Canada's National Firearms Association - NFA, National Firearms ...

C A N A D I A N 

January/February 2011 $4.50 

Firearms Journal 

Fully Committed On All Fronts: 

Canada’s National Firearms Association

Greeting from Head Office 

The New Year is upon us and all of us here at NFA HQ 

are hard at work processing all the new membership 

applications that 2011 has brought us! Keep them 

coming! 

We have a heavy gun show schedule ahead of us this 

winter, leading right into spring. If you are planning 

a show, drop us a line and let us know, so we can add 

it to the schedule, and also let our growing network 

of NFA Field Officers know about your event. If you 

haven’t already done so, please seriously consider 

becoming an NFA volunteer! We’re just an E-mail or 

toll-free call away. 

Preparations are already well underway for the 2011 

AGM. We look forward to getting reacquainted with 

so many of our ‘old’ friends, and meeting many more 

new ones for the very first time. 

Finally, if you haven’t already done so, please take 

a moment to complete our membership survey in 

this issue of CFJ, or fill it out on-line at www.nfa.ca. 

Your views are important to us and the answers you 

provide will help us better serve you, our members. 

Don’t miss out on your chance to win one of three 

fantastic NFA ‘SWAG’ bags! 

Cheers! 

Diane, Megan, Bev & Ted 

On The Cover 

Female shooters are one of the fastest growing 

demographics within Canada’s recreational firearms, 

community. They form an important and vital part of that 

community and it is therefore time we finally put to rest 

old, tired stereotypes, such as only men own guns. 

Today’s responsible firearms owner is just as likely to 

be a mother, sister, aunt or daughter as a father, brother, 

uncle or son. Women from all walks of life, backgrounds 

and ages are opting to join our ranks and we’re all the 

stronger for it. As responsible firearms owners, we need 

to take an active part in encouraging and recruiting more 

new shooters to our sport. Photo by Oleg Volk 

Mission Statement 

Canada’s National Firearms Association exists to promote, 

support and protect all safe firearms activities, including the 

right of self defence; firearms education for all Canadians; 

freedom and justice for Canada’s firearms community, and 

to advocate for legislative change to ensure the right of all 

Canadians to own and use firearms is protected. 

The contents of the Canadian Firearms Journal are copyrighted 

and may be reproduced only when written permission is 

obtained from the publisher. 

Inside 

This Issue 

Regulars 

From the Editor’s Desk ..................................................... 4 

Sean G. Penney 

From The NFA Bookshelf – 

RElOADING TOOlS, SIGHTS AND TElESCOPES 

for Single Shot Rifles ................................................................ 5 

Wm. R. Rantz 

Notice of Election/Call for Nominations ................7-8 

NFA Exerctive 

President’s Message – .................................................. 6 & 9 

Sheldon Clare 

NFA Legacy Fund – .......................................................10-11 

NFA Executive 

Preserving Our Firearms Heritage – . .............. 12-13 

Gary K. Kangas 

Politics & Guns 

Self-Defence: Absolute Right ............................................14-19 

Tyler Vance 

Members Survey – ..................................................25 

NFA Executive 

Made Right Here – 

North Eastern Arms ................................................. 34-37 

Sean G. Penney 

The International Front – 

liberal IED’s & the United Nations........................... 38-39 

Gary Mauser 

Old Western Armoury – 

The lawmen: Wyatt Earp ...................................................40-44 

Jesse l. “Wolf” Hardin 

Legal Corner. ...................................................................46-47 

Sean & Grayson Penney 

Features 

Gun Control and Magic . ...................................................20-21 

Bruce Gold 

Teaching Ladies to Shoot .................................................22-23 

Norman Gray 

Kids & Guns: Intro to Modern Sporting Rifles .........26-27 

Troy Jones 

Battle Rifles of the Central Powers-..............................28-33 

Bob Shell & Sean G. Penney 

2 January - February www.nfa.ca www.nfa.ca January - February 3

Welcome to another edition of Canadian 

Firearms Journal. You’ll notice some 

changes with this issue’s date; ordinarily 

this would’ve been our “February/March” 

issue. The new system we’re transitioning to 

simplifies things and should allow members 

to keep track of their subscriptions more 

easily. No worries, you didn’t miss an issue 

or get your magazine late. We apologize for 

any inconvenience. 

