Shaun Newman Podcast - #754 - Rod Giltaca

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

CEO and Executive Director of Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR). We discuss his journey into becoming a firearm lobbyist, the differences between Canada and the United States and Castle Law. Cornerstone Forum ‘25 https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone25/ Clothing Link: ⁠⁠⁠https://snp-8.creator-spring.com/listing/the-mashup-collection⁠⁠ Text Shaun 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Silver Gold Bull Links: Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone]

This is Brett Olin. I'm Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Prodnick. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. You're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Monday. How's everybody doing today? I got some thoughts on this past weekend. Let's get to precious metals first before we get there, shall we? Precious metals can be thought of as an ultimate insurance policy against economic uncertainty and government incompetence with deficit spending and fiscal irresponsibility unlikely to end anytime soon. Certainly not under this government.

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coins for the same price as generic silver rounds. All you've got to do is text or email Graham for details. That's down in the show notes. and if you want to get a feel for Silver Gold Bowl, I suggest going back to the last episode when I had Nick on one of the managing partners of Silver Gold Bowl. So him and Brett Olin were on together, and that was a fun little chat.

So if you want to get a feel for maybe a little bit more on Silver Gold Bowl, hop back an episode and go give that a listen. Cal Rock, your trusted partner in surplus oil field equipment, they had a table Friday night at the Dube. ceiling pianos. Get to that in a second. Leading supplier of new, used, and recondition oil field production equipment here in Canada, but that's not all. Tank fabrication, new and refurbish fluid storage tanks, trucking, pumpjacks, and demolition. Go to calrock.org.org for all your oilfield needs. Clay Smiley, the team over at Prophet River, well, it's

Christmas season, folks. And if you got a hunter or a sportsman in your life, you can do, you can go online. You can be anywhere in Canada. And you can find some cool stuff get it shipped right to you your spot in this country they are the major retailer of firearms optics and accessories they serve all of canada just go to profit river dot com windsor plywood builders of the podcast studio table for everything wood these are the folks and um well if you're looking for character wood mantles decks windows doors sheds podcast studio tables stop in here in lloyd minster windsor plywood and talk to carly they also had a table this past weekend at the dueling pianos I want to say thank you to all the companies.

We had back-to-back sold-out shows in total 22 companies here in Lloydminster and the surrounding area, I should say, because Ignite Distribution came in from Wainwright, and Caleb Taves, Renegate Acres, bought a table, and they're obviously Neilberg. And so there was, but regardless, 22 companies came out, supported, and my hats off to all of you. I appreciate it so much to the pianos.

I was telling the Grand Dueling Piano show, the group of the three performers, and then they had a fourth doing all the audio and visual. I told them, like, the first night on Friday, they were good. Like, I was like, okay, yeah, this is good. This is, I can't wait for the second night type thing. And the second night, they were electric. They had everybody out on the dance floor, and, yeah, I was thoroughly impressed.

And so I appreciate everybody coming along for the ride for the Christmas shows. That it was three companies in particular, T-Barr-1, uh, crude master and Rohan rig services here all in Lloyd that kind of this idea came around would I do a Christmas show and, and have it small enough that the three of them could, you know, get together

and it not be this 800 person thing. And, and so now we've got 240 people back to back nights. And it's become a lot of fun, like a lot of fun. And the dueling piano is just, uh, well, set a new bar for what the, the Christmas shows have become. And I just appreciate all the new companies that came along this year, you know, there's a whole list. I mean, I guess I could probably just

hear, Sean, how about I do this? You know, I hate to not, I hate to miss anyone. Cal Rock had a table, Jonas Hagel and balanced soil had a few Dan Ray paving, McCar Lawn, Triton, Quest Logistics, Renegade Acres, Ignite Distribution, Anderson Ag, Veracity, Financial, Kings, Windsor, Keene. We had individuals from home one by a table. Shout out to Rhett and his wife. Chelsea Smith's, their company as well. I don't know.

That was the second night, and then, of course, Tebar, Rohan, Crudemaster, original oil, sign advantage, Stuart Wright and Vast. So, shout out to you all. I really do, I think everybody had a lot of fun. I know I had a lot of fun. Like I say, the first night was great. Like I was, all right, this is, this is working. The second night was something. I hadn't

hit the dance for in so long. I almost kind of forgot how to dance for a little bit, folks. I'm not going to lie. And I think a lot of people really enjoyed it. Yeah, so that was the weekend. It was busy, busy, busy, two sold-out shows for the Christmas season. So that's now in the rear-view mirror, which means let's talk a little cornerstone form, shall we? Early bird prices. You You've got one month left. December is the early bird price. Start of the new year, prices go up. All the tables are going to come out January 1 with, you know,

if you want to sit with Tom Longo, Alex Craneer, etc. I know we've been getting asked lots about that. Those will be released January 1. And who do we got coming? We got Tom Longo. Alex Criner, Chuck Prattna, Kailen, Kailen 4, Matt Erick, Chase Barber, Chris Sims, Tom Bodrovics. And believe me, there's more coming.

And we're going to be announcing that as we go along here. So if you're wanting to get a cheap ticket or a cheaper table, now's the time to go buy it. It is early bird prices. They won't be any cheaper than what they are right now. And they're on until the end of December. That's May 10th in Calgary, Cornerstone Forum returns. And that's going to be a lot of fun. If you're listening, watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, make sure to subscribe, leave a review.

Please, it does help. Share, share, share. All of you wonderful people have been doing. Lots of kindnesses on the show, and I hope you continue to do so. We've got to get through some of the algorithms and everything else. So if you like the podcast, give it a five-star, give it a two-star, give it a whatever star you think it's worthy. Share it, like it, subscribe, make sure you don't miss it. I know there's been some people saying, you know, like I was subscribed to it,

and then it was like I wasn't subscribed to it. Make sure you're subscribed to it. That's another thing. Yeah, substack. One final thought before I get on to today's episode. Substack, it's free. Sunday nights, 5 p.m. We put out a week in review, and roughly I try and get it out for that time.

Last couple weekends have just been absolutely insane, but in the best possible ways. But one email week right now, there is a paid portion if you want to support the podcast and get a little behind the scenes. We've been announcing some pretty cool stuff, I think. And if you want to see that, well, let's see. little financial support and you can see a couple of cool things that are coming down the pipe for 2025, which is just around the corner. Holy mackana. All right, that's enough jibber jabber. Let's get on to that tale of the tape. He's the CEO and executive director for

Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights. I'm talking about Rod Giltaka. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. I'm joined by Rod Giltaka today. Sir, thanks for making some time for me. Thank you, Sean. Now, um, I, um, I, I certainly follow you on X and have listened to different parts of your guys' show or interviews, et cetera, et cetera, at different times. But let's assume there's a lot of, I don't know, people who don't own guns or just don't care. Who is Rod? And we'll get into it today. Well, what's the shortest possible version of that answer is what's running through my mind?

