The member is heckling me asking if my wife is okay with it. She is definitely okay with it.
Let me tell the House, those firearms put food on the table at my house. Every other year, I typically get a moose in the freezer, and a white-tailed deer or two, as well. That is definitely what we are using those firearms for.
I use firearms for other things as well. I do not know about anyone else, but there are not many things that are more exciting on a Friday night than going to a buddy's house, throwing a few skeets in the air, and taking them down with a shotgun. That is a lot of fun. I am not sure if the Speaker has ever participated in that, but that is a lot of fun.
This particular legislation targets people like that, people who just want to hang out on a Friday night and shoot some clay pigeons out at the gravel pit. I want one of those new Benelli shotguns. I am not sure if members have seen them but they are amazing. However, now if I want to sell my shotgun to my brother, who has a PAL, and he can show it to me and I can make sure the date on it is good, I will now have to call the RCMP to make sure that the card I am looking at, that has a date on it, that says it is still good, is actually still good. I will have to call in there, and he is going to have to call in as well.
What sense does that make? All that does is it makes life more miserable for firearms owners. That is what we are looking at with this piece of legislation. It is not so much about reducing crime; it is not going after gangsters or drug dealers in urban centres. This is going after firearms owners. This is trying to reduce the number of firearms in the country, just for ideological reasons.
I know that the Liberal government is only worried about reducing the number of firearms because, at committee, the Liberals were layering requirements on legal firearms owners, firearms dealers, and firearms stores, making sure that they keep records for 20 years, make all these phone calls, and register all these transactions.
This is registry. Whether or not a firearm is being registered or the transaction is being registered, the government is keeping tabs on the firearms in this country. Given all of that, I know that the only thing this bill is there to do is to reduce the number of firearms in this country. At committee, we moved an amendment to change the date on which the bill would come into effect. The date that this bill comes into effect is June 30, 2018, a week from now.
I do not think that this bill will be passed into law by June 30. However, that is the date in the bill. We expect that this bill will probably be passed into law sometime in the fall. We said that we wanted to make an amendment to change that to “whenever the bill comes into law”. The Liberals said no, they could not change that date. The date is June 30, and if the bill comes into law much later in the future, that date still has to be used.
That is so that we reduce the number of firearms that will come in under the exemption that is going to be in place after this bill is passed. The Liberals explicitly say that they want to reduce the number of firearms that come into this country. That is what this bill is all about. It is reducing the right of Canadians to bear arms. It is reducing the right of Canadians to buy firearms.
My NDP colleague over here always asks why people need a particular firearm. I am not a stamp collector. I know nothing about stamps. I take my hat off to those people who are stamp collectors. I ask them all the time why they need a particular stamp. They have lots of good reasons why they need a particular stamp. I think, well, all the power to them.
I have friends who are that way with firearms. They never use them. They have them sitting in their collection. When I go over to their house, they open the door on their gun case and say, “Check this out. Look at the new firearm I just bought. Is it not amazing?” I ask what they are ever going to use it for, and they say they are not going to use them, they just think they are cool. That is the same way for a lot of our firearms owners. They just want to be able to show that they have the coolest firearm on the planet Earth. They do not intend to use it. They just want to have that firearm in their collection. I do not necessarily understand it, just like I do not understand the stamp collector.
I think it is a right of Canadians to own property that brings them enjoyment.