This issue you’ll find contributor Tyler 

Vance back with an extensive review 

and debate on the issue of self-defence in 

Canada. Recent high-profile incidents in 

New Brunswick, Ontario and Alberta have 

put this issue front-and-center, so much so 

that we felt it appropriate to devote additional 

space to this extremely important right. 

From The 

Editor’s 

Desk 

With a potential spring election looming, 

perhaps it is finally time for Canadians to 

force a frank and earnest debate in Ottawa. 

Be sure to check out ‘legal Corner’ as 

well, as it also ties in with this subject. 

This issue also marks the launch of our new 

‘Western lawman’ series from perennial 

favourite Jesse Hardin, who takes a closer 

look at Wyatt Earp and his myth. Gary 

Kangas and Bill Rantz are back with their 

regular features and Bruce Gold returns 

with his tongue-in-cheek take on the slightof-hand 

and ‘magic’ that is necessary to 

make spending $2 billion on a firearms 

registry make sense. 

Gary Mauser checks in with another take 

on the issue of gun identification and the 

UN’s small arms marking scheme, while 

we also welcome aboard new contributor 

Norman Gray, who offers some interesting 

suggestions on how best to introduce new 

lady shooters to our sport. He is joined by 

another freshman writer, Troy Jones, who 

shares with us his experiences teaching his 

kids to shoot using modern sporting rifles. 

Back by popular demand, “Made Right 

Here” showcases North Eastern Arms and 

their innovative line of firearms parts and 

accessories that is really causing shooters 

here in Canada & the USA to sit up and take 

notice. Bob Shell and I also partner up for 

our long-awaited follow-up to the Battle 

Rifles of WW I series. In ‘Part I’ of “Battle 

Rifles of the Central Powers,” we look at 

the main infantry rifles that saw action in 

the hands of soldiers of the German and 

Austro-Hungarian empires. 

‘Team NFA Update,’ ‘The Gunsmith’s 

Bench,’ and ‘The last Word’ will return 

next issue, along with Blair’s VP-Column. 

In its place we’ve run this year’s ‘Notice 

of Election’ and nomination form as the 

prelude to this year’s AGM. Enjoy. 

Become a Member of Canada’s National Firearms Association! 

qYES! I would like to become a member of Canada’s National Firearms Association 

q Individual Regular ($35/year) q Life Regular ($850) q Individual Senior 65+ ($30/year) q Life Senior 65+ ($500) 

q Family* ( $45/yr) *Family Membership consists of 2 adults and anyone under 18, living under one roof. 

q NFA Liability Insurance: $9.95 / person covered, per year. $5 million coverage._____ people covered x $9.95 = _____ 

q Enclosed is a list of individuals covered. 

Payment Information Total Payment: $ ___________ q Cheque or Money Order enclosed q Visa/Mastercard/AMEX 

Credit Card #:______________________________________________________Expiry: ___________________________ 

Signature: __________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Name of Member: 

Address: Postal Code: 

Phone Number: Email Address: 

Please note: Canada’s National Firearms Association is a not for profit organization and abides by all privacy laws and rules. While you may receive additional marketing and general information from 

Canada’s National Firearms Association, our members information is protected . We do not sell or provide list information to private, corporate or government organizations. 

4 January June/July - February www.nfa.ca 

Single shot rifles manufactured during the late 1800s 

and early 1900s are sought after collector’s items in 

today’s market. They are cherished for their rarity, 

workmanship and the history that they represent. Most 

surviving specimens now spend years securely locked 

in vaults and gunrooms, seldom seeing the outdoors 

and rarely the local shooting range. 

Original owners of single shot rifles bought these guns 

for one purpose and that was to shoot them. Whether at 

a local gun club or in a field out behind the barn they 

were the day’s finest target rifles. The owner’s pride 

was not limited to the quality of wood and steel. The 

ability to outshoot your competitor was the ultimate 

source of pride. Reflecting the view of a true marksman 

and cartridge developer, Colonel Townsend Whelen 

is quoted as stating, “The only interesting rifle is an 

accurate one.” 

Major manufactures of the day included Remington, 

Ballard, Sharps, Stevens, plus many others, who 

produced single shot rifles ranging from plain to fancy. 