Well, I'm the CEO and executive director of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights. I think I'm still an instructor in good standing for the Canadian Firearms Program, but my background is in business development, international business development. Further back, I'm a tradesman. But we don't have to get into that. But as far as the CCFR is concerned, we are the largest gun lobby that ever existed in Canada. And we're fighting every single day and have been for the last nine years to keep and preserve the ability for Canadian to have legal access to firearms, not just for themselves, but for generations to come because

we think that's important. So, and we do a lot of things to push that, that goal forward. You know, if I, you know, we don't need, you said we don't need to talk about that, but I am still kind of curious, you know, nine years ago, go back 10 years or wherever the, the time frame takes you to tradesmen. I mean, what, what leads you to the CCFR? Like, what, what is it that is happening? Like, you know, I'm, I guess I'm a relative. young guy. Some people wouldn't say that. Some others are like, you're extremely young, but I'm kind of smack in the middle, I guess. If I go back 10 years, I wasn't worried about any of this. And so I'm curious, what was going on 10 years ago, or if it's 12, or if it's 9, that led you to the

CCFR? All right. Well, I guess it's a little bit of a longer form interview. So, but I'm an, I'm an electrician by trade way back in the day. And so I was an electrician in the building automation industry for about 12 years. And oddly enough, you know, I was thought like I should be doing more. I'm capable of doing more, but couldn't figure out how to do that. I ended up getting a, I took a few career risks, much to the dismay of my wife having to get dragged along with my dreams. I think it's a familiar story for a lot of people, but I ended up getting an opportunity to get into sales. And I found that sales and learning more about business and and dealing at that level of the industry was a little bit more rewarding and it was financially and intellectually,

I guess. And then I got, I think it's the same career path that most people that are, have some level of ambition follow where they get an opportunity and they jump to that opportunity. They keep jumping to the next one and I ended up, I ended up with an opportunity to do sales in the United States and the Western US and Western Canada took that, did that for about three and a half years, came to the conclusion, Well, I could probably do this for myself and not another company, so I started a consulting business, ended up starting a technology company in Montreal. Anyway, it was a twisted path, but when I was working in the United States, I was working with the U.S. military, like just doing building automation stuff, right, selling them product

that was Canadian made. And I had never seen a gun before in my life, really. And when you work with the military, all of your, all of your, your counterparts in purchasing and in, yeah, so in purchasing, I guess so the easiest way to explain it, they're all ex-military. So of course, you build relationships with these guys and they, and, you know, you're always exploring these differences between Canada and the United States. They start talking about guns. And I'm like, I don't know why anyone would even need a gun. I've never seen. What year is this?

This was, I'm going to say, 2005. That's, before you go any further, that's pretty wild, Rod, to be honest, right? In my brain, you're, you know, I'm being a little bit hyperbolic, I guess. I was thinking, you know, like a redneck from out in the woods who lived with a gun on his hip, you know, for his entire life. And then he, this, carry on. I just find that very fascinating because I can just imagine the U.S. military guys going, what? Come on. Yeah. Well, this is the interesting part of the story, right? Because the, you know, the gun lobby guy, it was used to not even understand why people own guns.

And, you know, and I was, but I was curious about it. And they're like, hey, you know, you know, slaves don't own guns. Citizens do. And, you know, guns are private firearm ownership is a, is an extremely important part, both practically and and, uh, symbolically of a free and equitable society. Like you can't have freedom without citizens having some kind of autonomy over themselves. And you know, all this kind of talk, right? And I'm like, ah, and I remember like it was yesterday. I think this has been my advantage the whole time is I remember my mindset at that time. Like I, you know, wasn't a dumb person.

I was reasonable. But I just, I'm like, I don't know. We got the police and we got the government. You know, what do I need to have? That's probably dangerous. So anyway, after, after all these discussions, because I spent quite a bit of time down there,

you know, I got curious and I said, well, and I was at, well, this is the interesting part. This was the turning point actually, Sean. I'm gonna share this with you, because it is, I find it interesting. So I was at Cam Pendleton Marine Corps base, which is about 100 kilometers north of San Diego, California. And I was with my, my,

representative from the military, who was a major. And it's his name was Major Paul Mangum. And so Paul and I are doing our work on the base. And he says, you know, we start talking about this thing again. And I said, you know what? I'd like to shoot a handgun. Like how, what would it take to shoot a handgun?

He's like, we can go right now. There's a, there's a range five minutes from the gates of Pendleton. And we can go and we can rent a handgun and we'll do some shooting. And I'm like, okay, this is exciting. So we leave Pendleton. we go to this range. It's called Iron Sites. It's still there. And I get a range ID there. And we roll into this into the shop and there's guns all over the walls. There's guns everywhere. And actually, I was quite nervous about it. Right. I'm like, I just, I'd never had that kind of exposure before.

You can rent a gun for five bucks. God bless America. And you buy your, you buy your ammunition. And you walk into the range and you shoot. And it's funny. Like, I may be oversharing a little bit. Sean, but the girl that was working, there's this Asian girl, small, maybe five feet working at the counter and she had a pistol on her hip. And I'm like, yeah, I wonder if that gun is loaded. And so I said to him after we got the guns, I said to Paul, is that gun loaded? Because that seems unsafe to me, right? Because I don't know anything. And he's like, it doesn't work if it's not loaded. And I'm like, okay. So we go in and I'll make a long story short. We, he gives me. Please, please, Please don't make, don't say, you're on the podcast, buddy.

You're, you're in for a ride and I'm enjoying this. So don't make anything short. Tell the story. All right. I appreciate that. So anyway, we go in. He gives me a little safety course. Tells me the basic firearm safety rules.

And we start shooting these handguns. It was a Glock model 17, semi-automatic handgun, obviously, but a Glock 17. And we start shooting and I was extremely nervous. I was sweating. my hands were shaky because I'm just thinking like this is just inherently unsafe. You know, I don't want to turn this thing the wrong way or whatever, have some disaster. It's scary, right? And after about 60 rounds, that's what it took.

I started to calm down and I started to kind of soak in this experience. And a lot of things were going on in my head because I'm very uncontrollably analytical. And I'm like, what, what's going on with this thing? Right. So anyway, we shoot about 300 rounds. And he's my client. I pay the company pays and I have to drive a hundred kilometers from Pendleton which is an ocean side in California all the way down to San Diego where my hotel was and I'm in the rental car

and I'm on the freeway and I'm doing 75 miles an hour no music on hands on the wheel 10 and 2 and I'm like what you know what was this experience like it just just running over and over again And when I was, this is probably some inside information, I probably shouldn't share because I'm not sure that it's completely compliant with the rules in California. But anyway, they gave me a range ID because I was there with military. And so that meant that I was allowed to go back anytime and rent guns myself. So I had this range ID or whatever. And I, you know, I have this hour long drive and just trying to process like, what was this whole thing? I get to the hotel room, walk up, throw my laptop bed.

down and I stood there in the middle of the room. I'm like, what the what is this? Like I, you know, just the way that I felt and the experience and everything. And I was like, hmm. So I took my suit off, put my street clothes back on and I drove 100 kilometers right back up there and I shot another 300 by myself. And then I was like, this is awesome. You know, I need to do more of this kind of thing. So anyway, came back to Canada, of course, and now my trips were every second week for about four days for I did that with that company and then my own company for about 10 years. But I got home and I'm like, I wonder if you can have guns in Canada. And so I looked into it and you can take a PAL and a restricted PAL back in those days.

You still can't actually just license at least. And you can own all kinds of things like AR-15s and handguns and long guns and shotguns and all that stuff. I'm like, okay, this is really cool. I want to do this. And one of the first things I did was I asked myself, is this a responsibility? possible decision because you hear about gun violence. And I actually did a bunch of research to see like, well, how many people are killed with guns?

Is owning guns really the right thing to do? Is it a moral idea? I know that sounds kind of weird, but I just, I wanted to know that. So I did a bunch of research and I'm like, yeah, I understand the landscape a lot better. I probably spent four hours doing it. Then I asked my, and I said to my wife, like, I think I'm going to get a, I think I'm going to get a gun and get a firearms license, get a gun. And she said, they'll never.

be a gun in this house. We had two kids and whatever. And the secret to that gentleman is incrementalism, right? Just a little bit of time. So I worked on her a little bit, ended up getting a PAL, got a handgun. My first gun was a Glock Model 17. And I got hyper interested in it. And it changed me as a person. And yeah, and anyway, I met one of my neighbors who was a 25-year SWAT operator. He was a team leader for the multi-jurisdictional ERT that is in the lower mainland of Vancouver. He was team leader for 10 years, I think. And he was an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur. And he's like, do you think that civilians would want to learn high risk room, room entry training, you know, active shooter training, hostage, rest of you. I'm like, all right, I've got an

idea. So I came back to him in a week with a business plan to start a small company. just a hobby company basically called Civil Advantage Firearms Training. And we did that for years. I became an instructor for the firearms program. And I started this YouTube channel back in 2009, which is one of the kind of granddaddy Canadian gun related YouTube channels. And it became quite popular. And then the world sort of changed in 2014. So I was not political. It was going through this metamorphosis to a gun guy, pretty hardcore gun owner. But I didn't want to be political. I didn't want to risk my status as an instructor for the firearms program.

