Sheila Gunn Reid reports on the UN’s RevCon 4, where Canada’s National Firearms Association (NFA) battled proposals like marking every firearm part—even springs—to enable global tracing, raising costs and legal risks. Delegates from Cuba, Russia, Ukraine, and Egypt clashed over terminology, while Canada pushed disarming women to curb domestic violence, ignoring rural realities. New Bill C-21 rules (effective September 1, 2024) now require PALs for transferring gun components, expanding restrictions under a handgun freeze and red flag laws. The NFA warns these moves signal a push to ban civilian firearms entirely, urging public resistance through upcoming discussions and advocacy. [Automatically generated summary]
The UN conference to ban your personal firearms just wrapped up.
Canada's National Firearms Association has just returned from five grueling days in New York City.
The NFA was in New York fighting for property rights at the United Nations RevCon 4.
That's the fourth review conference of the United Nations Program of Action to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade of Small and Light Weapons in all its aspects.
It's a real mouthful, but that's meant to obscure what it's all about.
It's a program to prevent, combat, and eradicate personal firearms use.
The meeting convenes every six years to scheme ways to use the illegal trade in small arms to ban legal firearms from law-abiding gun owners.
Thankfully, the Canadian government delegation, which had a focus on disarming women for some reason to combat domestic violence, was offset with some common sense ideas from the National Firearms Association, who worked closely with their American counterparts to have these bad UN ideas thankfully watered down.
NFA President Rick Iggersitz joins the show tonight to discuss what shook out at the UN and why we should be concerned about the so-called non-binding UN declaration.
Rick also updates us on an email from the Canadian Firearms Office that license holders, including me, received Monday night and his upcoming video podcast on Bill C-21 with the gun blog on Thursday night.
Take a listen.
Thanks for having me on again, Sheila.
It's always nice to be on your show.
Yes, we actually, the NFA has an NGO seat at the United Nations.
We're the only gun advocacy group in Canada that has a seat at the United Nations.
So we've been there over the last few years, but it's getting more important now that we show up there.
There's a lot of stuff going on at the United Nations right now.
I was there and it's, I'll actually read it here because it's quite a name they have it.
I was there for the fourth United Nations Conference to review progress made in the implementation of the Program of Action, short form POA, to prevent, combat, eradicate the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons in all its aspects.
The short form for it is RevCon 4.
So what it says, it's supposed to be about illicit firearms, but at the end of the day, it's about all firearms.
The United Nations, this is my first experience at the United Nations.
It's quite a different place to be at.
We were there, Ginger Fournier, our general manager, and I attended for five days, and it was grueling.
It was absolutely grueling.
We spent every day, basically from 10 o'clock to five or six o'clock in the evening, listening to different countries from around the world with their perspectives about firearms, illicit firearms, firearms ownership, and where it's going.
Most of it, for the first three or four days, what they do is they try to make amendments every day and put out a different revision every day.
It started off mostly talking about gender-based violence with illicit firearms, domestic violence with illicit firearms, violence against women and children, again, with illicit firearms, which really, they're using the word illicit firearms, but they're meaning firearms in general.
It actually got as far as to say the illicit use of firearms is responsible for climate change.
That's yes, they actually made that statement.
It's actually in the final document that they're actually calling climate change is due to illicit, the illicit use of firearms.
I almost fell out of my chair when I heard that, Sheila.
It was unbelievable.
So what went on is they every day it was developing countries mostly speaking on this stuff.
So every day everybody had a chance to speak that wanted to speak.
I'll get into the Canadian delegation a little later, but I'll just start off with the basics first.
The Canadian delegation was a challenge also.
But anyway, I'll just get on to I'll get on to the basics.
So every day, these people from these developing countries had this prepared document speech that they presented to the president of the United Nations.
And they went on about, you know, how illicit firearms and firearms in general are causing havoc in their countries due to the illegal importation of firearms, mostly against gender-based, it's mostly gender-based violence.
Domestic violence is the next biggest player.
Then, of course, the women and children, they played that routine.
So each day, these countries made these presentations.
Then they argued on, then there's a few countries that oppose this stuff.
And there are actually countries that we really shouldn't be associated with, like Cuba, Russia, Ukraine, Egypt.
They were opposed to this stuff because they were using, they were trying to put in place words like gender instead of sex.
You know, and there's a big back and forth ensued after that.
You know, it should be gender instead of sex.
And of course, these, it wasn't all developing nations, but it's mostly developing nations, went back and forth on this gender and sex thing.
And so they'd clear it up.
They'd soften it up for the next for the next amendment, the next revision the following day.