Calibers ranged from the .22-15-60 Stevens to the .50- 

140 Sharps. No doubt each specific cartridge had its 

following. How I wish the old timers were still here to 

share their arguments as to the virtues of a particular 

cartridge! 

In order to keep their groups “tight” the shooting 

fraternity realized that a perfect shot required much 

more than just a quality rifle. Many factors had to be 

considered which included powder, bullet selection, 

sights and how steady one could hold the rifle. 

Gerald O. Kelver, author of Reloading Tools, Sights 

and Telescopes for Single Shot Rifles has succeeded 

NFA Book Shelf 

RELOADING TOOLS, 

SIGHTS AND TELESCOPES 

For Single Shot Rifles 

Author Gerald O. Kelver 

Paperback, 8 ½ x 5 ½, 163 pages 

Black and white photographs 

Originally published in 1982 by Robinson Press 

Reprinted by Pioneer Press 

in providing a wide variety of information in a single 

volume. In order to accomplish this, Kelver has utilized 

many photographs, patent drawings and sections 

reprinted from old gun catalogues originally printed by 

major firearm companies. 

Reading the first three chapters allows the reader to 

become familiar with the most common commercially 

produced loading tools and bullet molds of the day. 

While now primarily collector items, these hand tools 

were at one time essential if you wished to shoot on 

a regular basis. “Store bought” ammunition was often 

not available in uncommon calibers. When located it 

tended to be too expensive to allow for an afternoon of 

target shooting. Reloading one hundred years ago, as 

today, allowed the shooter to experiment and develop 

custom ammunition at minimal cost. 

Kelver also provides the reader with extensive 

information regarding early rifle scope makers and 

their products. This section contains both historical 

data and specific information that will help identify 

and date old riflescopes. Collectors will find this 

knowledge essential when matching an old scope to an 

antique rifle. 

Commercial sights and tools from companies such 

as Bullard, lyman, Maynard, Stevens, Sharps and 

others are discussed and shown in both pictures and 

reproductions of original advertisements. Kelver 

wisely devoted a separate chapter to the sights and 

tools of custom makers. Farrow, King, Pope, Schoyen 

and Zischang are among the talented and legendary 

craftsmen whose products are identified. 

The final third of this book enhances the reader’s 

knowledge about Scheutzen rifles which were the finest 

of the single shot target rifles. Detailed information is 

BOOKSHELF... Continued On Page 24 

www.nfa.ca January - February 5 

By Wm. R. Rantz

President’s 

Message 

by Sheldon Clare 

There is much speculation about an election this spring 

as the opposition tries to build some sort of a platform 

that can compete with the government’s relatively strong 

economic performance. It is very much the case in Canada 

that whichever party forms government will have to attract 

seats from places where they are currently weak. For the 

Conservatives it is clear that in order to get into majority 

territory they will have to gain more seats in both Quebec 

and in the Maritime provinces. There are also opportunities 

in the West. Those MPs who flipped their votes are certainly 

vulnerable to be replaced by Conservative candidates who 

will support the wishes of their constituents and support a 

pro-rights and freedom agenda. Such an agenda will do 

much more than merely go after the so-called long gun 

registry. The registration of firearms is certainly a problem, 

but if it is a problem for long arms then it is a problem for all 

other firearms and for the same reasons. 

The NFA has long advocated a practical firearms control 

system that concentrates on personally responsibility, 

rather than on tracking property. The idea is that the lawful 

possession of arms by ordinary people is not a crime and never 

should be considered to be one. What is really needed is a 

return to the old principle of the English Bill of Rights – you 

know, radical ideas that people are presumed innocent until 

proven guilty, and that every person’s home is their castle. 

Our present constitution lists in Section 7 of the Charter of 

Rights and Freedoms “…the right to life, liberty and security 

of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except 

in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. “ 

The problem is the first article of the Charter which subjects 

all of the listed rights to “…reasonable limits prescribed by 

law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic 

society.” And therein lies our problem – what are those 

reasonable limits and how can they be reasonably justified? 

Is it reasonably justified to limit the right of Canadian 

residents to defend themselves, their families, neighbours 

and property from criminal activity? Certainly not! In fact 

the peer-reviewed research shows compellingly that when 

people have ready access to firearms for self defence, the 

incidence of violent crime drops dramatically. 