And I just was not a fan of politics, actually. I don't like it. He meet a lot of toxic people, and I wasn't interested in that. But in 2014, the RCMP used their authority. It's sort of a fictional authority, but when it's backed by, you know, enforcement, it becomes a real authority. They use their authority to reclassify a non-restricted, well, two families of non-restricted firearms, long guns that you could use for target shooting and hunting. So that was the CZ-858 and the Swiss arms rifles. And they reclassified them from non-restricted, which means you can just have that in your vehicle, doesn't have to have a secure.

locking device on it or whatever it just has to be unloaded you can shoot it out in the forest you can hunt with it you can shoot at the rain do whatever you want with it um they were registered back in those days they changed the classification from non-restricted to prohibited in the in the dead of night and they told nobody they told nobody now unauthorized unauthorized possession of a prohibited firearm gets you three years in federal prison and mandatory minimum. And I'm like, how could they do that? What an irresponsible, disgusting display of behavior to take only licensed gun owners, these are the only people where they have registered firearms that, you know, that possess these things. And you want to entrap them somehow into going to prison for

three years minimum. The only way to stay out of prison, if that, if, if I got caught in the bush with that gun and didn't know about any of this, the only way to stay out of prison would be to launch some kind of constant, you know, charter, charter of, um, rights and freedoms challenge, a charter challenge against mandatory minimums. And I just, uh, I came to the conclusion that somebody has to kind of stand up and do something about that because they just, I saw a lot of angry rhetoric. but nobody taking actual steps. And that's what turned me political. And then I guess the rest of that,

the rest of that sort of history. That's, um, that's quite something, you know. I don't mean to bring my own story into it. But once again, Rod, we've never talked before. So I don't know how much you know about me, right? But like, I started out a podcast as a hobby while I was working in the oil field. And, uh, I wanted to,

I wanted to interview NHL alumni. Essentially was the idea. I kept running into all these, oh man, there was some just interesting men who were in their, you know, late 60s, early 70s, who played in the NHL back in the glory days,

as they would call it, and just have wild stories. And I did the math, and, you know, the NHLPA, as I can't remember how many members now, but at the time, like 4,000 and changed and how many of them are retired, and I was doing the math and I had, I'm like, oh, man.

And I got to the point where I interviewed Glenn Healy and I pitched him on it, you know. And my idea had been to, you know, like, I could spend years interviewing these people because everybody interviews Wayne Grexky. Everybody interviews Bobby O'R, et cetera. And but along that route of getting an interview, Glenn Healy and pitching him on the idea, folks, COVID happened. And I sat there and dragged my feet for a full year and not wanting to talk about it. I'm not bringing on the podcast because I'm not political.

I'm not going to bring in, you know, sports radio always talks about, you don't talk about politics, you don't talk about faith or religion or whatever we're talking about. And I was a very unwilling person to start talking about it. And then in the middle of COVID, I'm like, I'll secure it. Interviewed a doctor in studio and told the audience, all right, I'm done talking hockey until this COVID thing was done. I didn't realize what I was saying at that point. But, you know, it brings me to where we're talking about guns. You know, like I just, you know, we've talked a lot about COVID.

but faith now, everything, right? Just like everything. So now I'm like, your story is fascinating to me because I guess I didn't know as much about you as I thought I did. Because I didn't know that background, which is funny. I bet if I listen to more than just the, the, obviously the hair that I have, I probably would have picked up on parts of these stories and been like, oh, that's interesting. Because that's a fascinating turn of events that, you know, I think the CCFR is, you'd call it a gun lobbyist, right? Correct?

is a guy who at one point didn't own guns or anything and kind of had this transformational experience of shooting a handgun that went, holy crap, this is, this is wild, you know? And I actually, as you're saying, I'm like, I wonder how many people in Canada have never fired a firearm, have no understanding of what it means, represents, the feeling that comes from it. Because I come from the opposite background. By the time I was probably six, you know, Granlin was giving me the double-barreled shotgun to try and shoot a squirrel because the squirrels chased away the birds. That's just what happened on the farm. And so I have early memories being around guns all the time.

So I find that fascinating that you're the man that's pushing the charge on, I think, educating Canadians on the importance of gun ownership and that it isn't tied to, you know, I don't know, some of the largest drug busts with firearms and everything. Like, it isn't legal gun owners doing that. I could be wrong and you can have your say on that.

Yeah. Well, let me, let me just step back and just, just one half a step, just out of interest. You know what's interesting is I moved on the company that I was with. It was a manufacturer, like an HVAC controls manufacturer in Montreal. The company that I was with, I moved on from. So probably, I don't know, maybe three, meetings after that handgun turning point, I left that company and was working for myself. And I had never spoken to, I think it was a lieutenant major, Lieutenant Major Paul Mangum again,

never spoke to him again, just because our path didn't cross. And of course, the evolution of everything that we just talked about, that was over years, years and years, right? I don't know, whatever, five years. And I think it was about two years ago. What, how did that happen? I think it was, I don't know, I was just, my mind was running. And I'm like, oh, man, you know, I wonder whatever happened to, to Major Paul. And I looked him up and I found him on LinkedIn. And he makes these, he ended up starting his own business. He's making these, something like camping stuff right and I'm like I should reach out to him because he has no idea no clue because he never heard from me again and he wouldn't be concerned with what's going on

in Canada as far as gun rights are concerned or what have you he has no idea that he was the person that really started the chain of events that led to the the ccfr and everything that we had done and everything that I had done as an individual, he has no idea. So I reached out to him. I said, hey, Paul, haven't heard from me a long time. Do you remember him? He's like, oh, absolutely. And I'm like, do you, can we have a quick phone call?

He's like, sure. So I phone him. And I'm like, Paul, I know we haven't talked a long time. I'm surprised you even remember me, but I've got a story to tell you. Do you have a minute? He's like, yeah, shoot. I told him that whole story. And I said, the largest firearm-related lobby group,

in the history of the country, that was you taking a stranger shooting once in like 2005. And I think when you tell people that you're, you have an idea what this interaction is supposed to be like, right? I'm like, I hope he thinks that's cool because I think that's, that was just, if somebody called me and said that I was a, you know, the, the inflection point of a whole chain of events, I would find that fascinating. And he did. He was just like, this is, that's the best story anybody ever told me. Well, you think about it from a very romantic way to look at the world and in your interactions is you have no idea what you're doing to any given person at any given point

because he'd probably taken what, hundreds, thousands of people shooting and nothing ever happened. And yet the one turns into what it's become. And I think like you think about that, that's a beautiful way to look at how you should treat people, how you should interact with every conversation of every single day, because you just have no idea what little things are going to do to, you know, it's the butterfly effect. It is.

That's exactly what I was thinking, right? It's the butterfly effect. And I mean, even further, I hate to dive down this rabbit hole too deep, but the conversation that really triggered us to be really starting to talk about guns more was a meeting that we had at Denny's where there was a couple of military guys and they were talking about guns. So it sparked a little debate. I wasn't debating them, but I'm just like, yeah, in Canada, we don't do that, I don't think.