And they kept doing that.
So what we were doing as Canada's national firearms, and I just want to say the NFA will be attending United Nations as long as Canada has a delegation there, because we need somebody from Canada to challenge the Canadians.
At the end of the day, they're on an opposite page.
We are.
We approached, Ginger and I approached the delegate from Canada.
So I said to her, I introduced myself.
I had never met her before.
I introduced myself and I said, I'm here representing Canada's National Firearms Association and law-abiding firearms owners from Canada.
She says, well, I'm here.
My fixed point is domestic violence on a global level.
I'm not familiar with any firearms-related events in Canada.
I go, you're kidding.
Basically, and she says, no, I'm just here.
I'm just here to deal with the world stuff.
So at the end of the day, it was futile even to speak to her anymore during the meetings.
But luckily, myself and the NFA has developed really good connections with some other groups over the last three years since I've been doing this international stuff.
One of them, a couple of them actually are out of the States, Americans, and there's some, there's a couple out of the European Union that are that are on our side.
So what we did, any point we needed to get across to have a to have delegates speak about, we talked to our American colleagues.
They passed it on to the delegates and got it out on the floor.
So at the end of the day, the end of the day, we've got some of our points across.
You know, there's a lot of stuff in here.
And the big one was I didn't even get to that.
I haven't even spoke about what we were really focused on.
And what we were focused on were a couple of things.
The big thing was tracing of firearms and parts.
What the UN wants is to mark every part on a firearm, including the smallest spring, so they can, if this firearm turns up somewhere on the planet, they can trace that part back to its original origin.
There's a couple problems with that.
Number one, the way lawsuits go these days and somebody, something happens with that firearm, it opens up the possibility of suing the guy that made that spring in, I don't know where, opens them up to a lawsuit.
The other problem is when you're talking marking parts on a firearm, you're talking doubling or tripling the price of that firearm.
So in my opinion, what they're trying to do by doing this, again, is like the Canadian government does, they're trying to get rid of firearms by attrition.
They're killing us by attrition.
It's the same deal worldwide as it is in Canada.
The thing about the United Nations, they make all these proclamations.
At the end of this conference, they made, I don't know, 80 or 90 proclamations.
Proclamations are not enforceable.
United Nations proclamations are not enforceable.
They can only be put into place if a government like ours takes them and uses them, which no doubt Justin Trudeau will take and put these into place.
That's why they had their delegate there.
They had their delegate there talking about domestic violence because, as you know, Sheila, things are starting to run pretty thin as far as using firearms as an election issue.
So now they're stretching it on to the domestic use of fire or the violence, domestic violence related to firearms.
That's where they're pushing the issue these days.
So I have no doubt that's why she was there to get it out on the world stage.
Give Canada's position on the world stage to it's all about it's all about elections and money.
If you want to simplify it, this whole United Nations, it's all about getting the government elected by using some of these proclamations and money.
My next point, money, third world countries, all these people show up there.
They're all appointed because of family stuff, no doubt.
You know, that's my assessment of it anyway.
Yeah, they show up with these written documents.
The guy shows up.
He reads off a piece of paper and talks about what's going on in his country and why he thinks firearms are the cause of it.
It goes on for an hour.
Some of these guys go on for an hour.
And then at the end of it, well, you know what, though?
We can't really be here anymore because we haven't got the funds.
We haven't got the funds to continue with the United Nations.
And at the end of the day, the United Nations has no funds either.
Their coffers are empty.
So these people basically have this rehearsed program spiel that they give to the United Nations.
And at the end of it, at the end of their spiel, and every one of them, every one of them that I, and I sit there, I listen to them for five days.
It all comes down to we need money to keep going to keep this fight against illicit firearms going.
I'm listening to you talk about the illicit firearms, UN people, and I'm thinking, this is the same garbage they pull with the climate change stuff.
So they say they make all these proclamations, which are unenforceable.
The Paris Accord was unenforceable until Justin Trudeau took it home and passed laws to make it enforceable here, at least enforce the targets here, which is exactly what he plans to do with these gun control proclamations.
And then it is exactly the same with the developing nations coming there, cozying up to whatever progressive issue there is and saying, the only solution to this is for you to give me more money.
Climate change, gun control, exactly the same thing.
We're just this little weeny teeny developing country.
We can't fight climate change unless you give us a gazillion dollars.
And it's the same thing.
We can't fight crime in our country.
How dare you ask us to pass local laws to deal with illicit drugs?
You're going to have to give us a bunch of money, United States, EU, Canada.
That's the only way we can keep our people safe.
It's just this, just wash, rinse, repeat.
