Sheila Gunn-Reid and Tracy Wilson from the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights (CCFR) report record attendance at Canada’s largest firearms event, the Toronto Sportsman Show, despite Justin Trudeau’s restrictive C-21 legislation (2023), citing optimism around Pierre Poilievre’s opposition. Law enforcement, including CCFR allies, reject Trudeau’s focus on banning hunting/sports shooting, arguing it fails to curb crime while targeting responsible owners—mirroring New Zealand’s post-2019 Ardern-era policies. With Alberta’s conservative government under Daniel Smith and a potential 2025 federal election, the CCFR pushes for grassroots engagement, like their June 1st National Range Day and Alberta AGM in May, warning that top-down gun control risks economic decline, as seen in Calgary under Nahid Nenshi’s leadership. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
And if you're watching the gun show, I'm guessing that you're not one of those people.
But did you know that more Canadians are involved in the shooting sports, so target shooting, hunting, than are involved in organized hockey?
Doesn't that make the shooting sports by the numbers Canada's national sport?
I would say so.
And yet it is the sport that is under attack by the federal government.
Sports shooters are being scapegoated by Justin Trudeau for his own failures and for the failures of progressive mayors in Canada's big cities.
Sports shooters like me are always under attack by the federal government.
Well, almost always.
We get a little bit of reprieve when there's a conservative government in town.
But for the last eight plus years, it has been a non-stop onslaught, a complete and total attack on gun rights, which are really just good old-fashioned property rights.
But are sports shooters like me losing faith, losing hope in our sport?
Well, based on the turnout at one of Canada's largest outdoor shows, the Toronto Sportsman Show, I don't think so.
I think sports shooters are optimistic and they're hopeful looking at Justin Trudeau's results in the latest opinion poll.
So joining me today to talk about, well, the Toronto Sportsman Show and what's coming down the pipe at Canadian Gun Owners is my friend Tracy Wilson from the CCFR.
So joining me now is my friend Tracy Wilson from the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights.
Tracy, you are fresh off the Toronto Sportsman Show, literally just home, you know, hours ago.
What was it like?
I know you guys are always the busiest booth at any sort of sportsman show.
I think it's probably exactly true for Toronto.
Let us know how it went.
I have to say, I'm a little hoarse, okay?
I've been talking and talking and talking for days, but I have to say that for me personally, it sort of speaks to the perseverance of the outdoor community, whether it's hunters, fisher people, especially gun owners who have been under attack from this liberal government for almost nine years now.
It speaks to their perseverance because the show has never been busier.
It was bigger than ever.
It was five halls long.
It was just, I spoke to other retailers and distributors and companies that were there at the show, and they were in the same boat.
They were just absolutely swamped.
It was a sea of shoulders for hours on end.
It was absolutely beautiful.
So really good to get out and speak to people in person.
So why do you think that is?
I know nothing sends me skipping off to the gun store like the threat of a gun ban.
That's just me.
But is it, you know, that there's people are attending the shows and buying guns in an act of defiance?
Or are they hopeful?
Because they're seeing Trudeau plummeting in the polls and, you know, they know that there's going to be a change in government.
And Pierre Polyev has said that he will roll back all these Trudeau gun grabs and his latest gun control measures.
So is it one, the other?
Probably a mixture of both.
Well, probably a little bit of both for sure.
But I think Column B, the feeling of hope was the message of the weekend by far.
People coming by the booth were saying, you know, I think there's light at the end of the tunnel.
You know, change is on the way.
Even law enforcement, we had a lot of law enforcement come by the booth.
The police are big supporters of the CCFR.
And of course, they, for obvious reasons, also want to save for country.
And, you know, I think, you know, just seeing that there is an opportunity for a government with a proper focus on reducing crime violence and gun smuggling rather than reducing hunting and sports shooting.
I think in general, everybody just had this, you know, resounding feeling of hope and light at the end of the tunnel for all of us, really.
Yeah, you know, you make a really good point.
We all have police officers that we know.
Some of us, like me, even have police officers that they know and love that are in their family.
And they are sports shooters just like us.
They've got better things to do than at the behest of Trudeau kicking the doors of their neighbors.
They want to be arresting the bad guys and keeping the bad guys in jail.
And it's never been easier to be a bad guy in this country.
It's never been easier to get bail in this country unless you've done some inconvenient horn honking.
