When a Canadian Gets Gun Rights Better Than Many Americans

“You don’t need an AR-15 to hunt deer.”

It’s a common refrain among anti-gunners, and they’re not wrong. You don’t. An AR-15 isn’t a great deer rifle, though not for the reasons they think. It’s actually illegal to use for hunting in many states because the round isn’t powerful enough to humanely kill a deer–a long way from the whole “it’ll blow your lung out” nonsense.

The bigger issue than their lack of understanding about calibers and hunting laws, though, is the inane believe that the right to keep and bear arms has anything at all to do with hunting in the first place. That’s especially fascinating since so many of them also seem to lean heavily on the “well-regulated militia” argument. They know the militia clause, but think gun rights are only for hunting?

It’s kind of insane.

Yet over the weekend, a reader sent me a piece from a Canadian author’s Substack that was pretty fascinating. It seems he understands the value of gun rights far better than some of our fellow Americans.

Canadians pretended we didn’t need to take defence seriously. We justified it with fantasies — the world wasn’t that dangerous, threats were distant, and America would rescue us if needed. That delusion is dead. U.S. Republicans and some Democrats don’t trust us to defend our own territory. Trump openly floated annexation and made clear that military protection now comes at a price — potentially statehood. Canadian military leaders now describe our closest ally as “unpredictable and potentially unreliable.” And even when America was a sure bet, our overreliance was reckless. Sovereignty requires self-defence; outsourcing it means surrendering power.

We should take cues from nations in similar situations, like Finland. Both of us border stronger powers, control vast, harsh landscapes, and hold valuable strategic resources. We’re internally stable, democratic, and potential targets.

We also share a key strength — one that could expand our military recruitment, onshore defence production, rebuild social trust, and bolster deterrence: a strong civilian firearms tradition.

We should be doing everything we can to make that tradition a bigger part of Canadian defence, and a larger part of our economy, too.

That may sound absurd to some Canadians. It shouldn’t. Finland is taking full advantage by attempting to expand shooting and military training for civilians both through private and public ranges and the voluntary National Defence Training Association. Finland is seeking to massively upgrade civilian range capacity by building 300 new ones and upgrading others to encourage civilian interest in firearms and national defence, and is doing so in partnership with civilian firearm owners and existing non-government institutions.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of the whole 51st-state thing, though it is kind of funny watching Canadians flip out about it. Still, the truth is that the Canadian military is largely built on the idea that we Americans will swoop in to save them should the need arise, which is something they really shouldn’t do.

I’ve seen a lot of responses, though, from Canadians who have claimed they’d resist any attempt at annexation with force, which is hilarious to me because they’ll give up the very weapons best suited for such a thing just as soon as the government can figure out how to confiscate them. They’re already banned. People who own them can’t sell them, shoot them, or do anything with them lawfully until such time as the government figures out how to work its “buyback,” which is a clusterflop all its own.

While it’s unlikely we’d actually try to conquer Canada–who wants a new state filled with people who think California is too pro-gun for their taste?–the truth is that their gun control laws have weakened them from a national defense standpoint.

It’s also why I will never give up any of my guns.

Our Founding Fathers were distrustful of standing armies. They’d seen the army used to quell dissent in the colonies and they were concerned that a standing army would be used similarly here. They wanted the people to be armed so they could resist foreign invaders.

Even with a standing army, though, the militia was still a thing. 

“But now we have the National Guard.”

Yes, we do, but there’s something a lot of people don’t like to think about, and that’s how part of any nation’s mobilization strategy involves the general populace being called up in a militia role.

Canada and many other nations have basically taken the step of making that last stage of a call-up as ineffective as it can possibly be. Finland is correcting that, as are many European nations, thankfully. The United States doesn’t inherently have that issue. While some don’t shoot, sure, there are a lot of us who do and are prepared to answer the call, even bringing our own weapons to the battlefield.

What the author of this piece is doing is suggesting that Canada step up and do the same thing.

If the specter of an American invasion prompts them to get their house in order, so be it. I hate that it’s come to this, of course, but it’ll be better for Canada in the long run.