Category: Anti Civil Rights ideas & “Friends”
Canada’s government is forcing licensed and law-abiding firearm owners to surrender, export or permanently “deactivate” thousands of prohibited firearm models. Meanwhile, a criminal investigation involving former Member of Parliament (MP) Inky Mark shows Canadian authorities already possess extensive laws to pursue actual firearm trafficking and other illegal criminal conduct.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested former MP Mark, 79, after executing search warrants on July 7, 2026, at his Dauphin, Manitoba, residence. Investigators reported seizing 439 firearms, ammunition, an antique cannon and more than C$300,000 in cash, which Mark claims is from the sale of Manitoba properties. Former MP Mark faces 12 Criminal Code charges, including firearm trafficking and possession of property obtained by crime.
He has been released from custody. Mark denies the charges but did tell the Canadian Broadcast Corporation that “he did something stupid” and admitted he transferred firearms to an individual he has known for 30 years.
Mark, also the former mayor of Dauphin, is outspoken and critical against Canada’s Liberal Party, which dominates politics north of the border. Mark wasn’t in Canada’s Parliament when the gun confiscation bill was voted upon.
Criminal Conduct Is Already Illegal
RCMP officials said investigators believe at least three of the seized firearms were illegally trafficked and one had an altered serial number. The investigation reportedly began after another Dauphin resident was charged with firearm offenses in the United States.
Those allegations are serious. But they do not expose some previously unknown gap in Canada’s gun laws.
Firearm trafficking, altering serial numbers, unauthorized possession and violating secure storage laws are already criminal offenses. RCMP officials acknowledged that Canadians may lawfully possess large firearm collections. The legal line is crossed by criminal conduct, not by the number of firearms a licensed citizen owns.
That distinction should guide public policy.
Confiscation Moves Forward
In the meantime, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is pressing ahead with the so-called “Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program” covering more than 2,500 makes and models prohibited since May 2020. The entire scheme, begun under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has been a fiasco from the get-go.
The declaration period for law-abiding gun owners ended March 31. Collection, destruction, deactivation and compensation are already underway and are expected to continue through early fall. As of June 8, owners had declared just 68,717 firearms, including 2,520 in Manitoba.
Participation in the compensation program was technically voluntary. But compliance with the prohibitions is not. Owners who decline compensation must ultimately surrender their affected firearms without payment, export them or pay to have them permanently deactivated.
Facing measly compliance rates, the Canadian government extended its amnesty orders after the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear a challenge to the 2020 prohibitions. The amnesty will now expire 90 days after the court issues its decision, expected in 2027. The confiscation program, however, continues.
Target Criminals, Not Lawful Owners
Nothing alleged against former MP Mark suggests Canada needed to prohibit thousands of additional firearm models or confiscate lawfully acquired property to investigate him.
Police used existing laws directed at trafficking, unauthorized possession and altered serial numbers. That is precisely where enforcement belongs.
The courts will determine whether former MP Mark committed the offenses alleged against him.
The United States had their own brush with a state lawmaker convicted of trafficking firearms. California Democratic state Sen. Leland Yee was a “known champion of open government and gun control” according to an NPR report. The Brady Campaign named him to its Gun Violence Prevention Honor Roll for his bill to require unworkable microstamping. He was also part of the effort to require California’s “bullet button.”
Except he was an illegal firearm trafficker. Yee accepted over $42,000 from undercover FBI agents to provide up to $2.5 million in firearms from Muslim terrorists in The Philippines and smuggle them into the United States.
The disgraced state senator was convicted of felony racketeering charges for money laundering, political corruption, arms trafficking and bribery. He spent five years in prison.
Canada’s Mark faces his own day in court but policymakers there should nevertheless recognize the larger lesson already staring them in the face.
Public safety is not advanced by disarming hunters, recreational shooters and other licensed citizens who obey the law. It is advanced by identifying criminal conduct, prosecuting those responsible and leaving lawful firearm owners alone.
by Lee Williams
It’s hard not to smile or even giggle a little bit when you see how badly President Donald Trump is scaring the country’s paid anti-gun community, especially when you combine the President’s efforts with those of the United States Supreme Court.
No one is feeling this pro-gun heat more than the youngsters working at the Trace, the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control empire, who want the public to believe it’s an actual newsroom comprised of actual journalists—a fiction they’ll go to great lengths to maintain.
The Trace kids are extremely busy trying to stop this Second Amendment tidal wave that’s washing across the entire country. They realize that they’re losing, so they’re rabidly coming up with new ideas to counter our coming freedom—and some of their ideas are absolutely crazy.
Two Tracers just released this tome: “New Jersey Just Lost Its Assault Weapons Ban. Here’s Why That Matters for the Rest of the Country.”
The story’s last line is bedeviling. It’s not a quote or taken from any report. It’s completely attributable to the story’s two anti-gun authors:
“If the Supreme Court strikes down assault weapons bans nationwide next year, states could try other strategies, including putting semiautomatic rifles behind a permitting process,” they actually wrote.
Can you actually imagine that?
The highest court in the country says you can legally possess ARs in every state and U.S. Territory, but then some blue state suddenly requires you to obtain a state permit—regardless of the Supreme Court decision?
Do they think that might actually work?
It’s a Second Amendment right, right?
It would be like requiring state permits before allowing someone to read a book or scour the internet, which are rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The Trace is redefining desperation.
I’m picturing five-gallon pails of Zoloft, Prozac and Xanax scattered throughout their newsroom, each with a “help yourself” label.
It actually gets even worse. They’ve actually run out of legitimate sources.
