Paul Rogan, the founding editor of Canadian Access to Firearms, wasn’t always a libertarian thinker and activist. The 75-year-old campaigned for the socialists as a young adult in the 1960s in his homeland of France, before discovering the writings of Ayn Rand and experiencing a political conversion.
TheGunBlog.ca met with Rogan today in Whitehorse, Yukon, to talk about guns, politics, and his monthly subscription-only newsletter, which he describes as the most-private way to buy and sell firearms in Canada.
Background on Rogan’s Early Yukon Lifestyle: Rogan moved from France to Yukon in the 1960s and lived in the bush with his wife and daughter, who shot her first bear at age 12, regularly traveled 100 km alone on horseback to get the mail, and won scholarships to Sophia University in Japan and Harvard University in Massachusetts despite never having set foot in a classroom.
Why did you start the Canadian Access to Firearms newsletter?
My idea originally was to use it as a way for people who like firearms to have political influence. All my research and all my travels tell me that the left is wrong. It’s a con job. The left will never be able to offer a solution to humanity, because it starts from a false premise: equality. No two people have ever been equal.
What do guns have to do with politics?
Guns are a symbol of freedom. A society that respects you as a citizen with full rights cannot deny you the right to own guns. It’s the basis of the Second Amendment.
When people ask why you need an AR-15 to hunt rabbits, they’re missing the point. It has nothing to do with hunting rabbits. It has to do with politics and politicians.
You cannot ask a human being to give up their right to protect their existence. It’s not possible to give someone else the right to decide your right to exist.
Who are your subscribers?
We have two trends among our subscribers at the moment. The first group is loyal supporters, mainly older guys who have lived their whole lives with a lot more freedom and liberty than what we have now. They tend to keep quiet, they don’t go to public meetings, but they don’t like what’s happening. The second group is younger guys who are just discovering that they’re missing something. Society hasn’t given them what they need. They are missing the whole idea that being a human being, you have natural rights.
What makes Canadian Access to Firearms unique?
We are the most-private way to deal in guns in Canada, in terms of buying and selling. Lots of Internet sites that sell guns tell you that your information will be shared with the government. When people read our paper, they see only that someone has a gun for sale and they see a phone number. The rest is up to them.
How has the newsletter worked out as a business?
When we started, we had a business plan forecast to break even after five years. We broke even and were profitable after two years.
In 34 years of doing this, I have met some of the most dependable and loyal people you could imagine. I’ve never signed a contract with any of my advertisers. It’s all done with a verbal agreement and a handshake. If you’re going to be marooned on a desert island, these are the kind of people you want to be marooned with.
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