In this regard, I commend to you the excellent work of 

Professor John lott, Jr. in his latest edition of More Guns, 

Less Crime. Professor lott has been thorough in proving his 

thesis as clearly stated in the title and in responding to the 

alarmist criticisms of the gun-grabbers emotional arguments. 

Personally, I think that as an NFA member, you could perform 

a real service by buying a copy of lott’s book and sending 

it to your member of parliament. Perhaps a few of them 

might actually take the time to read it and become informed 

as to solutions to firearms legislation. Another good work to 

pick up is that of Joyce lee Malcolm, Guns and Violence; 

the English Experience which shows the history of failed 

firearms control and the erosion of rights around self defence 

and firearms ownership. 

We really need to work on changing the political mindset in 

all of the parties that only pays lip service to firearms rights 

issues when it might gain some votes. Bills like that which 

the NDP’s Charlie Angus has introduced that tries to appeal 

to a divided constituency are quite frankly garbage, and 

are merely intended to appease the large numbers of NDP 

supporters who own and use firearms. The NDP has yet 

to figure who its constituents are, and it has again failed to 

develop any sort of vision for the future – it is not a party that 

is friendly to firearms owners despite what a few designated 

members have tried to sell as concern for rural gun owners. 

The NDP’s Bill C-580 is merely a technique to try to break 

up what they quite legitimately see as a Conservative threat 

to those few seats that they hold in areas of high firearms 

ownership. 

The firearms community has high expectations of the 

Conservative party, should it form a majority government. 

The Conservatives once promised to repeal the Firearms 

Act, and quite frankly, merely getting rid of the registration 

of long-guns is far from what is needed. It will take much 

resolve and political involvement from each of us to get our 

politicians to do the real work of getting rid of the firearms 

control laws that have become a serious threat to the personal 

rights and freedoms of all Canadians, not just those who own 

firearms. 

Notice of Election 

and Call for Nominations 2011-12 

Canada’s National Firearms Association announces that 

elections will be held for the Board of Directors with 

mailed ballots being counted in April. Interested parties 

should submit a nomination form and a short (200 word) 

biography and statement of intent to the National office 

no later than March 15, 2011. Nomination forms are 

available on request from the National Office. Forms are 

also available for download at www.nfa.ca 

In accordance with the bylaws, a total of eleven nominations 

are sought for the following positions: 

15. The property and business of the association shall be 

managed by a board of directors elected from the following 

electoral regions as described below: 

Electoral Area Require To Be Elected Now 

Alberta-Northwest 

Territories & Out-of-Canada 2 1 

British Columbia-Yukon 2 1 

Manitoba-Nunavut 

Newfoundland- 

1 1 

labrador-Maritimes 1 0 

Ontario 2 1 

Quebec 2 1 

Saskatchewan 1 1 

a. Each of the above would form one electoral area when 

electing its director(s). Out-of-Canada members will vote 

as part of the Alberta membership. The combinations above 

shall apply until such time as those specific provinces and 

territories develop sufficient membership to form separate 

electoral areas. 

b. Each electoral area containing at least 5 percent (5%) of 

the voting members of the association on September 1 of an 

election year is entitled to elect one, but only one director. 

Each electoral area containing at least 10 percent (10%) of 

the voting members of the association on September 1 of an 

election year is entitled to elect two, but only two directors. 

A voting member may vote only for candidate(s) in the electoral 

area in which he or she resides. 

c. A province, territory or out-of-Canada grouping may form 

an electoral area when dividing the electoral area it is part 

of will mean that both of that province, territory or grouping 

and the remaining province(s) and/or territory or grouping 

each have at least 5 percent (5%) of the voting membership 

of the association. Provinces and territories not having sufficient 

numbers to form an electoral area will be combined 

with an adjacent province or territory as determined by the 

board of Directors. 

Directors must be individuals, 18 years of age or older at the 

time of the election, with power under Canadian law to sign 

contracts. 