It's the same formula over and over again.
Name the progressive issue at the United Nations.
This is how it happens.
Yeah.
The thing is, Justin Trudeau is all about giving United Nations and developing countries money while the infrastructure in Canada is falling apart.
People can't afford housing.
People can't even drive to work for the price of fuel.
But oh, we got no problem.
We'll just raise the carbon tax a little more and spread this money out around the world.
And that's why most of these people are attending there.
It's all a facade with their big, long, you know, practiced rehearsed statements.
At the end of the day, all they want is money.
In my opinion, that's why they're there.
Yep.
Yep.
So at the end of it, at the end of it, they did soften a lot of the proclamations up due to our work with the Americans.
United Nations is a funny thing.
They need for their, I call it for their peace of mind, but they need everybody to agree before they move forward.
So the only way to get them to agree is keep softening stuff till everybody agrees.
And after five grueling, well, actually, it was two weeks long because the written submission or the verbal submissions were a week before that.
We weren't there for that.
We followed them.
We followed them on the web, but we weren't there to actually sit there and witness it because at the end of it, we're just too busy to take two weeks to sit at the United Nations and listen to the, I'll bleep myself out here.
Ammunition Marking Debate00:03:29
But anyway, the bull, because it's the same old thing over and over again from country to country again.
It's the same.
It's repetitive.
It's the same thing.
And the end game is the same with all of it.
But like I started to say, when the final revision, the sixth draft of it was put forward, a lot of stuff was softened up.
But at the end of the day, none of it means anything.
It's only effective with the type of government we have around because the liberals will take it.
oh, yeah, the United Nations suggested we do this, this, and this.
Let's do this.
Let's, you know, let's start marking fire parts.
You know, and the second part of that, too, which I probably should have touched on that I didn't even touch on is ammunition marking.
Ammunition marking has been part of the international tracing instrument for the last three or four years.
Now, this started off.
It wasn't a part of this RevCon, this RevCon, these RevCon discussions.
interjected it into these discussions.
And what I think what I need to clarify what ammunition marking is, they want to mark every component of a cartridge.
That includes the bullet, the case, the powder, and the primer.
For the same reason, they want to do parts tracing of firearms.
They want to do that with ammunition now.
So what they want to do, and what's that?
Well, they jack the price up and then they stop you from hoarding ammo.
Exactly.
And it's ammo on sale.
It never goes on sale anymore.
No, because the manufacturers, now to put, to mark the powder, they have to put a specific trace element into the powder so they can trace it to a batch lot.
I sit on the World Forum of Shooting Activities, which is a European think tank, where we discuss this stuff.
We discuss this stuff a lot.
What their plan is, the same thing as tracing the parts.
If a cartridge shows up at some event that involved a firearm, they could trace that back to the manufacturer, basically probably to the month that it was manufactured.
And it opens up the same deal again.
It's nothing more than another avenue for these people to go after firearms manufacturers and ammunition manufacturers.
The other part of the ammunition thing is stockpiling.
Nobody can give you a definition of what a stockpile is.
If you've got a 500 box of Remington Thunderbolt 22s at your residence that you use for dispatching gophers on your farm, that might be considered a stockpile.
Initially, stockpiling was all about military stockpiling.
And of course, these people from across the planet basically put it or incorporated into civilian ownership of ammunition.
And that's what it's all about.
At the end of the day, my conclusion at the end of the day is the United Nations mandate is to get rid of all firearms and all ammunition, all civilian ownership of firearms and ammunition.
That's it.
C21 And The Advisory Committee00:10:25
That's the end game.
There's no doubt about it.
Because these are the same governments who say, first of all, we're going to hand out illicit drugs, but we won't put traceability measures into the illicit drugs.
But they want, and those are illegal things that are poisoning our young people, but they want to trace the powder in my gopher dispatching mechanism.
It's just bizarre.
It makes no sense.
And then they throw in domestic violence into the mix as though disarming women somehow makes them safer from domestic violence.
We are indeed the smaller sex, regardless of what the trans activists like to say.
It's funny because a lot of this stuff is Canadian related.
When I did my thing at the Senate, and that was my first question from one of the liberal senators.
Well, Rick, don't you feel that women would feel a lot safer in their residence if their spouse didn't have any firearms?
My reply to that, wouldn't they feel safer if you didn't have any steak knives in the house?
It doesn't make any sense.
None of it.
No, of course not.
Somebody like me whose husband works away in the oil patch all the time.
I'm a half an hour from the closest RCMP detachment.
How do they think disarming me would make me feel safer?