You know, and that's what started us talking about guns. So it's really just a, it was a breakfast meeting at Denny's in San Diego that started that whole thing. And boom, you have the rest of it. Well, you know, I think if I look at my life and I'm sure if all the listeners take a look at their lives, we all have those moments that completely changed the trajectory of where we're heading. and you know i've spent a lot of time thinking about those moments right because i i think of uh oh shoot i interviewed glen saither okay uh stanley cup winning gm of the emminton oilers got his banner retired everything right here's this uber successful choose on the cigar and he is as

cool in person folks as you'd think and how do you meet his wife she had a flat tire on an overpass in New York, in New York City, I think. And he pulled over. I'm like, Glenn stated pulled over. And he goes, I go, what is that? I'm like, of all the places, that's where you're going to be right. He's like, ah, some things just aren't worth that, you know, like digging into. And I'm like, I don't know.

Because I see it all the time. I see Brian Burke was another one. He wasn't a hockey guy. And then his family was moving. They got trapped in a snowstorm where they were supposed to make it to somewhere else and they didn't. And they ended up in a hockey rink that night. And it was the first time he never seen hockey.

He said it was just transformational experience. Like, wow, that's something. And if I go back to COVID, the guy who led the freedom convoy was vaccinated, right? So he is facing the ultimate penalty for going and doing everything the government wanted up to a certain point. And then leading the charge, driving all across our frozen tundra to Ottawa. That's Chris Barber. And I think like, it's just, it comes from the people you least expect. And I appreciate you telling me the story this morning.

This is what podcasting is all about. I wanted to hear what makes Rod tick and lead into the CCFR because I think it's an important organization, what you're doing. But to hear the story and the motivation behind it, man, that's a cool story. I appreciate you telling me. Yeah, my pleasure. Well, I mean, now I'm like, now I didn't even know where to go to, you know, now I'm talking about guns, it's funny. I'm like, after that, man, when you just, folks, we're just going to call it a day for today. We'll just wrap it up.

You can go on with a smile on your day. You know, one of the big things that my wife, American, right, is the difference between American and Canada. And we get so much of our news feed from the United States, right? I mean, I don't know how many people in my circle who are turning into CBC, CTV, global, but I do know a ton that are tuning into, even BBC, but Fox News is a big one.

And then, of course, podcasting. When you bring up going down to the States and paying five bucks to rent a gun and pay for your ammo, et cetera, et cetera, what are the major differences that you see between the United States and Canada? Well, there's a lot of differences. And you hear about this all the time, you know, Canadian anti-gun groups and the Canadian government, well, specifically the liberals and the NDP. And so really two groups, deceptive people and ignorant people. they love to use the United States as a cautionary tale. Canadians, when it comes to the United States, not all Canadians, certainly I'm trying to ever to be like that, but a lot of Canadians are very arrogant about how good Canada was in the past, right?

So everything the Americans do, that's what not to do. We don't want to be Americans, like that's some kind of badge of honor, right? And no country's perfect. But they like to use the United States and they want to draw comparisons with Canada. And what I've said countless times is that the situation is entirely different. And in the United States, the ways that you acquire firearms, the rights that you have, the cultural significance, the purpose, the reason why people in firearms completely different than Canada, different and not different. So obviously in the United States, you have a codified right to own firearms. And you have very little gun control.

You have some strange rules like we have in Canada as well. We have some really bizarre rules. But in Canada, on the other hand, the government and what I might call the elites, the ruling class in Canada, have put a tremendous amount of effort into making sure that Canadians don't ever believe that it is a positive aspect of our culture to own firearms privately, that we have no right, that all rights to determine what we can't have and what we can't have lie with the government. And legally there's some truth to that. And they love that. And they go out of their way and have for decades and decades to make sure that we never get it in our heads,

that we have a right to use firearms for protection to save our own lives if someone is trying to commit rape, assault, murder against us or to take our things. So it's a very different argument, and it's a very different, I don't know, just the way that non-gun-owning Canadians perceive firearm ownership is very different than non-gun-owning Americans perceive firearm ownership.

And that's the big challenge, and that's a huge difference. especially in the work that we do to try to preserve this ability, trying to deal with public perception, and then, of course, all the things that the government and anti-gun groups and what have you try to inject into the conversation here. So it doesn't apply. So whenever we're talking about guns,

you have to look at it from the Canadian context because it's quite different. I don't know if that's a bit of a rambling answer, but it's... How many people, how many members of this, CCFR have? Well, there's when it comes to gun groups and I don't know, I know more about our group than any other, but I have been involved in other groups previous to the CCFR. We have around 40 to 50,000 members specifically. And while it can bounce anywhere from like 34,000, getting up to 50, it depends on renewals, right? So you have attrition and you have new members. And so it actually varies widely. And if you compare that to the 2.4 million licensed gun owners in Canada, you'd come to the conclusion that, you know, there is no NRA of Canada.

We don't have, our groups are nowhere near as big and, and whatnot. But I typically look at the people that support the CCFR, the number of people. And that's around 100,000. And the reason I think, like more people give us money and donations than want to take out a membership. And I think that's because gun owners don't like. being on lists, I think primarily, which actually works for us because, you know, when you're a member, we provide insurance and things like that. So it's, it's more beneficial for us to just have donations. But yeah, I'd say around 100,000 gun owners are involved, like directly

involved in politics. It's still low, you know, like, I mean, those are strong numbers. I don't mean to say that it's, you know, for you, it's low. I mean, in general, when you think of the percentage of gun owners and how many of them are, are members or even donating, in my brain, I go, man, if COVID, I've been trying to work myself out of this mindset, right? I don't like doing surveys. I don't like being on list. I don't like. I don't like. But it's funny, you know, just a couple days ago, we were talking about being on lists and how, you know, I'd been talking to several different policemen.

about how you know, you're on a list. Like I'm talking about myself and actually I'm talking about Rod too. Who are we kidding? You're on a list and with AI, you know, they're stockpiling conversations, they're stockpiling on and on and on the things go. And when I look at being on your list, I'm trying to rewire my brain that it's a benefit

because what you provide and other people actually that want you to sign up and push things forward because if you never go on any list, We can't help support the organizations that are helping protect things we want. Right. And so I look at the CCFR as being one of those. And I've been trying to rewire my brain because I'm like probably like so many Canadians. And yet by not going on list folks, or maybe we shouldn't call them lists by not getting a membership. You know, like there are freedoms are being eroded essentially. I guess is what I'm trying to spit out. Yeah. Well, it's you have to get involved, right? I tried.

desperately to avoid politics because I just, I inherently don't like it. Because it sucked. Yeah, and I don't like the people that I have to interact with. I don't like people that lie. I don't like people that, anyway, it's just, yeah, it's rough. And I desperately tried to stay out of it. But, you know, I was looking around. I'm like, you know, who is really doing something?

And what exactly is it that they're doing? And how can we actually solve this problem? You know, and I just couldn't, I couldn't see anything that was effective. I had lots of ideas. I'm kind of an ideas person. I, in fact, I can't turn them off. And I'm like, you know, our groups could do this and this and this. And it was like, you know, list, you know, 60 things that they could probably do. And I just couldn't see anybody capable of doing it. And then I got to the point where it's like, well, if somebody doesn't step up and do it, then it's just not going to get done. And then we're going to get to a point where we've lost everything.

and then we're looking backwards. We're like, well, oh, we should have done this when we had the chance. Oh, you know, maybe this would have done it. And the community itself, you know, if I think of like bulletin board, there's a couple of large bulletin board groups back in the day, right, for gun owners. And then other social media, everybody's got ideas, you know, everybody's voicing frustration. Nobody was actually doing something. And, you know, it's interesting.

