February 20, 2001
Canadian Experience Shows The High Price of Gun Control

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

Canadian Customs officials at Pearson International Airport in Toronto on Jan. 30 detained the Japanese Junior Airgun Team and seized their airguns, thereby advertising to the world another factor in the high price of gun control.

Authorities north of the border were reported trying to determine if the airguns should be considered “firearms” under C-68, the recently enacted and highly controversial Canadian Firearms Act and, if so, whether or not Temporary Firearms Licenses can be issued to the junior competitors since they are minors.

The Japanese team was traveling to compete at the annual Crosman International Airgun Grand Prix, hosted in Toronto by the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Commenting on the border delay, Tony Bernardo, executive director of the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action (CILA), said: “This is exactly the kind of nonsense we have repeatedly warned about.

“These kids are not a threat to Canadian society,” he continued. “These future Olympic competitors will hardly be doing drive-bys in Toronto with their $3,000 competition pellet guns, but they’ll sure remember this if Toronto succeeds in getting its Olympic bid.”

Toronto is one of the cities bidding to host the 2008 or 2012 Summer Olympics in which there are normally some 17 shooting events.

Continuing Controversy
The absurdity of detaining international competitors and holding their airguns is just the latest in the continuing embarrassment that C-68 has become for the Canadian government. Since it was enacted, the Canadian law, which focuses on shotgun and rifle licensing and registration even more than handguns, has inspired nothing but controversy

The registration requirement has cost about 21 times the original government estimates; the Canadian Supreme Court has upheld a constitutional challenge brought by seven provinces; the Act has been criticized by law enforcement and even members of the Liberal Party cabinet, and some provincial leaders have said they will not enforce it.

Now criticism is coming from a new quarter. The Toronto Star recently reported that highly personal questions asked of potential gunowners under the Act’s registration provisions have prompted Federal Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski to consider launching an official review of Canada’s gun licensing process.

Legal and privacy experts say the nation’s controversial gun licensing rules violate the privacy of gunowners and could jeopardize their right to a fair trial, according to The Star.

“I personally find the invasive nature of these questions disturbing,” Radwanski told The Canadian Press in a recent interview.

“I feel these questions should be reviewed afresh.... Our informal review indicates there is sufficient concern to justify conducting another review.”

Maze of Bureaucracy
Recent criticisms of the two-year-old process for getting a gun license—its high cost to the public, its maze of bureaucracy, and its alleged inefficiency in identifying safety risks—have missed a significant flaw in the law, other legal and privacy experts say.

Under the Act, gunowners and potential owners are asked to surrender sensitive personal information about their mental health history, marital and divorce status, and bankruptcy status—details that are stored in a federal database and may then be further investigated by firearms officers and even local police.

“The issue of violence is being used to justify a huge invasive grab of personal information,” said Valerie Steeves, a law professor at Carleton University and privacy expert specializing in human rights and technology.

Under the current rules, gunowners and potential owners are required to state on a form whether, in the past five years, they have: “threatened or attempted suicide,” “been diagnosed or treated by a medical practitioner for: depression, alcohol, drug or substance abuse, behavioral problems, or emotional problems,” or “experienced a divorce, breakdown of a significant relationship, job loss or bankruptcy.”

If they answer “yes” to any of the questions, applicants are asked to provide written details on a separate page.

David Austin, spokesperson for the Canadian Firearms Center in Ottawa, said a “yes” answer means the form is referred to the regional firearms office, where an officer further investigates by calling anyone associated with the applicant to determine whether that person is a risk. Steeves argues the security of federal government databases has proven faulty in the past, and said the large number of bureaucrats with access to the information should be questioned. Providing such information isn’t voluntary, as it’s been characterized by the law’s advocates, Steeves added.

The potential use of sensitive information during a criminal trial is another flaw in the legislation, said David Paciocco, a law professor at the University of Ottawa.

Paciocco said the way in which the personal information about mental health, divorce status or bankruptcy is collected could violate people’s rights not to incriminate themselves if they’re ever charged with an offense.

“All those pieces of information may assist in presenting a case, or establishing a motive,” he said. “It definitely undermines self-incrimination issues ... anybody who gives this information should know that they’re forfeiting privacy interests, and it can have implications for them.”

Powers granted to police by the legislation which allows them to investigate individuals as “agents of the center” is also cause for concern, he said.

“With respect to a suspect, they may be able to pose questions that sound innocent (under the guise of working for the firearms center), but that aren’t.

And while Canadians have been arguing over the privacy issue and firearms laws, similar privacy debates are taking place in the US for other reasons.

Super Bowl Surveillance
During the Super Bowl on Jan. 28, hidden cameras scanned each of the faces of those who passed through the turnstiles and compared their likenesses with photos of terrorists and known criminals of every stripe.

In a command post at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, FL, the digitized images of some 100,000 fans and workers were cross-checked against files of local police, the FBI and state agencies at the rate of a million images a minute.

The cameras identified 19 people with criminal histories, none of them of a “significant” nature, Tampa authorities said, according to The St. Petersburg Times. But the undisclosed first test of the technology at a major US sporting event raised arguments about privacy versus security and questions about the future of such spying and its uses.

“Oh my God, it’s yet another nail in the coffin of personal liberty,” said Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technical officer of Counterpane Internet Security Inc., a security monitoring company.

“It’s another manifestation of a surveillance society, which says we’re going to watch you all the time just in case you might do something wrong,” said Schneier, whose book Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World warned of the increasing encroachment on civil liberties in high-tech society.

But USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, an authority on constitutional law, said the right to privacy doesn’t extend to places quite so public.

“I’m troubled by the extensive use of cameras to monitor us when we’re in public places, but that doesn’t mean it’s illegal or unconstitutional,” Chemerinsky said. “People have no reasonable expectation that when out in public, they cannot be photographed.”

Unfortunately, too many Americans apparently would agree with Oakland Raiders Senior Assistant Bruce Allen’s position:

“Whatever they want to do to protect this country, I’m for. . . . So anything we can do to help, I can’t imagine anyone disagreeing with that.”

That’s what a lot of Canadians apparently also said.