Canada Experiencing Massive Civil Disobedience Over Registration
Slow gun registration panicking Ottawa
by Gary Ball

Originally ran in Peterborough Examiner

(Canada) April 30, 2000

Excerpt from Column: It seems that Ottawa has realized, way to late, that it may be facing massive civil disobedience over firearms registration.

Canada and the United States, learned sad lessons about bad laws during Prohibition. Is Ottawa worried about the same sort of situation with firearms. Is that what the panic's about? Bruce Hutton, a former Mountie from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, heads the Law-Abiding Firearms Association (LUFA), which he says has 16,000 members across Canada. Two LUFA meetings in Ontario that I'm aware of drew about 400 gun owners, many willing to sign up at $20 a head. There were about 300 at a Sudbury meeting and about 100 in Apsley, north of Peterborough. Hutton and LUFA say, in a published plan, that they are advocating non-registration, non-compliance, civil disobedience. "When the first member of LUFA is arrested or charged, we will appoint his legal counsel. Then

10 or 20 or 30,000 of us will go into RCMP detachments across this country and tell them we have unregistered firearms without a licence," LUFA's website (www.lufa.ca) says. "This is an indictable offence so they will have to investigate.

The RCMP doesn't have the manpower to handle it and the court system is already plugged. They will not be able to handle the load. We will also ask for legal aid as we are not financially capable of paying our lawyers' fees. We can tie the courts up forever." Yes, indeed, there's a whiff of panic in the air around the Department of Justice and the Canadian Firearms Centre.