The two authors wrote this:
“It’s unclear whether rescinding the bans will cause an increase in gun violence — or mass shootings in particular. Assault weapons have been used in most of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, and studies have found that assault weapons, combined with high-capacity magazines, may increase the death count in mass shootings,” the story claims.
The link takes you to another hilarious medical study, which falsely claimed that “state assault weapons bans are associated with fewer fatalities.” The study based its findings on one particular source: “Data were abstracted from the Gun Violence Archive, an independent online database of US gun violence incidents.”
We’ve nearly written volumes about the faulty data from the Gun Violence Archive—so much so that it’s hard not to laugh every time some academic clod uses it in their “research.” Suffice it to say, the GVA said there were 417 mass shootings in 2019. The FBI says there were 30, because it uses actual data and doesn’t make stuff up.
The two authors actually supported using the GVA’s faulty numbers.
“The Trace uses the Gun Violence Archive’s definition of mass shooting, which includes shootings resulting in four or more injuries or deaths, excluding the shooter,” they wrote.
Trace history
The Trace calls itself “The only newsroom dedicated to covering gun violence.” Its staff refer to themselves as journalists, rather than anti-gun activists who are paid by Bloomberg to write propaganda.
Since the Trace was founded about a decade ago, scores of newspapers, websites and other legacy media outlets have fallen victim to this ruse. What’s left of Gannett’s flagship newspaper, USA Today, has collaborated with the Trace multiple times, and has even allowed Trace activists to produce and edit content, which appeared in the newspaper under a joint byline.
“We have partnered with more than 170 national and local media organizations,” the Trace boasts on its website. “We’re always looking to start new partnerships.”
The Trace is nothing more than the propaganda arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, which is also funded by Bloomberg.
Both nonprofits share the same president, John Feinblatt. In fact, Feinblatt is also listed as the two nonprofits’ principal officer. Federal tax documents show that the Trace and Everytown also use the same phone number, 646-324-8250.
Both nonprofits were incorporated in Delaware, which is known for its stringent corporate privacy laws.
Takeaways
Now that New Jersey-compliant ARs are a thing of the past, and California-compliant ARs may soon follow, we should take a minute to relax, but only one minute, no more.
The Trace and its followers will certainly come up with more whacky ideas, but they live in states whose judges support whacky behavior, especially if it harms the Second Amendment.
We remain in a constant battle for our civil rights, and anything can still go wrong at any time, according to Murphy’s Law.
“I learned that Murphy is alive and well. He’s in every drawer, under every rock and on top of every hill.”
Col. Charlie Beckwith said that. He should certainly know.
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Texas has a proud heritage of gun ownership and Second Amendment support, so the likelihood of a vehement anti-gun candidate getting elected on a statewide basis for nearly any public office isn’t great.
Look no further than three-time loser Beto O’Rourke for proof. Running on a solidly anti-gun platform of banning AR and AK style rifles, O’Rourke lost the election for the U.S. Senate to pro-gun Sen. Ted Cruz, then failed to make it out of the primaries before the 2020 election. Finally, he lost the governor’s race to pro-gun candidate Greg Abbott in a lopsided 52% to 43% vote.
Enter Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a “pastor” who has proclaimed that God is “non-binary” and that there are really “six different genders.” While those views won’t sit well with many Texans, his views on guns and gun ownership seem to be even worse.
Talarico is vying for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. John Cornyn, who lost the Republican primary to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And Talarico’s thoughts on the Second Amendment should ensure that gun-rights proponents vote against Talarico this November.
In a town hall meeting in 2020, Talarico explained his reasoning on why passing more and more restrictive gun control laws is appropriate and constitutional.
“A lot of politicians like to talk about the Second Amendment,” Rep. Talarico said in the video town hall. “Very few have actually read the Second Amendment because, if they did, they would know that the words ‘well regulated’ are right there in the text of the amendment itself.”
As the National Shooting Sports Foundation pointed out in a recent news alert chronicling Talerico’s stance,
“Rep. Talarico’s suggestion that ‘well regulated’ meant that the Founders believed all along that gun rights were supposed to be heavily restricted or conditioned is as laughable as it should be disqualifying,” Larry Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel, wrote in the alert.
“We have a summer reading list for Rep. Talarico, and it begins with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Heller.”
As Keane further pointed out, in the early days of our country, “well regulated” referred to “well trained,” “well organized” or “well exercised.” Basically, the militia (of “the People”) is trained and ready to go should it be called up for duty.
Of course, that’s not Talarico’s only objectionable stance when it comes to gun owners’ rights. On a progressive podcast, he called for passage of “safe storage” laws that would mandate how citizens store their privately owned firearms—a position in direct opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Heller.
On that podcast, he equated gun control laws to the requirement for people to apply for city permits in order to hold protests and rallies on city property—a ludicrous comparison, indeed.
It was even revealed recently that Talarico employed the former head of an extremist gun control protest movement as his legislative aide in the Texas House of Representatives.
As Keane wrote, while November might seem far off, the election just a little more than 100 days away.
“As Rep. Talarico continues to try to sell his anti-gun platform to voters in Texas, more of them will learn just how extreme that platform is and will reject it,” Keane concluded. “NSSF will be there to help spread the word.”
Ultimately, while there are some decidedly liberal cities in Texas—like Austin, Houston and Dallas (think failed congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who lost to Talarico in the Democratic Senate primary)—rank-and-file Texans are believers in the protections afforded by the Second Amendment and cast their votes accordingly. Hopefully, the vast majority will do so again and keep Talarico as far away from Washington, D.C., as possible.