Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the committee members for inviting me to speak on behalf of licensed gun owners and the members of my club.
My name is Keith Loh. I am the president of the Port Coquitlam & District Hunting & Fishing Club. We are a non-profit society and shooting range serving the metro Vancouver area, including the riding represented by Mr. McKinnon, who has given us his valuable time on this issue on more than one occasion.
Our range serves over 3,000 active members who engage in sport shooting, hunting, fishing and archery. We are one of the largest outdoor ranges in B.C., and we are a training centre for multiple law enforcement agencies, including the RCMP and the police forces of most of the cities in the Lower Mainland. Similarly, our members are drawn from all the major urban centres. We are urban firearms owners who are in the same communities that are impacted by gang crime. I am a hunter and a competitive shooter.
Mesdames and messieurs, our members share concerns of what appears to be the growing incidence of open gang violence in our communities. Like all Canadians, we wonder why people turn to the gangster lifestyle, and we applaud constructive efforts to put a stop to gang violence and address the root causes that promote gang activity.
Where possible, we co-operate with the police. We vet our members, and we instruct them on the safe and legal use of firearms. We rely on the same licensing conventions that our government uses, which should prevent criminals from gaining access to firearms. When needed, we raise concerns with the chief firearms officer of B.C. and are bound to report illegality that we witness.
Our club has always had active and retired law enforcement officers serving as staff and on our volunteer board of directors. In short, we are a place where gangsters would probably want to be the furthest away from.
I would suggest to the committee that legal firearm owners are fully supportive of constructive efforts against gangs, against illegal trafficking and towards social changes that would deter those away from the gang lifestyle. However, recent efforts by the federal government appear to be aimed improperly at licensed gun owners, who are among the most vetted citizens in the country, targeting those who are fully onside against gangs.
Among the suggested changes were giving cities and provinces the ability to restrict firearms while ignoring the fact that gang members pass freely from one jurisdiction to the next and already disregard laws against illegally transporting firearms or owning them without a license.
You have likely heard that the vast majority of so-called crime guns are flooding through our borders from the United States and elsewhere. Somehow, despite all the background checks on Canadian owners and controls on how licensees buy and sell firearms legitimately, criminals are apparently able to get what they need to support their gang business through foreign sources. Perhaps the committee should ask why, even during COVID, strict border controls and a population that was largely locked down, guns from abroad continued to stream through our border and show up at crime scenes.
In the case of straw purchasing, the public should know that, for anyone desperate enough to use their licence to traffic in firearms, the government already has all the details needed to prosecute them. Indeed, in the case of restricted firearms, which include hand guns, the government has to approve every purchase. If the problem is domestic trafficking, if that was an issue, shouldn't we ask instead if the police have the resources to pursue investigations?
Finally, a gun buyback of legal firearms that were used safely and legally for sporting and hunting, such as by our members, punishes those who already have to pass screening and who already have to abide by laws against improper usage.
It is not clear what evidence the government has had that this will impact gangsters who, if they choose to, could smuggle those guns in or have them manufactured. The fact is, gangsters are not using the $3,000 competition rifles that our members may lose in a buyback. All that will be accomplished is that our sport will be diminished at a cost to the public purse. A gun buyback could cost Canadians hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, decreasing our wealth while our systems are already straining.
I ask the committee to think about how the money proposed for such ideas like the gun buyback could be better used towards stopping the smuggling of illegal firearms or how regions could use those funds instead to attack the source of urban violence by funding housing for our most vulnerable, to help mitigate drug abuse, or to properly fund our courts and policing. How much better would it be if we used our taxpayer dollars for the strengthening of our borders, putting money towards community programs that steer people away from the gang lifestyle and providing better access to mental health resources to those at risk? These are the measures I believe would unite Canadians, and I urge the committee to direct their efforts to exploring those areas.
Thank you.