16. Directors shall be elected by surface mail, electronic 

mail, or secure call-in telephone ballot of voting members 

for a term of two years, except as noted below: 

a. An electoral area with 2 directors shall elect one each 

year, except in the first year in which these bylaws come 

into effect at which time all directors will be elected. The 

director, from an area with 2 directors, having the second 

highest number of votes will serve a one year term and that 

directorship will be up for election for a two-year term in the 

subsequent election. In the event of a tie, the matter will be 

determined by a draw. The directors for Saskatchewan and 

Manitoba-Nunuvat will likewise be first elected as a one year 

term so that about half of the board of directors is subject to 

election each year. 

Signed Diane laitila 

Election Officer 

6 January - February www.nfa.ca www.nfa.ca 

36 

January January 

- February - February www.nfa.ca 735

Nomination Form for Office of Director 

of Canada’s National Firearms Association 

CANDIDATE: 

Name: ____________________________ NFA Membership Number_____________________ 

Address: ______________________________________________________________________ 

Telephone Number: ________________________ E-Mail: ______________________________ 

Candidate Profile: The candidate must provide a good quality digital photograph and a typed electronic 

200 word biography that outlines his or her experience and reasons for wishing to serve as a director of 

Canada’s National Firearms Association. 

Date of Birth: ____________________ 

How long have you been a member of Canada’s NFA?: ______ 

Do you have power under Canadian law to sign legally binding contracts? YES/NO 

Do you have a criminal record for which you have not received a pardon? YES/NO 

I accept the nomination to run as a director for Canada’s NFA. 

Candidate’s signature: ____________________________ Date: _________________________ 

We the undersigned members in good standing of Canada’s National Firearms Association wish to nominate 

____________________ _______________for the position of director. 

NOMINATORS: 

Name: ____________________________ NFA Membership Number: ____________________ 

Address: ______________________________________________________________________ 


How long have you known this person? _____________________________________________ 

Nominator’s Signature: __________________________________ Date: __________________ 

Name: ____________________________ NFA Membership Number: ____________________ 

Address: ______________________________________________________________________ 


Message du 

Président 

Nous nous retrouvons encore à l’aube 

d’une possible élection au printemps en 

voyant l’opposition tenter d’établir un 

programme capable de faire compétition 

à la solide performance économique du 

Gouvernement. Peu importe quel parti 

formera le prochain Gouvernement, ils 

devront tous gagner du terrain en faisant 

élire des députés dans les régions ou ils 

sont faiblement représentés. Pour les 

Conservateurs, la majorité sera possible 

en gagnant des sièges au Québec et dans 

les maritimes en plus de quelques sièges 

dans l’ouest. les Députés qui ont changé 

leur vote lors de la saga du registre des 

armes longues sont particulièrement en 

péril, pouvant être remplacés par des 

candidats Conservateurs, qui eux, seront 

fidèles aux souhaits de leurs électeurs 

et appuieront un agenda pro-droits 

et libertés. Un tel agenda s’adressera 

à bien plus que le registre des armes 

longues. l’enregistrement des armes est 

problématique, s’il l’est pour les armes 

longues, il l’est pour toutes les armes et 

pour les mêmes raisons! 

l’Association Canadienne des 

Propriétaires d’Armes à Feu préconise 

depuis longtemps un système de 

contrôle des armes pratique et centré sur 

la responsabilité individuelle plutôt que 

sur le traçage de la propriété des gens. 

Son fondement est que la possession 

légitime d’armes à feu par des citoyens 

ordinaires n’est pas un crime et ne devrait 

jamais être considéré comme tel. Il est 

essentiel de revenir aux anciens principes 

de la Charte des Droits Anglaise qui 

affirme des principes ‘radicaux’ comme 

la présomption d’innocence jusqu’à la 

preuve du contraire et qu’une résidence 

est inviolable! Notre Constitution 

actuelle, la Charte Canadienne des 

Droits et libertés, énumère dans l’Art. 7 

: ‘Que chacun a droit à la vie, à la liberté 

et à la sécurité de sa personne; Il ne 

peut être porté atteinte à ce droit qu’en 

conformité avec des principes de justice 

fondamentale.’ le problème se trouve 

dans le premier Article de la Charte, qui 

garantit tous les droits et libertés qui y 

sont énoncés, à la condition suivante : 

‘Ils ne peuvent être restreints que par une 

règle de droit, dans les limites qui soient 

raisonnables et dont la justification 

puisse se démontrer dans le cadre d’une 

société libre et démocratique.’ Alors 

voici notre problème : Quelles sont 

ces limites raisonnables? Et comment 

sont-elles raisonnablement justifiables? 

