First, it will protect the issue of our rifles and our shotguns to hunt and harvest. We don't believe that you need weapons used in wars and so forth, those types of military guns. We don't support handguns of any nature either. However, we will protect our rifles and our shotguns. We need those in order to continue existing in the way we do.
Our families have seen that there's a higher rate of gangs using more guns. It's also getting more dangerous for police because we have Métis police officers who are part of the RCMP or part of municipal policing programs. Clearly, at the end of the day, guns do make a more dangerous situation. For example, in Manitoba, on the Sagkeeng reserve, there was someone shot by the RCMP. He had a knife, so he was killed. By the time they took him in, it was too late.
When you look overall, guns are something that we are very cautious of. We watch very carefully. However, we also will protect our rights to our rifles and our shotguns in order to keep feeding our families through our cultural ways of harvesting.