You know, they don't want to waste their time hassling, you know, gun-toting dog-loving grandmas like you.
Yeah, well, that's it.
There's a reason why, you know, with all these liberal gun bans and everything else and talk and threats of kicking in our doors with some sort of confiscation program, there's a reason it hasn't happened yet.
And that's because nobody will do it.
It's impossible to do.
Nobody wants to do it.
It would be ridiculous and offensive and a big waste of time and resources.
So nobody's going to do it.
It's not going to happen.
And yeah, this guy's on his way out.
So yeah, it was just a really uplifting feeling of hope through all five halls and the tens of thousands of people who attended.
Yeah, and as you say, the police want to save our country.
You and I want to save our country.
But that's not what lies before us.
I mean, we're seeing gang violence break out in the big cities all across the country.
And then we have the Toronto police telling us, you know, just put your keys by the door.
Maybe take your TV off the wall, put it outside.
Attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door.
Because they're breaking into your home to steal your car.
They don't want anything else.
A lot of them that they're arresting have guns on them.
And they're not toy guns.
They're real guns.
They're loaded.
Put on the snow tires for the criminals so that they don't spin out and have an accident while they steal your car.
It's just this bizarre focus on the wrong people while the society around us disintegrates.
Yeah, well, here's the thing.
If you've got gun-toting, repeat, violent offenders coming to kick your door in to steal your car, if the car was all they wanted, they wouldn't have guns.
They've got guns because they're there to hurt you if you try and stop them.
So for the police, it almost feels like they've given up, you know, and that in itself is pretty frustrating.
I know TPS did put out some sort of clarifying statement on that, but it doesn't erase what you said.
Like leave your, consider leaving your fob by the front door so they can just very easily steal your car without disturbing you or putting yourself at risk.
And I thought, what, what a clown show.
Like what an absolute upside down world this country has become.
Yeah, I saw that the TPS put out a statement saying like, well, that's not necessarily the advice that we would give you, but that is the advice that you gave.
And that's the guy you send to the community town halls.
That's the guy.
So this is what he does for a living.
This is the advice that he's giving for a living on behalf of the Toronto Police Service.
I think the Toronto Police Service were kind of caught flat-footed because everybody started making fun of them, not just here in Canada, but the international media sort of lit up the Toronto Police Service.
And I think the Toronto Police Service, they've got a tough job because they are trying to catch these repeat offenders who go before a judge or a justice of the peace, which is not necessarily even a lawyer, and they're often out on the very same day for violent offenses.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, they do have an incredibly tough job because I've seen many accounts of that from law enforcement where they say, you know, they're doing the hard work, they're catching the bad guys, and they're back out on the same day reoffending over and over and over again.
And I get it.
You know, if you had to choose between having your car stolen or having your car stolen and getting shot, but those shouldn't be the two choices, right?
So yeah, it is a tough spot for law enforcement.
And I think, of course, you get a completely different conversation out of brass than you do out of the frontline officers.
But yeah, we have overwhelming support at these shows from law enforcement.
They come and take selfies.
And yeah, it's a tough spot, I think, for all Canadians to be in with this government.
Yeah, the cops in my life are big CCFR fans, big Tracy Wilson fans, for sure.
Organizing Volunteers for Elections00:06:18
And, you know, it even varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction for an Alberta.
Like, for example, I look at things through an Alberta worldview.
And last week, instead of saying, put your keys by the door so the bad guys don't disturb your good night's sleep, in Alberta, we said, actually, if the judges are letting you out on bail, we're going to put an ankle monitor on you and we're going to expand our sheriff's duties to make sure that they're chasing the bad guys so that the other cops can keep you safe.
And so it's just strange the cultural differences between like Toronto versus Calgary in some instances.
Yeah, Alberta's done a great job actually.
They're intervening on our appeal in the federal court against the gun ban.
I actually had a great meeting with the Minister of Justice here in Ottawa at their Ottawa Accountability Office.
I like to call it the Alberta Embassy.
But they said that's not what it's called, but that's what I'm calling it going forward.
That's what it is.
Yeah, I think Alberta has a completely different understanding of freedom than the rest of the country.
So yeah.
God bless Alberta.
Yes, exactly.
May we spread our sense of freedom to the rest of this country.
And I think we kind of are.