Est-ce raisonnable et justifiable dans 

une société libre et démocratique 

de restreindre le droit aux résidents 

Canadiens de se défendre, de défendre 

leurs familles, leurs voisins et leur 

propriété contre des gestes criminels? 

Certainement pas! En fait, il a été 

démontré que lorsque les gens ont un 

accès direct à des armes à feu pour se 

défendre, l’incidence de crimes violents 

baisse radicalement. 

Je vous recommande les ouvrages 

suivants écrit en anglais : le premier, 

le livre le plus récent du professeur 

John lott Jr. : More Guns, Less Crime 

(Plus d’armes à feu, moins de crime). 

le professeur lott réussi haut la main 

à démontrer l’énoncé du titre de son 

livre en répondant avec des faits aux 

critiques alarmistes et émotionnelles 

des hystériques anti-armes qui veulent 

désarmer les gens respectueux des lois. 

Je crois personnellement qu’en tant que 

membre de l’Association Canadienne 

des Propriétaires d’Armes à Feu, vous 

feriez une bonne action en achetant une 

copie de ce livre et en l’envoyant à votre 

Député. 

Il y en aurait peut-être quelques un 

qui prendraient le temps de le lire et 

deviendraient par le fait même, mieux 

informé sur des solutions possibles 

pour légiférer au sujet des armes à 

feu. Un deuxième excellent livre est 

celui de Joyce lee Malcom, Guns and 

Violence; the English Experience. (les 

armes à feu et la violence, l’expérience 

de l’Angleterre). Ce livre expose 

l’historique des lois ratées sur les armes 

à feu en Angleterre et l’érosion des 

droits de légitime défense et du droit de 

posséder des armes à feu. 

Nous devons travailler sans relâche 

pour changer la manière de penser 

de tous les partis politiques qui font 

semblant d’appuyer l’enjeu des droits 

de posséder des armes à feu lorsqu’ils 

pensent pouvoir gagner quelques votes. 

les projets de loi comme celui du 

Député Charlie Angus du NPD qui tente 

de plaire à ses électeurs divisés, ne sont 

franchement que des ordures et sont 

présentés que pour apaiser les électeurs 

du NPD qui possèdent et utilisent des 

armes à feu. le NPD n’a pas encore 

réussi à bien connaître ses électeurs et 

il a encore échoué à créer une vision 

d’avenir. Ce n’est pas un parti ami des 

propriétaires d’armes à feu malgré ce 

que quelques membres désignés du parti 

ont essayé de faire croire comme étant 

un appui envers ces mêmes propriétaires 

des régions rurales. le projet de loi 

C-580 n’est qu’une technique électorale 

pour tenter de garder les sièges qui ont 

été mis en péril par le changement de 

vote lors du débat sur le registre des 

armes longues, en particulier dans les 

circonscriptions ou les électeurs sont 

nombreux à posséder des armes à feu. 

les propriétaires d’armes à feu ont 

des attentes très élevées vis-à-vis les 

Conservateurs si un jour ils forment 

un Gouvernement majoritaire. les 

Conservateurs ont déjà promis 

d’abroger la loi sur les Armes à Feu, 

et franchement, simplement abolir le 

registre des armes longues est loin de 

ce qui est nécessaire en cette matière. 

Il nous faudra beaucoup de ténacité et 

d’implication politique pour convaincre 

les politiciens d’accomplir vraiment la 

tâche d’éliminer les lois sur les armes 

à feu qui sont devenues des menaces 

sérieuses envers nos droits et libertés, 

et ce pour tous les Canadiens, pas juste 

ceux qui possèdent des armes à feu. 

Sheldon Clare 

Président. Association Canadienne des 

Propriétaires d’Armes à Feu 

8 How long have you known this person? _____________________________________________ January - February www.nfa.ca www.nfa.ca January January - February 99

NFA Legacy Fund 

Canada’s National Firearms Association is pleased to 

announce the creation of our NFA legacy Fund. The new 

fund has been created at the request of members, and under 

the direction of the new board of directors. 