And my background was in business as an entrepreneur. And so I'm very familiar with if you don't get up, you know, get your gear on and go do something, your life doesn't move forward. So I'm like, okay, well, I think there's room for another organization that actually does work. And I'm not, I'm not implying that anyone else doesn't do work, but just shows up every day, because that's the only way to get anywhere is you show up every day, you get up early, and you hammer it all day long. And then after a certain length of time, you have results, right?

Like I, I know that it sounds very simple. It's just it's something that's easy. But it's extremely difficult. Yeah, it's hard to do, right? So for instance, I'm just for anyone that hasn't heard of the CCFR. We're a group. I don't want, I don't want to sound self-serving, but, you know, I've had control of this organization since before it took its first membership. and I had ideas of what I would expect from an organization that I was supporting.

And one of those things, and that's what I wanted to make, you know, have us do. And one of those things is everyone always has a question, what do you guys doing to help help do this? And it's like, well, no one ever really wanted to, wanted to provide an answer for that. And I'm like, that, that's, that's stinky. I don't like that. So if you go to our website, I don't know, I guess a plug, ccfr.ca or firearm rights.ca. Plug away. There's a, well, anyway, I'm not. I'm teasing. Plug away. Feel free. It's not a big deal. People are going to want to find you after this. For sure they are.

So if you go to our website, there's a button that says, why join? And when you hit that, something I implemented right away, I'm like, if people are going to support us, they have to know why. And that means you tell them what you're doing, especially when you're taking money from someone that is willingly giving it to you after they've worked for it, after the government has taken their cut before they even get it. And then they get this money and it's not ever really enough for most people. And then they're going to carve off 40 bucks or a donation, right, $100 or $30 or whatever and give it to you in the hopes that you're going to do something to protect, you know, the way that. that they want to live their lives. And that is a level of trust. We're not like a company that's selling widgets. And it's like, yeah, you got your widget,

give me my money. It's all based on hope and trust. And that can never be betrayed. So you have to take those dollars. And if somebody says to you, Rod, what have you done with this money? Because that money wasn't easy for me to make, I better have an answer.

So if you look down, if you click Y Join, you look down that list of what we've done in nine years, it represents an incredible, an incredible amount of work. Like so much work for a small group of people that's hard for me to even when I, I looked at the list actually, Sean, before we got on, because I'm like, I keep forgetting what we've done,

because I'm always thinking about the next thing. And it's just amazing. So if you're going to, if you want any change in your life, whether it's for the stuff that you can own or just your own career or just who you are as a person, like you gotta do that work and you gotta do it every single, every single day.

So anyway, I guess that's a long way of saying, you know, when we started the group, I'm like, you know what? There's an opportunity here to take all of the ideas from the community that people like, here's what we should be doing. Here's what we should be doing and nobody doing it and all of my own ideas and actually make them happen.

And we have. We've done everything. I wish it worked better. I mean, we have this malevolent government that's malevolent not only in property rights and guns and all the rest of that stuff, but everything. else. I wish it was working better because we have to work within this system. But yeah, I think

we've really made a mark and we've made it more difficult for them to roll out the agenda that they always wanted, which is to ban all firearms from civilians. But yeah, it takes a lot of work to do that and I wanted to be part of it. You know, when your dealings, when you say they want to ban everything from all civilians, is that I go back to, I think you said early on, you're dealing with two types of people, either ignorant or deceptive. Like when you look at, we're going to take it away from everyone. I think that's insane. Uh, you know, just where I grew up, where, how I live and the people I know and how they live. I'm like, do they not, like everyone, that's an insane idea. So this insane idea, when you wrestle with it or have ran into those people, why is there

reasoning for wanting to get rid of all legal ownership of guns? Well, I understand that perfectly. I understand what their mindset is because I couldn't come up with a reason myself before I owned guns, before I had exposure to legally owned firearms. I couldn't figure out why anybody would want a gun either. And I think that's, that was my personal advantage is I wasn't, like I looked around and certainly at gun groups and gun owners. Because I was just getting, I had just gotten into this community.

And I remember, maybe that's my advantage. I just remember things, right? Especially mistakes, right? Try not to ever make the same mistake twice. But I remember it's like, man, these gun owners, they are sour. They are angry and frustrated and sour and confrontational. And I'm like, man, there's a lot of negativity around here. And then, you know, and it was a feature of the community.

And then as I became, you know, a more experienced gun owner, started understanding the laws, starting to become acquainted with the history. Because Canada has a lot of history with gun control, some pretty dark stuff. Then I started to understand that you have a government that has its own, its own, and it's not even just any particular government.

It's a class of people that are the more elites and the politically connected in Canada that circulate around in and out of government, in and out of the bureaucracy, humans, humans get, they get to, they get to a place where they just get this, this superiority complex that, you know, that you see in many other, many other areas, I guess.

I'm trying to be, trying to be reasonably careful. But they think that they should be running everything and you should just be a worker that's throwing off money their way, right? And they'll control everything. And I remember what it was like to be someone that didn't, couldn't justify owning firearms. And I thought they were very dangerous and especially in the wrong hands. But it's, you know, I went through my own evolution and I never forgot that mindset. And so when you encounter people that don't know why people own guns, I think the most important thing,

and we've done this as an organization, but even for individual gun owners, the most important thing is that you understand how to how to how to explain why and how to explain why all of the regulations that maybe are in the dreams of the bureaucracy and the government are negative and be able to explain that private firearm ownership is an essential and very positive aspect of of canadian society and that we've owned guns in this country since before where Canada was a country. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of aspect. It really is education, I guess, is what I'm trying to pull out of my head.

It's about education and it's about representing gun owners in a reasonable manner, right? Not the angry gun owner that's had his stuff taken. Angry, absolutely for good reason. Totally justifiable, actually, if you know the history of gun control. But you're dealing with people that have no idea just like I did. So if all those guys, you know, in that breakfast meeting at Denny's in San Diego, California back in 2005, we're just like, you know, you're stupid. You know, come and get it. You'll, you know, take it from my cold dead hands. You'll get the ammunition first. You know, stuff like that. I probably would have recoiled and went, man, these people are just as crazy as I thought they were. So there's a, you need to know your arguments. It happens one person at a time. It's about education. And it's also about avoiding stereotypes. Because. There's a lot of gun owners, I think, that fall into confirming stereotypes that are laid out by parties like the Liberal Party about who gun owners are. And so, yeah, those are sort of the guiding principles and the ways that you convert people.

Even not just they don't, people don't have to own guns, right? That's not the goal. People just have to acknowledge why people own them and understand that it's important. That's really all we're trying to do. When you bring up the dark history of Canadian gun ownership, what specifically are you talking about that you can maybe enlighten with us today? Well, as I said, right, lots of angry gun owners. I'm like, why are these guys always so angry and snippy and whatever?

Well, long before I was ever a gun owner, Canada, so let's say, let's say in the middle 80s, in the mid-80s, you could own all kinds of kinds of firearms that were scary. You could own handguns that were short, right? Barrels less than four and four and one eighth inches long. So little subcompacts and Saturday night specials and, you know, these small pistols, pistols that some people, I guess, in the United States would have carried, right, because they're compact, but they're concealable. You could own a wide variety of rifles, including the AK-47 used to be legal in Canada. It used to be legal full, auto actually back in the 70s, in the middle 70s, in I believe it was 1977, full autos were banned,

essentially banned in Canada. People that had them could still have them and they ended up with prohibited status. There was no PAL possession acquisition license in those days. It was an FAC, I believe. This was before my time. But people had all of these guns. And then you had, of course, the situation where you had the the shooting at a cold polytechnic on December 6th, 1989. And that was the catalyzing moment for the then liberal government to roll out gun control. They were just right there, ready to go. And they, they, the whole gun control thing is a conundrum. Because what you're saying is, even though you have these incredible outlier events,

incredibly isolated events that almost never happened, if you think of it from a, statistical perspective where you have multiple victim public shootings, you just didn't have them often, but you had one. Do you take that one event by one person and then take firearms away from probably at that time two to three to four million people, right? We don't, we don't, we don't operate. That's not part of our ideology of how we, we administrate our society in any other topic, you know, car accents or car theft or, you know, what have you. You don't apply that to anything else. And you don't apply if it saves one life, it's worth it, to anything else in our society,

apparently other than gun ownership, right? So which I find is quite convenient for some people. So a bunch of gun control got rolled out. So there was Bill C68 and C-17 and combined, and this was over the course of about five years, combined, they banned a bunch of guns. Typically scary looking guns, right? But they also did something else. They were worried about getting decimated in elections, which is always a concern in Canada.