You know, we're emboldening some of the other premiers to stand up and get involved.
Now, I want to ask you, speaking of standing up and getting involved, what's next for the CCFR?
What are you guys working on right now?
Well, as you know, C-21 received royal assent.
And of course, that enshrined the handgun freeze, which is just a prolonged ban, in legislation, making it not impossible, but complex to overturn.
So, you know, our focus has been on some messaging around that.
And of course, the most important thing we need right now is a new government.
So there will be an election at some point.
You know, we're 19 years at the maximum or 19 months at the maximum.
19 years.
Oh, my lord.
It nights like that.
It does feel like that sometimes.
Yeah, but it could happen anytime between now and October of 25.
So there's a lot of work that's got to go into getting election ready and ensuring that we get a government in there who will hurt us less and instead focus on public safety.
So we are hyper-focused on that.
At the same time, really working on growing and organizing our volunteer program.
We've got hundreds of volunteers all across the country working gun shows and all kinds of other events.
And we really want to mobilize them to help with election prep and election readiness.
So we're working on that.
We've got a secret project that I literally can't even tell you about, but we will come back after the next federal election and talk about it and then say, oh, see all that stuff that happened?
That was us.
And you'll be totally shocked.
It's got nothing to do with guns, but it's got everything to do with influencing an election.
And yeah, National Range Day is on the horizon.
The first Saturday in June every year is National Range Day.
So that's June 1st this year.
That's a day where ranges and gun clubs across the country open their doors to the public and invite people who maybe otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to try the shooting sports to come on in, learn a little bit, grow a little bit of acceptance.
A lot of people's opinions about gun and gun ownership come from media, liberals, Hollywood.
You know, it's not realistic to the Canadian gun culture.
So yeah, it's a great opportunity.
I'm hosting a massive event here in Ottawa.
We see about six to eight hundred people come through the gates of the range, which is really exciting and tons of activities for the kids and cotton candy and bouncy castles and all the things that Ottawa hates.
So yeah, that's a really big priority.
And of course, the CCFR AGM is coming up in May and we're coming to Alberta.
So I will see you then.
Oh, you better believe you'll see me then.
Yeah.
Now, I want to ask you, how do people specifically get involved with the CCFR?
Because I see online, and I don't mean this to disparage the people who are saying this, but they're complaining that, hey, I was at my local gun show and I expected to see the CCFR booth, but they didn't have one there.
First of all, tell us why they don't have one there and how we can fix that.
Yeah, so when you see a CCFR booth at a gun show or a sportsman show, you know, even a small show in the basement of a church, it's literally run by volunteers.
So like I said, we've got about 300 volunteers across the country, but there are shows every single weekend in every single town and city across the country.
It is virtually impossible to be at every single one, but we could be at more if we had more help.
So the volunteer group, the field officers of the CCFR are a great group.
They become lifelong friends.
They do all kinds of stuff together.
And you can be a part of that team by sending an email to volunteer at ccfr.ca.
There's some vetting process, obviously, and then we'll set you up with all the resources you need to go out and get tables at gun shows.
You get business cards, you get banners, tablecloths, all the stuff you need.
So yeah, and of course, it's just great to take that extra step over and above just getting a membership and truly getting involved.
And then of course, Rod and I do our best to get around and come to some of these shows.
I will be at the Calgary Easter Gun Show at the end of the month.
So I hope to see you there.
So make sure you come out to that.
And yeah, so volunteering is a very best way to get involved.
We've recently hired a new staff member who's going to be working at better helping organize the volunteers so that it's not a big workload on them and they could get to just show up and have fun at the gun shows.
And make no mistake, it is a lot of fun.
And yeah, it's just a great time to get out in the community and recruit more members.
Yeah, like unlike the other side of the gun rights debate, you don't get any funding from the government to do the work that you do.
And I don't think you would take it anyway.
I wouldn't.
But, you know, the other side of this is very well funded.
They've got all kinds of, well, they're not volunteers, they're paid staff.
Law-Abiding Canadians00:08:40
You don't have a lot of that.
You rely on people who care deeply about this to give their time.
So friends out there, if you're like, why isn't the CCR at my gun show?
You could be the CCFR at the gun show if you just stepped up and filled the void and solved the problem yourself as conservatives tend to do.
Now, I want to talk about something that's in the news right now, and it didn't get a lot of play in the Canadian media, and I think I know why.
