TheGunBlog.ca — Watch our exclusive conversation with Teri Bryant, Alberta’s first provincially appointed Chief Firearms Officer.
Topics Include
- Starting the Alberta CFO office from ground zero.
- Working toward the complementary goals of “a flourishing firearms community and the very highest levels of public safety”
- How Alberta gun owners targeted by federal confiscation should respond
- Timing of Alberta’s provincial Firearms Act
- Personal political action, donating, volunteering
- And more!
Duration: 1 hour 50 minutes
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Select Quotations By Teri Bryant, Alberta CFO
Federal Liberal Gun Confiscations Are Counterproductive
… what I really would like is not just to be cheered by the firearms community, but I think if people really understood what we are doing, then ordinary people all across Canada — in Alberta and elsewhere — would also be cheering us on, because what we’re attempting to do is to head off a massive diversion of resources in directions that are not just unproductive, but likely counterproductive. (00:10:44)
’Five Rounds Good, Six Rounds Bad’ Undermines Public Safety
What we’re arguing against largely is the idea that public safety can be promoted by prohibiting specific types of firearms. You can get into an endless and usually unproductive debate about exactly, “Well, this one is good, that one is bad, this one is in between, and so on.” Really that’s a completely unproductive direction for the allocation of resources for public-safety purposes. Because the approach that we take is that if someone shouldn’t have a firearm, they shouldn’t have any firearm. Trying to improve public safety by saying, “Well, you can’t have this one because it’ll hold six rounds, but you can have that one because it’ll hold five rounds.” that’s really not a productive way of approaching the public-safety issue. What we need to be doing is focusing on who it is that is allowed legal access to firearms. (01:13:05)
Confiscation Is Corrosive
In the short term, the cost of these kind of measures, like banning specific types of firearms arbitrarily without any justification, in the short term the cost of that is a huge waste of money. But in the long term that’s even more corrosive to our social fabric because it undermines the credibility of the federal government, of our regulatory system, of the police who are then charged with doing things. (00:29:35)
‘Compliance Through Credibility, Not Compulsion’
One of my slogans is: “Compliance through credibility, not compulsion.” So if we have laws that are credible, that are reasonable, and they are being administered by people who are credible and reasonable, then it’s a natural human tendency to want to comply, to just go along with things, and everyone will be better off that way. But if we follow the path that the federal government has followed, and try and abuse the most-honest, law-abiding segment of the population, then that undermines people’s trust in the whole system — not just gun control, but every aspect of how we operate our society. (00:42:59)
You Can Use Rules to Help People or Hurt People
Anytime there’s a law or a regulation or some kind of a rule, you can try to find ways to use that rule against people, or use that rule to help people. We always try to bring people into compliance, to help them to comply to avoid issues. We actively work to try and help ranges to stay open, to help people to keep their guns, to make sure that they get a proper license, and so on. (01:04:51)
Flourishing Firearms Community and Public Safety
… when I was appointed I had a mandate letter which laid out much more expansive responsibilities than is typical for especially a federally appointed CFO because their job is basically, Here’s the program we’ll tell you what to do,” whereas my job is to administer the program as it is now, but to try and advocate for change to make it better, to make it more effective, to make it more efficient, to make it more user-friendly, to help to reconcile the two issues which I think are are actually complementary and mutually reinforcing, and that is: a flourishing firearms community and the very highest levels of public safety. (01:09:10)
Alberta Firearms Act Timing
May 29th is the election. I think it is highly likely that there will be something introduced before then.
Guidelines to Alberta Gun Owners Targeted by the Liberal Confiscations
Sit tight and don’t panic, because right now we’re almost at the end of January, the current amnesty expires at the end of October … October 30 …, but given where the federal government is right now on developing its process for the confiscation of these firearms and the awarding of some degree of compensation to affected individuals, I can’t see any way that it’s possible for them to accomplish that program by the date the amnesty expires. …. (01:15:01)
Liberals Will Fail to Meet Their Confiscation Deadline
There’s no way that they can do what they are proposing to do. I think they will have no alternative but to reluctantly extend the amnesty. (01:16:24)
Donate the Value of One Gun Each Year for Advocacy
The rule of thumb that I have used for a long time and that I personally have exceeded for many years is: every firearms owner every year should donate the equivalent of the cost of one typical firearm that they would have. (01:20:45)
A Matter of Principle
I have a Norinco CQA1, which is the Chinese knockoff of an M4, an AR-15 platform carbine, and I can say it openly because it’s registered, so the feds know I have it. That’s not a huge monetary loss it was roughly $600 or $620 when I bought it. But as a matter of principle, if they offered me $6,000 or $60,000, I wouldn’t take it. I would rather keep the gun than take that money. But I may have no choice at some point. And in my case, my ability to continue in my position and advocate from the position that I have is more important than whether I’m able to keep that $600 gun. (01:39:57)
We’re All in the Same Boat, Let’s Row in the Same Direction
The positive thing is that these measures have brought us together in a way that I have not previously seen. …Now we see that we’re all in the same boat and we all need to be rowing it in the same direction. (01:47:05)