So they said, okay, all of you guys that own these certain guns like the AK-47, you can keep them. And you can use them like you were before. But you just, you want to register them because we want gun owners to be accountable for their guns. no one's trying to take your guns, conspiracy theorist. You know, you guys are all, you know, it's a big conspiracy all the time. That's not true. We just want to know what you have. So if it gets stolen, we know that that's your gun to return it to you.

And we also don't want people trafficking legal guns. And of course, being a reasonable person like that makes all the sense in the world. I still think that makes sense, to be honest with you, Sean. Because I don't want anybody shot either, right? But what they did was they started this, this classification scheme. and they said just register these things. They're all non-restricted. And this is, there's more intricacies to this,

but I'm just trying to keep it simple. Then later, when they believed that they had enough of these firearms registered, so these are firearms that would be restricted or prohibited, then they decided, I think this was around, 2000, 1996, 97, again, before my time, they started flipping the classifications to firearms that they said, no, no problem, you can keep them. Oh, you know what? They're now prohibited. We've made a, you know, there was a shooting somewhere. And most late, you know, lately the liberal government's like, oh, there's just shooting in the United States, time to ban more guns in Canada.

We've seen that obviously. But they started flipping the classifications from non-restricted or restricted to restricted or prohibited. and that allowed them to ban guns and they knew where these guns were. So you have gun owners, why are they angry? They're angry. You lied to me and you keep lying to me, right? You said you didn't want my gun. You called me a conspiracy theorist. Then you turn around and you want to take my property now.

You want to take the guns and do exactly what I was concerned about, that you called me a conspiracy theorist and you did it. And then, then you have the long gun registry. And then you have all the way up to today where they keep lying to people telling them, nobody wants your gun, they get them registered, and then they flip the classification of Prohib, and they say turn in your gun,

and you have whatever, 28 days to comply, or you'll be charged with unauthorized possession of prohibited firearm. You'll lose your license, you'll lose all your guns. So it's this constant state of betrayal, starting back in the early 90s, all the way through the 90s entirely, and then took off,

started again in the around 2014 2015 and then it accelerated like foot to the floor accelerated from 2015 when the liberals got in to this morning when we started talking so it's what can what can um sorry uh like i i i i like some of the words some of the sayings the government says it just irks me you know on a completely emotional soul level level. Like, I mean, it just hits me to the core. And I go, okay, I've, I've heard the dark nefarious and, and, you know, the whole like, oh, we don't want your guns. I don't. And then take them. Right. I mean, well, through COVID, I mean, we just saw them say certain things. Oh, but we're not going to do that. And then like two weeks later do the exact same thing.

It's just like, are you that stupid? I think you're that stupid. And I mean, we got Jagmeet Singh, saying things, but he's the government that's propping up the government, right? Like, I mean, it's just, it's insane when you when you can just pay attention to it for i don't know five minutes folks here in canada probably a little more than that probably an hour i'll give it an hour i'll make it a little longer and you're like man our system is messed and the fact that he can say that and not be ousted from his own party is insane in my own personal opinion regardless um maybe there's a positive that we could talk about when i when i look at the ccfr is there like do you see hope in the horizon Is there ways that are going to be, you know, that can get people like, energetic like, oh, if we join or if we support this or if we pay attention here, maybe there's some wins that could be coming down the pipe that instead of it being take, take, take, screw you over, screw you over, sign up for this and we're going to take it back next year and you're going to go to jail if you don't or lose your license and all the dark nefarious. Is there some positives?

There are positives. But hold on to that question, Sean, because I just want to make one comment about what you just said. Don't let me forget that question though, because I probably will. When you look at this, you know, you brought up some examples of the way that the government and the bureaucracy says one thing, turns around and does another. And it's a repeating pattern constantly because the bureaucracy and people that are people that are involved in bureaucracies at some level and then governments, this is the only way they know how to behave. It's psychopathic, right? And so especially during COVID, and this has been the long, it's funny, so everybody got a taste of what the governments, that sociopathic behavior of the government during COVID, a lot of people woke up, as you know, right?

We all kind of were watching how things were happening the whole time. Well, that's what gun owners had experienced since the early 90s, right? That's the life. It's almost like that meme, right? You know, is it your first time or whatever it was, right? First time, the guy with the noose around his neck. It's like that's what gun owners have been living for decades and decades. And it's funny because you have Justin Trudeau and all of the other people that are alike,

they're all complaining about the collapse of institutions. And they're blaming it on like right wing this or white supremacy or alternative media or whatever. It's like, man, any thinking rational person knows exactly why there's a collapse in confidence in institutions because of your behavior. If you knew another person personally in your life that behaved the way that government and the bureaucracy does, where they just lie to your face, turn around within days, do exactly what they, you know. It's an abusive relationship.

You'd be like, I never want to see this person again. If this person gets anywhere near me, there's going to be problems. Well, that's how government and the people that run it, that's how they behave on an ongoing basis. So the collapsing confidence of the system and in institutions is entirely placed upon them. And that's why I use the example of firearm registration. Do I think people should be responsible for their firearms, be held accountable? Absolutely. I don't want there to be no rules. We're the reasonable gun law because we're reasonable people. But the problem with firearm registration is you cannot trust the government to keep their word. And proving it like hundreds of times had they said,

This firearm is fine. By the way, we just, we just prohibited this firearm and it's registered. So now you have to turn it in and we're not giving any compensation. Even if they gave compensation, it doesn't matter. This is unjustified. They haven't shown data to say, if we take Rod Giltaka's guns, there will be no multiple victim public shootings. There will be no gang shootings. They have never done that. It's just because they can't do that. That's right. It's political convenience. So this is why for the people that don't own guns. This is why gun owners are like not another step. I'll fight. you all the way to my dying breath because of this. So anyway, I just wanted to mention that, you know, the collapse of institutions is because of their own behavior. And because they're not everybody is dumb. People are like, this is ridiculous. You're telling them a conspiracy theorist and you're doing that. Well, the thing about COVID, there's there's multiple things that have just started to like absolutely, I don't know, explode in the last five years. And one of them is alternative media, Right. I would argue that, you know, over the course of 20 years and gun owners can tell me, if heck, you could tell me different, right? I'm sure there's been some people that have been very pro

CCFR and gun owners in general. But overall, like watching the CBC, watching the CTV, watching the global, watching all these news organizations through COVID really opened a lot of eyes. And part of the reason it opened eyes is because there was an explosion of independent media, things like this and others, right? That just people weren't, people aren't dumb. But when you have nowhere to get the information from, you're kind of limited. Now it's like you can find, like they write a story and there's how many organizations writing the counter story to like show them like you didn't do your homework or you miss this part. And so certainly when I like when I think here back to growing up on the farm and being around guns, but always hearing guns are dangerous.

