If you view things as a simple case of the government ultimately looking for a way to screw you, you’re generally going to be better off than if you’re trusting. It doesn’t matter who is in power; the bureaucrats alone exist just to flex their authority, and that means playing games with people’s lives in too many cases.
So, when a government starts telling you to declare you have guns so they can take them from you with the promise of payment, you should be skeptical for many reasons. Sure, part of it is why do they really want your guns. Another is asking just how they’ll manage to screw people over.
It seems that in Canada, the problem is that they’re upset that Alberta doesn’t want to play their anti-gun games, so everyone who tried to follow the rules is getting screwed.
More than 7,000 banned guns have been declared in Alberta under the federal government’s gun buyback program, but owners in the province can’t collect compensation because of an ongoing dispute between Alberta and Ottawa over how the program is meant to operate.
That’s left firearms owners like James Bachynsky, president of the Calgary Shooting Centre, frustrated and out of pocket.
“It’ll impact me personally; it’ll impact my business partners, my family,” he said.
He said the government offered $67,700 for his firearms, lower than the roughly $80,000 he believes they’re worth.
But because of the standoff between the two levels of government, he’s not able to collect it.
Meanwhile, the federal government has set an October deadline where prohibited guns must be disposed of or deactivated, whether a gun owner sought compensation or not.
Basically, Canada wants Alberta to help them with the whole thing, and Alberta figures that since the federal government decided to kick off this whole boondoggle, it’s up to them to run it. They shouldn’t be forced to play that game, and I agree.
Of course, I think anyone who tried to follow these rules was destined to get screwed from the start, because the government will always lowball you when it comes to what they’re going to pay you for your stuff, particularly when they’re making you sell it to them. If you didn’t see this coming, that’s on you.
But for the Canadian government to back down on paying anything unless Alberta helps with something they never agreed to help is pathetic.
Is it any wonder that a lot of Albertans are looking at the whole “Make Canada the 51st state” rhetoric more than a bit wistfully?
Alberta didn’t sign on for this. They explicitly said they weren’t taking part. If Canada has the authority to force the issue, then they need to step up and do it, even if it makes them the bad guys, rather than trying to screw over the people who did exactly what they were told to do.
Now, those people are going to lose those guns one way or another, because if they don’t, they’re likely to get a knock on the door from the federal authorities up that way. After all, they’ve admitted to having these now-banned firearms.
But because the provincial government doesn’t want to take part in something it disagrees with–it’s not even trying to be a sanctuary province, really, as they’re just saying they won’t help–the people there get hosed.
Gun control is never about anything but control. It’s nothing but a way to make the law-abiding pay, and this is just more of the same. The people who complied are the ones getting screwed. The Albertans who didn’t say a thing about their guns? They’re the ones most likely to be fine.
There’s a lesson in there for gun owners throughout the world.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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