ‘storing’ something has been analyzed concerning insurance legislation. It has been judicially recognized the word ‘stored’ is a common English word with no very precise or exact signification and THAT IT IS DIFFICULT IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE TO DEFINE ACCURATELY ITS MEANING.(My emphasis.)

“Gauged by the definitional references in the decision it seems the French word ‘entreposer’ is no more precise in meaning than is the English language concept of ‘storing’,” added the Alberta judge.

Judge Demetrick’s judgement in the Joe case was used as part of Carlos’ defense. He was acquitted by deputy judge Deborah Livingstone who accepted the plain meaning of “store” to be: “to reserve, put away, or set aside for future use”.

That is exactly what my 49-cent Thorndike Barnhart offered as a definition! But to come to the same answer in the first round of courtroom debates cost the defendant approximately $25,000.

Ian Thomson should be acquitted of sin, if for no other reason than he should never have been in court in the first place.

The Ontario Crown prosecutors should be utilizing their energy bringing the threesome and an accomplice to trial, not only for damaging Thomson’s property, but for the much more serious criminal offense of attempting to murder him with illegal, lethal weapons that were not firearms.

February 15, 2012