They never, all they think about is the women who live in the 600 square foot coffin with a cat in downtown Toronto.
They don't think that there are different kinds of women in this country who have a different viewpoint on this issue.
Rick, I wanted to talk to you about something before we run out of time.
And I know people don't care if I go long, but I'm sure you're busy and I'm busy.
Before we jumped on the call here, before I started recording, I said, hey, Rick, did you get your email from the CFO today?
And apparently you had gotten your email from the CFO earlier.
And it is about some of the first implementations of Bill C-21.
They announced that the government of Canada, I'll just read directly from the email, has announced that the requirement to have a valid PAL to transfer a firearm barrel or handgun slide.
So now it's on parts two, and the requirement to have a valid PAL to import these parts, ammunition, and cartridge magazines will take effect on September 1st, 2024.
And then they give the link for the information.
And other measures that are already in effect, they list those.
Businesses and individuals may only transfer cartridge magazines to an individual that holds a valid PAL, national freeze on handguns, changes to the definition of a prohibited firearm, red flag laws, as though we didn't already have a version of those, and the addition of new criminal code offenses and additional measures they promise will take effect at a later date.
Now, you told me that you have a discussion coming up with our friends at the gun blog about what those additional measures might be.
Yeah, we've got an NFA talk Thursday night at 8 o'clock Eastern Time, Ontario Time, with Nicholas Johnson from the Gun blog.
And Nicholas has been following this very closely at the government level and at the RCMP level.
We will be discussing these points, these amendments.
And as everybody knows, these amendments were when the C21 discussions were going on, they put into place all these amendments at the end.
I think everybody was getting weary and tired of being at the C21 at the SECQ SECQ meetings there.
And everybody was getting tired.
And they just put, I don't know, 80 or 90 of these amendments in place.
And now they're starting to enact them.
And apparently they're going to be enforcing them.
Now, and their whole thing was, well, we have to start keeping track of slides and barrels because of 3D printing and ghost guns.
Why not go after the bad guys?
Why go after the good guys on this stuff?
Stop the illicit import of firearms into Canada.
Stop straw purchases.
Stop ghost guns.
But that's not the liberals' approach.
The liberals' approach is, we'll just put more rules and rigs into place for law-abiding Canadians instead of where the problem really lies.
Speaking of these amendments, the one I'm waiting for to pop up is a firearms advisory committee because it was part of the recreation of the firearms advisory committee was going to be part of these amendments.
And I'm just waiting for that to come up.
We've applied for a position on that.
The chances of us getting on that committee are really slim.
I spoke to Terry Bryant from Alberta and she suggested that we get on it.
The Alberta CFO is going to try to get on it.
If they put that into place, the problem with that is, and I know we're short on time here, but they can basically attach the order in council to the end of C21 through a firearms advisory committee.
So even if there's no doubt, in my opinion, that there's going to be a government change.
Right now, the way it sits, Pier Polyev can get rid of the order in council with a stroke of a pen.
But if something happens before that, this firearms advisory committee moves forward, they attach the order of counsel, the 15 or 18 or 1,900 guns, whatever it is now, to the end of as an amendment to C21.
It's going to be a lot harder to get rid of because C21 is a law.
I've spoken to Polyev, and he said, he's going to get rid of the Order in Council right away.
And he's going to C21's, it's a little different.
They almost have to put an opposing bill in to get our stuff back, our handguns, and get rid of some of these amendments, Megs, and the slide and barrel issue that you mentioned.
It still has to go through the Senate, though.
And the Senate is overloaded with liberals and independents right now.
It's going to be a tough goal.
I'm sure he's up to the challenge.
But at the end of the day, we have to either make a government change really quick.
And from what I'm hearing from our lobbyists in Ottawa, things are just in an uproar between the NDP and the Liberals right now.
And actually, there's an uproar inside the Liberal Party from what I've been hearing.
Apparently, our prime minister hasn't even been showing up to meetings to discuss his future.
So I don't know what's going to become of that.
Judd Meet Singh seems to be hanging in there for his pension, which is unfortunate because he's hurting his own party.
He's hurting himself by doing it.
Again, my opinion, he's showing his true colors.
He's in there for the money and nothing else.
And I don't know what's going to happen, but back to this C21, there's so many amendments there, and they'll slowly put them into place, which is going to lock us down very hard, more than people were expecting.
So we'll be discussing that on Thursday night with Nicholas Johnson from the Gun Blog.
Nicholas is he's done an in-depth study on this.
Him and I talk about this stuff all the time.
So if you can come out, have a listen, and maybe we can get some more information out there to the people.