New Zealand could potentially be rolling back a lot of their comprehensive gun control legislation because they have a new right-of-center government.
And the three parties that formed this coalition government, one of them very specifically, campaign on easing some of their gun control legislation that was drafted in 2019 over the course of six days.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah, so you'll remember, excuse me, I am so hoarse.
Former prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern.
She just, you know, she's held up as sort of the gold standard of gun control.
Of course, they had a tragic mass shooting in her country, and she took that opportunity to ban basically all semi-autos.
There's some argument about how successful the gun grab was.
Of course, I think there was 50,000 rifles that were turned in.
56,000, yeah.
56,000.
However, there's, you know, some quotes that there are hundreds of thousands that were not.
So, you know, these things are never as successful as they like to promote them as being.
But the more important factor here is you've had five years since that happened to look at the stats on what's happening.
Is it making New Zealand a safer place?
Is crime and violence, and in particular gun violence, is it going down?
And unfortunately, it's not.
It's going up.
So, you know, it's not like any experts or anybody could have forewarned about this result.
But the results are in and they speak for themselves.
And it's been a massive failure.
So, you know, instead of punishing your law-abiding citizens, again, in that country, they are now looking at going after repeat violent offenders and leaving hunters and sports shooters alone.
So, yeah, I think, you know, I remember back when that happened, Justin Trudeau just looked at her with stars in his eyes about all the wild things she was doing to the firearms community in New Zealand.
And I think he's taken some lessons.
But I would expect his career will go right in the same place hers is, which is the dumpster.
From your lips to God's ears, Tracy.
I remember at the time people were saying, look how quickly they were able to do this in New Zealand.
And I'm hearing, look how quickly they were able to scapegoat the innocent and stomp all over the law-abiding.
Look how quickly they were able to do it.
They wrote their legislation in six days and then quickly started enacting it.
And the op-eds in Canada, in the Toronto Star, other CBC, it was like, if they can do it in New Zealand, why can't we do it here?
Well, they didn't do it in New Zealand.
And thank goodness we didn't do it here.
Although we did, I'm going to say about 50% of it here, as much as Justin Trudeau thought he could get away with.
Yeah, I mean, you know, the gun grab here in Canada from May of 2020, the one that we're currently fighting in court, you know, that banned somewhere around half a million rifles from Canadians who've legally and lawfully owned them safely and without issue for decades, if not generations.
And there's no solid evidence that this would have any positive impact on public safety.
And now, you know, we've got almost nine years of the Trudeau regime and all their attacks on gun owners.
And look at the rates of violent crime in this country.
The same story is being told in New Zealand with pretty much the same results.
So yeah, I think the tides are definitely shifting and that adds to that positive atmosphere of hope that we saw all weekend at the Toronto Sportsman Show.
Well, and it just honestly, the actions of the liberals actually say something else.
You know, like they were saying at the time, these guns are so dangerous, we have to get them out of the hands of Canadians.
Yeah.
Law-abiding Canadians at that.
And then they left them with us for five years.
Yeah.
So they really can't help being all that dangerous.
Yeah.
Guns so dangerous that you're forced to keep them for five and a half years.
You know, you've got people who maybe, you know, would choose to get out of the sport or maybe they've had an injury and can't shoot anymore.
They don't even have an option to get rid of them.
Like you're forced to keep them.
So yeah, it's just total crazy town.
I mean, if legal gun owners in Canada were a problem, you'd know it.
But all of those AR-15s and all the other guns that were banned are still exactly where they were before, locked safely away in the gun rooms and safes of law-abiding Canadians who care about their communities and work hard to own these things.
Yeah, and work hard to follow the rules because there are a lot of rules.
A lot of rules we have to follow.
People have no idea.
Tracy, how do people support the work that you do at the CCFR?
Because as I pointed out earlier, you'd never take a penny from Justin Trudeau and how could you hold him to account if you ever did.
So you rely on donations and membership.
So and merch sales because you guys have a great merch store.
So tell us all about that.
Yeah, so you can find us at ccfr.ca.
On there, there's a couple of ways you can help.
You can donate, you can donate money.
Of course, that's always helpful.
You can also donate straight to our legal fund, which helps us fight the liberals in court.
You can pick up a membership.
That's really important because the power of having those numbers behind us really makes a difference when we're trying to influence policy.