And your brain you go, yeah, guns are dangerous. Like I mean, they are. Like they're inherently dangerous. So is a tractor. Yeah. Well, so was driving in a car, right? Like, I mean, like lots of things are dangerous. But it's funny, when you don't hear the other side talk, that part of your brain doesn't get to activate of like, uh,

and now, like, one of the things that's helping all of us out is the fact that you can hear Rod on different forms like this, or on Twitter, you know, there was a time on X, well, before X, back when it was Twitter, when those things were silence, We've all seen the Twitter files and everything else. Now that it's open, you get to, you get to hear the sides of the argument and start to come to rational decisions, I think, that are like, oh, yeah, everything you're saying this morning. I'm like, this makes sense.

And I'm just, I go back to, so is there hope wins on the horizon of like, listen, yeah, gun owners, they've been taking and taken and taken and there's reasons to be skeptical. I don't know if you'll ever beat that at anyone who went through COVID, let alone the gun ownership side of it, because obviously they've been dealing with this for a lot. lot longer. But, you know, is there some hope to offer or some winds coming that that can kind of be like, hey, here's something on the horizon? Absolutely, there is. So, and, you know, if we talked about this, whatever, two years ago, I would be a lot less optimistic. But if you look at polling, you have the conservatives polling somewhere around supermajority territory. And it wasn't like one poll where there was a spike. It's been going on for over a year. Consistently every single. whatever, every single month for probably a year and a half, two years almost, right?

So there will be a change in government. It will be an overwhelming majority. Now there's some moving parts here. There's some variables. But there's going to be a very clear majority conservative government. The messaging from the conservatives, like, I mean, we deal with a lot of conservatives. So, you know, we have it on. And, you know, like I'm fairly confident.

We can talk about that in a minute if you want. But there will be a majority conservative government. Their messaging has been pretty, it's been pretty clear and very relevant. They know what the problems are. And not just with guns, right, but with the economy, with the bureaucracy. They know, they understand all this stuff. And times are changing in Canada where you always have to temper your message and your actions. with what the public can handle, what the public mood is.

Same thing with the CCFR, the way that I have, my messaging has evolved, or I should say devolved because I'm getting frustrated as a person too, but it's a different time now than even nine years ago. And the stuff that I talk about now, I wouldn't have talked about, you know, eight, seven, eight years ago. So the conservators know what's wrong. They are committed to fix it internally, like the conversations we have from multiple MPs all the way up to the

top, let's say of the party, they intend to fix these things. So I think now there's a lot of damage done. If I limit my comments to just firearm ownership, I think we're going to see a full repeal of all the gun ban. So that's handguns and that's long guns as well. I think we're going to end up getting back everything we've lost. Now, I think the danger there is to go, okay, well, nine years ago when you started the CCFR, what were you after? And are you going to get any of those things? Well, that's, it took, it took 35 years for us to get to the point where we are with gun control. It's not going to be solved overnight. It's still going to take probably a couple of years. But we'll definitely get back in my opinion, right? It could be

wrong. But I think we're going to get back everything that we've lost. And we might also make some other firearm regulation in Canada make a little bit more sense. And I think the, it's going to be very beneficial that the conservatives are really going to focus on public safety and they are going to hammer the criminals they're going to hammer the gangs and they're going to hammer the repeat violent offenders and they're going to yeah they're really going to put it to the criminals so we're going to see can to get a lot safer while we get our guns back um it's not going to be you know no licensing and everybody gets guns or whatever but we're going to get all their stuff back and i think we're going to start building you know that path to to recovery i don't know that Canada

as a country will fully recover from where it was 10 years ago. I don't think that that's even possible to be a little bit pessimistic. But I think we're going to stop the bleeding and things are going to get notably better. There's going to be lots of, lots of work to do. We're going to have our stuff back. It's going to be a different time. And that's the, I think, the best we can do for now. And I'm very optimistic.

I think it's going to happen. If people want to find, you Rod, where can they go? Well, they can go to ccfr.c.c.a, of course. I mentioned that earlier, or firearm rights.ca. And so they can check out the website, see what we've done as an organization. You can sign up or donate or do whatever you want or volunteer. And of course, we have our broadcast television show on Wild TV in its four season, CCFR Radio on the air, which looks very similar to this.

And we have our podcast on YouTube and seven other social media platforms as well, which is CCFR. I was giving Rod a compliment, folks. this morning because it's background. I do this. Obviously, I interview people a lot five days a week, right? And there's no knock on anyone else who's come on the show. But your background, I've been waiting to get you on because I've been waiting to go, is that, is that green screen? And folks, it is, if you didn't know, it is not. It's a sharp background Rod's got sitting there. I don't know how much time I have left with you. Do you have a couple more minutes? Absolutely. I mean, my schedule has been cleared.

I wanted to ask about, I don't know, I don't know if I'm getting. getting this right. I don't know if it's castle law in the states, but regardless, self-protecting oneself in their home in Canada is really messed up. Um, I think, but I thought, who better to ask than you? Because I'm like, I, from what I understand, if somebody breaks into your house, you can't, even if you're a legal gun owner and all the, all the stuff, and, and, I don't think you want to, I don't know, I, I'm going to just leave it there. And can you explain to me what we have for protection of someone who is in their property, legally gut owning with somebody trying to take their stuff or cause them harm.

Yeah. So what you're referring to is Castle Doctrine. And they have that in many states in the United States, which means, I guess, simply if someone's breaking into your home, if they enter, because the home is, there's, you know, that is your sanctuary. That's when all else fails, the only place you can really retreat to is your home.

though the home is, you know, there's some sanctity there. And so in the law in the United States, like I say, I think it's on a more on a state level than it is federally. You have castle doctrine that says, if anyone comes into your home, you can use whatever force you believe is necessary in the circumstances, not reasonable in the circumstances in the eyes of a judge, reasonable to you that you think you need to do in the circumstances up to and including lethal force. And of course, you can own a firearm specifically for the purpose. of self-defense in the United States. So what the net, I think the important part of this is the net result.

So the net result in the United States is I'm, you know, I'm in my bed. You know, a bunch of guys kicked the door in. Let's say, let's have a little fun with this, Sean. They're Canadians. They're Canadians from Brampton. And they're like, hey, this is working great up in Canada. We just boot people's doors in. And we just take their keys and beat the hell out of them.

And we take what we want because they can't do anything. well, if they tried that in the United States, they get lit up immediately. And they would, and that problem, that problem with those offenders would, would end right there. Would be solved night one. Yeah, night one. There is, you know, the prolific violent offenders are not anywhere near as plentiful in the United States because they tend to, they tend to get eliminated, depending on the activities they're engaged in. But here in Canada, that's where the prolific part comes in because the bureaucracy, now moving to Canada, the bureaucracy, and the RCMP in particular and the government politicians will tell you that you do not have the right to defend yourself with a firearm. That in Canada, that's not true. You do have the ability to defend yourself with a firearm and many people have and have not run a file of the law.

