You'll Put Your Eye Out with that Kid!

Well hunting season will be upon us this fall and the lake areas will be run-amok with mad hunters armed to the teeth with shotguns, and high powered rifles. NOT!

When was the last fall that you heard the sound of gun fire in the air, or the days when you could drive down any country road and come across fathers and sons patrolling the countryside for geese or ducks. Or even the backroads of Alder Flats with vehicles pulled into the ditches while hunters hiked into crown land looking to bag a moose. It just does not happen anymore. It certainly happens less.

The disarming of common folk at the hands of federal liberals at the turn of the century has reduced hunters and gun owners at a rapid pace, and at the same time gun crimes is up in the country while federal spending to disarm the public has run-amok.

I was one of those ‘gun nuts’ who years ago had a Browning 30.06 Semi-Automatic rifle, a Cooey 20 gauge shotgun, a Winchester 12 Gauge shotgun, a Remington 3030, and a Cooey 22 single shot.

I was raised by a father who taught me gun safety and gave me an appreciation of weaponry. My father was a career policeman who also instilled in me a respect for the law. A respect that saw me enter service in 1980. I last worked in uniform in 2001 on a First Nations Reserve near Hobbema, Alberta.

When the new gun law regulations came in effect, I like many, were perplexed because I knew as a police officer that it would not make any difference in reducing gun related crime and it was only a liberal money grab. The bad guy, who wanted to procure a firearm for the purpose robbing a convenience store would not be the type to fill out a application form, not to mention registering it.

Refusing to ‘go through the ropes’, I did the next best thing. I sold all my weapons to a qualified couple on the Indian Reserve. Those folks have the ability to hunt when they want and I am sure they are in the hands of very responsible people.

So there I was, a man without any of his rifles that were handed down by my father. The government had in essence told me that unless I came under scrutiny I was not trustworthy enough to possess weapons used for hunting.

Yep, I was a man in uniform that conformed to the regulation is spades. Did you catch that? The government did not trust me, an average citizen, like all other Canadians, so my guns were no more. But on my hip in the course of my employment I carried a Semi-Automatic GLOCK hand gun, which I was fully qualified for, and scored a perfect 300. The irony of it all.

Today, I am reduced to hunting with a Daisy Red Rider BB gun with a muzzle velocity of 273 fps. Yess- siree, I don my red cap with a bow tied on the top and plaid jacket, while slinging my Daisy over my shoulder and head out at fall. With a Daisy I can raise welts in the backsides of them there critters.

“Oh Wabbit, come out a Pway!” is a call of the sportsman in Alberta. You’ll put your eye out with that kid!