And then, of course, yes, go to the merch shop.
There's a ton of cool stuff there.
We've got all kinds of new products and people just love our gear.
I see it everywhere now.
Me too.
Yeah, sales are great.
And then, of course, again, if you're looking to maybe help out a little bit, there's no specific time commitment that you have to put in.
But if you can help out a bit, that would be great.
Send an email, email to volunteer at ccfr.ca.
You can find our videos on YouTube and all the other podcast platforms.
And of course, watch us every two weeks on Wild TV on a national Canadian network.
We've got a TV show on there.
Awesome.
Tracy, I will let you go because I know your horse.
You're very tired.
You have a very busy last week in Toronto.
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
And thank you so much for all the work that you do for law-abiding gun owners just like me.
We're going to keep at it.
Thanks for the opportunity.
and I hope to see you at the Calgary Easter Gun Show.
Into the portion of the show wherein I invite your viewer feedback.
I know I say this every single week, but you know what?
We get new people here all the time.
We've got to tell them the rules, otherwise they're not going to know how to play.
And I just think that I better start that again because I had a pause there.
It looks like the video just went.
So let's try that again.
Well, friends, we've come to the portion of the show wherein I invite your viewer feedback.
And I know this is very redundant to the regular viewers of the show.
However, we are getting new people here all the time.
So we have to tell them the rules so they know how to play the game.
I give you my email address right now at Sheila at RebelNews.com.
Put gun show letters in the subject line.
And that's how I'll know that that's why you're talking to me because I get a ton of emails every single day, but specifically every single week, and it is difficult to weed through them.
So if you put gun show letters in the subject line, I know why you're trying to reach out to me.
And let me know.
Do you want me to say your name on air?
Do you not want me to say your name on air?
Just note that so I don't out you to your progressive friends or your progressive employers.
But don't let that be the only reason that you interact with me.
If you are watching the free version of the show either on Rumble or on YouTube, go and leave a comment there.
I go looking for your comments and story ideas over there.
I want to know what you think about the work that we do here at Rebel News.
And today's comment comes to us by way of Rumble.
Rumble Comments Matter00:03:01
And it is on last week's show where I was talking to Peter McCaffrey from the Alberta Institute about largely Mayor Nahid Nenshi, former Mayor Nahid Nenshi's recent run for the leadership of the NDP.
I wanted to know what Peter thought about his candidacy, if he thought that Nenshi could win.
And if Nenshi won, would he have a good shot at becoming premier?
The idea sends a chill up my spine.
But Peter is a careful political watcher for a very long time, and he's very analytical.
And I felt a lot better after talking to him.
Anyway, the letter comes from the Rumble comment section, and it's from Alberta Rocks.
And Alberta Rocks, he or she writes, I first moved to Calgary in 1971 and I lived there until 2017, 46 years.
I watched that city grow from 400,000 to 1.4 million people.
The construction that was going on in the early 1970s was absolutely astounding with as many as 75 tall construction cranes visible at any given time.
Calgary was an amazingly positive city to live in back then.
Today, I thank God I moved out of that concrete jungle because ever since the disastrous NDP Notley years, Calgary has never fully recovered.
And this bothers me to no end because Alberta is absolutely the greatest province or state in the entire Western hemisphere.
I agree.
Let's keep going.
And Calgary, along with all the rural towns, is perhaps the very bastion of sanity in all of the Western hemisphere.
Also agree.
If Calgary falls, Alberta falls.
Also agree.
With good government back in place with Daniel Smith and considering the Western cowboy common sense that most native Albertans have, I do not think Calgary will fall.
Also agree.
Nenshi contributed mightily to the downhill slide of Calgary.
Tax and spend, tax and spend.
That's all that effing idiot understands.
He has less chance of succeeding as leader of the NDP in Alberta as a common toad would have.
So I pray he wins.
I have nothing to add.
Thank you, Alberta Rocks.
It is very sad.
You know, you talk to people who spent a lot of time in Calgary in the years before the National Energy Program and then through the disaster of the National Energy Program.
And then as Calgary recovered and sort of became this gem of the oil patch to now with 30% vacancy in the downtown commercial real estate core, it's sad.
It's sad.
And it's sad to see a city struggle, but it's worse to see it unnecessarily struggle because of its own bad leadership.
Well, friends, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week.