It's complicated though. So I guess the short answer is, can you defend yourself with a firearm in your home? Yeah, you can. The downside of that is there are a lot of rules. You can defend yourself with a gun or a pipe wrench. There's no pipe wrench act. There's no secure storage of pipe wrenches. There's no improper use of pipe wrenches. There's a lot of regulation that goes along with firearms that you can run afoul of. In fact, there's an entire act, the firearms act. and there's safe storage requirements and what have you. So, and then when it comes to the actual act of doing that, your actions have to be proportional to the, your use of force has to be proportional to the threat, meaning that if someone has the wrong house and it's just a drunk kid, you know,

opens the door, you forgot to lock and he's rolls and he's like, I'm home. And you know, you can't use force on that person any more than necessary to remove them from, and I'm not a lawyer, it's not legal advice, but the idea, is you can't, you can't just like shoot them because that's not right for one. It's not, it's not good for anybody. And the, uh, and the law will turn its gaze upon you and use the full

force of the law to prosecute you for that. Now, let's say people kick your door in, they have guns and they're coming through your home. If you were able to retrieve your firearm that was stored safely and you perceive that you would suffer grievous bodily harm or death or someone under your protection would do that, then that's something that you could do and not run afoul of the law depending on the circumstances. So it can be done. They make it very complicated. If that is, and I think this is important because we want to represent at least some value for people that are listening to this, if that's rattling around in the back of your head somewhere, that you're going to use a firearm to defend yourself, if things get weird, as it were, that's not a legal reason to own a firearm

in the eyes of the bureaucracy. So you can't have a firearm for that purpose specifically, unless you have special permission. And you really need to take that responsibility seriously. And that means learn as much as you can about interpersonal violence and the law and all of these things and make sure that you train a little bit. And you're very clear and you work all of the variables out in your mind

before you're ever in that situation because in those situations, I've done a lot of training. We train, I personally, I've trained around 4,000 people. And, you know, and I've, I've gotten a lot of other specialized training not available to most people because of my partnership with my, with my old partner. But you need to work out all of these variables on a regular basis, way ahead of time, because these incidents happen in the span of a handful of seconds. Sometimes you have one and a half seconds to make a decision. It will change the course of your life. We talked about that actually. We started talking. It's a turning point in your life. And a lot of people have had that happen. And if you're going to be prepared for that, then you need to prepare in advance. Like, can you

shoot another human being? Like most of us can't do that. Are you going to make sure that your firearms are available for you for you to retrieve, but are 100% compliance with the law? You know, so there's a lot of variables, you know, going on. So yeah, it's, you have a lot higher threshold of responsibility in Canada than you do in the United States, but it can be done. The reason I bring it up is I, it just comes up an awful lot. And as, you know, you bring up Brampton and I chuckle because I think the audience knows all about Brampton, at least I hope they do. And I just look at, you know, where we're, where we're heading as a country, you know, conservatives get a clear majority fine but what's been done over the course of nine 10 years now

is quite evident you know and it's playing out in the streets and it's playing out with everyone's safety and it's playing out and it's playing out and it's playing out and so um uh you know like i think there's a lot to wrestle with there and i think people are just talking about it right and and once people start talking then they need information to make a judgment and when you bring up uh castle doctrine versus what we have in in Canada. I just hear a complexity of, you know, it's like, you better make sure it's safely stored. It's like, yeah, yeah, well, how many people have their guns safe,

sitting in the basement, sitting in some very secure location that is not accessible if an intruder comes in, you know? And I'm not saying that you move it, just that that's part of the equation of what you were talking about. Even the fact that you can't own a gun just for that specific reason, I think people need to be aware of, right? You can't go buy a gun. for self-defense is, is interesting.

You know, with all the people you've trained, 4,000 plus, and you mentioned having a partner in a business once upon a time that talked about, basically the civilian side of it. Are you still doing that, or does he still offer it? No, I don't, I don't have time.

I haven't, I haven't held a single class since before COVID. So, and I don't, I don't have the time to do that kind of stuff. I got other things going on. And he does law enforcement only training. So, but there are other companies in Canada that do that kind of stuff. But I think the most important thing to take out of this part of our conversation is, is that if that's in your mind, like personally, I don't like to speak for everybody, right? So I don't, you know, personally, I believe it's my personal responsibility to be able to protect myself

and the people who I'm responsible for, right, my family. And, you know, maybe somebody me and my neighbors as well, I don't know, right? But I take that responsibility seriously. And that means that I have to take the steps and do the work so that if I ever had to be in that situation, I would be fully competent. Like for myself, because of the level of experience that I have, I am fully competent. Far more competent than most of the police that might arrive at your door to save you if you couldn't save yourself. But still, like no matter what, you have to, like those two things come together. firearm ownership and the idea that you would ever use that firearm as a tool,

if it was reasonable in the circumstances, that comes with a high level of responsibility and that time that you spend, taking that seriously, learning about the law, looking at case law, and training with firearms and understanding interpersonal violence and those kinds of things, like that is time well spent. That is, that is very, a very valuable skill to you might save your life someday,

but you got to take that part seriously. If you were, if you were pointing somebody in the direction, of where to go to start down that road, other than getting their pal and like obviously owning a gun legally and all that. Where would you, where would you point them to, Rud? Well, I think if you, most firearm safety course companies

or firearm safety course instructors would be able to guide you someplace. So like here in BC, there's a group called BC Firearms Academy. So they do the PAL and they do some basic pistol courses and basic long gun courses, I think, as well. Well, you can go and spend a little money there, but even if you just, you get your PAL, you read case law, there's a lot of resources on Rumble or YouTube or wherever,

and start looking at what professionals are doing. You know, I did this video series with a guy, the Canadian Prepper. So there's got a big YouTube channel. That's Saskatoon, I believe. Yeah, that's right. So Nate came to British Columbia and we did a full seven part

series on going from zero to the point where you could take an advance, like a combat rifle or combat pistol course. And we did these videos. And they're quite, they're quite nice. And in there, there's a lot, you should see a lot of drills in there. And so going to the range or going out to the bush, doing drills, working on your safety, controlling muscle direction, all that stuff. Those are really, really good skills that you need to have ingrained in your mind because when the critical time comes, you won't be able to. consciously think about anything. So only the skills that you've trained hundreds, if not thousands of times will be there when your heart rate goes to 200. Right. So you can, you can look on

YouTube, find things to do, get some, get your safety ingrained, make sure that you're following all the rules and that'll put you in a better position. The, the sports analogy, I think it's Tony Dungy, who said, you know, you don't rise to the occasion, you fall back to your level of preparedness, right? And that was talking about football. And what you're talking about is, is exactly that, right? If you've never, I don't know, we're talking guns. So if you've never shot a gun, right, know how to load it, no how to, you just, right, you think somebody's busted through your door and you own a gun legally and you're going to be

able to figure that out. Chances are not, right? That's why you need to actually use the tools and start to understand them and on and on. I completely understand what you're saying there. One final question for you. You know, in Canada, guns are federally regulated, correct? Correct. Here in Alberta, there's been talk about, you know, can Alberta put in different legislation

to help protect gun owners against the federal government. Do you ever foresee a province being able to take over, I don't know, regulation or allow more freedoms or do you get what I'm saying? Is there a way for a province to insert itself into that role? I think the only role based on our system for the province is to protect people in the provinces from overreach by the federal government. So Alberta's done that. Saskatchewan's done a really good job of that too. And so I'll give you an example. So in Saskatchewan they have their own firearms act as well that they just recently rolled out and part of it is if you're going to

engage in confiscation, let's say the RCMP or any other police force, like even a local police force or Regina police or whatever. If you're going to engage in a confiscation program, you have to be licensed by the province. So, and if you're not, it's, it's an offense. You know, and we just could see the RCMP going to jail for improperly confiscating firearms or whatever. I say that facetiously. I'm not sure how that would actually work, but they, there are way, there are roadblocks that the province can put in the way to stop overreach from the federal government. I don't think it's within the purview of the provinces to issue concealed carry permits. That actually used to be something they had, but that was taken away in recent legislation.

But they can't really expand your rights, maybe where you can discharge firearms, maybe that, you know, maybe something like that. But just to prevent overreach, that's it to stop people at the border, basically. But I don't think the, the provinces can give you rights that you currently don't have from the federal government because firearms are a federal jurisdiction. Appreciate you hopping on around in doing this. And best of luck with CCFR. And I mean, obviously we're always here if big things happen and you need to get the word out. Would love to have you back on. I got a lot of time for your organization and the things you do. And appreciate you, you know, give us some time this morning. Yeah, well, thanks for the opportunity.

Thanks, Sean.