Yeah, I really admire the work Nicholas does as somebody who deals in access to information all the time.
That man is a very powerful journalist who does not get the credit he deserves for uncovering a lot of the things going on within the government with regard to government gun control legislation.
Rick, where can people find that talk that you're doing with Nicholas?
It's going to be on YouTube on Canada's National Firearms Association.
The link is also going to be on our Facebook page, on our Instagram and on our Twitter.
So if you go to any of those platforms and click on the link, it'll take you to the program.
The program is going to be live.
We will be taking questions during the program.
There's going to be a lot of stuff out there.
What I've been finding, I was at an event in Hamilton, the gun club, a couple days ago.
They had the Ontario Provincial Trap Shooting Championships happening there.
So there is a lot of people there from all over Ontario and Manitoba and Quebec and even farther out.
A lot of people are unaware of what's going on.
We need to get the information out there so people can jump aboard and get into the fight.
That's one of my biggest struggles in the NFA is getting more people to jump aboard and getting into the fight.
And as you and I know, Sheila, the more people we can get aboard, votes talk.
And you just can't, you can't sit in the weeds anymore and let everything unfold.
You have to get into the fight.
There's no other choice.
The liberals put us in that position.
So that's a great segue.
Look at you.
You've done this before, Rick.
Look at me go.
How do people get involved in the NFA?
How did they get involved in the fight?
How do you create that army of people fighting back and funding the, I guess, the legal war chest of the NFA to take the government to task on these tyrannical pieces of legislation?
Well, there's several ways you can do it.
And to become a member, go to NFA.ca, which is our webpage.
There's a lot of information on there.
And there's a lot of information, even if you're not a member, you can use.
You can reach out to any of your provincial directors and they'll give you the information.
We're attending events right across Canada.
We'll be at quite a few events.
We always have a bit of a recruitment drive for members going at our events, along with selling some of our merchants and whatnot.
Joining Forces00:03:47
With the NFA, you got to remember the majority of the money goes back into the fight.
It's not there.
We have a small office staff.
I'm a full-time employee and we have a lobbyist.
Everybody else are volunteers and passionate, passionate people.
My board of directors are some of the most passionate firearms people you'll ever meet.
They're in it for the same reason I'm in it.
I'm not in it for the money or I'm in it because this involves my firearms.
It's about my firearms, but that's not my biggest thing.
My biggest thing is your kids and your kids' kids.
Future generations, if the liberals keep going and we keep them in power and the laws keep stacking up the way they are now, our children and our children's children are not going to be able to enjoy what we did with firearms growing up, plinking, you know, just all the guns are fun.
Guns are fun to shoot.
At the end of the day, guns are fun to shoot.
And I want the future generations, and this is my personal mandate.
I want the future generations to have the same privileges as we had and also to keep personal property that they worked hard for, they acquired.
I don't want tyrannical, I don't like using that word, but I'm going to use a tyrannical government taking our stuff away.
Yeah, if they, if I wouldn't use the word tyrannical if they didn't behave so tyrannically all the time.
But I'm with you.
This is not just about my private property ownership.
This is about my ability to pass along that private property that was my dad's, that was my grandfather's, onto my children.
It's about protecting the ability to use those tools for me of farming to keep my livestock safe, to keep my land safe.
It's about our culture.
And the liberals, they think culture only exists within this Laurentian bubble.
But there are a lot of Canadas and we're different.
As you know, Sheila, it's gone way beyond that now.
We're getting so many members now that aren't even firearms owners, but they have personal property.
You know, we work with other segments of Rebel News and we put stuff out.
And there's a lot of freedom people reaching out to us, donating to us.
They're not even gun owners, but they're concerned about the personal property aspect of the whole deal.
Yeah, every time you're on the show, I get somebody reaching out to me and saying, hey, do you think I could join the NFA if I'm not a firearms owner?
I'm like, I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure you can.
Every time you're on the show, because they see this as a greater issue of human rights.
And I'm glad that when you communicate about firearms, you communicated in that respect.
Rick, I could have you on the show for hours and hours and I could talk to you all day, but you're busy and I'm busy.
And I'll have you back on again very, very soon.
And tell us again one more time when people can find out about your talk with the gun blog.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can see what we're up to on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube.
If you're interested in joining and you want to see some documentation and what we're all about and how we're helping people, go to our website, nfa.ca.
The information's on there.
If you can, please join.
If you can't join our organization, join a gun organization.
You know, I say this all the time, you know, get into the fight.
Our voices need to be heard in Ottawa.
And the more people we can get aboard, the more the liberals and the conservatives are going to listen.