It is hoped that this new fund will provide interested members 

with an opportunity to know that their treasured firearms 

will be preserved after their passing, and ensure that their 

guns will be saved from potential destruction; especially in 

cases where they have no living heirs, or their heirs have no 

interest in firearms ownership. 

By directly donating or bequeathing their firearms to NFA, 

members can be assured that their prized firearms will find 

welcomed new homes in the hands of active, responsible 

shooters & collectors from across Canada. 

From consultations with members on this topic we are aware 

that simply knowing that their prized firearm(s) will survive 

them, and in turn become treasured family heirlooms to an 

entirely new generation of shooters, offers a not unsubstantial 

measure of consolation and contentment to many. 

Sadly, the more common scenario played out with increasing 

frequency today involves a call to the local police, seeking 

legal advice on the proper disbursement of their loved one’s 

firearms; followed by a personal visit by the local constable, 

and culminating with the unsuspecting executor or heirs 

relinquishing ownership of the firearms in question. The 

latter are then fated for almost certain destruction. 

It is our hope that members facing such a decision will find 

the potential alternative we offer today far more palatable. 

All funds realized from the dispensation of such generous 

gifts will be used to directly aid Canada’s National Firearms 

Association in achieving its long-standing goals. 

Canada’s National Firearms Association exists to promote, 

support and protect all safe firearms activities, including the 

right of self defence; firearms education for all Canadians; 

freedom and justice for Canada’s firearms community, and 

further to advocate for legislative change to protect the right 

to own and use firearms. 

To discuss arrangements or to make a direct gift to the NFA 

legacy Fund today, please call toll free: 1-877-818-0393 or 

E-mail: info@nfa.ca 

Please note that Canada’s National Firearms Association also 

provides free copies of our Inheritance Primer, for the 

convenience of Canadian firearms owners. You do not have 

to be a supporter of NFA legacy Fund to take advantage of 

this offer. Simply write or call to request your copy today. 

Many members find it so valuable that they keep an extra 

copy with their will as an aid to their future executor or 

family. 

Acknowledging Legacy Donors: 

Mr. George McLeod 

Canada’s National Firearms Association wishes to 

acknowledge the generosity of Ms. Nancy liebech 

and the Estate of the late Gordon Mcleod. 

NFA member Gordon Mcleod was kind enough to 

bestow a large donation and his extensive collection 

of firearms to the NFA legacy Fund. His gift serves 

as a memorial to his life-long commitment to the 

NFA’s never-ending fight for natural justice in 

Canadian firearms law. 

legacies such as this make it possible for Canada’s 

National Firearms Association to continue our 

work to protect and advance our firearms rights 

as responsible members of Canada’s recreational 

firearms community, and our centuries old cultural 

traditions and heritage of firearms ownership. 

Canada’s National Firearms Association wishes 

to recognize our friend, Gordon Mcleod, for this 

effort and extend our heartfelt appreciation for such 

a selfless gift. 

Team NFA 

Update 

Megan Heinicke 

Info on Megan and a bit of extra space if you 

need room for “From the Editior” 

The TEAM NFA Update will return next issue. Pictured above is 

our very own Megan Heinicke, holding the newest addition to her 

family, Baby Predo at Age 3 Weeks. We look forward to the day 

when we may perhaps welcome another addition to TEAM NFA. 

As we go to print, mother and baby are doing well and Megan is 

hard at work training for her return to competition in late February 

or early March. 

Join us on 

Canadian 

Firearms Journal 

The Official Magazine of the National Firearms Association 

Editor .................................................................... sean@nfa.ca 

Sean Penney & Grayson Penney 

Executive VP, Operations .....................................info@nfa.ca 

Diane Laitila ....................................................... 780-439-1394 

Accounts / Membership / General Info .... membership@nfa.ca 

Legal Inquiries .................................................... legal@nfa.ca 

National Executive 

National President .......................................... 1-877-818-0393 

Sheldon Clare.................................................... sheldon@nfa.ca 

Executive VP, Communications.....................1-877-818-0393 

Blair Hagen............................................................ blair@nfa.ca 

Treasurer......................................................... 1-877-818-0393 

Henry Atkinson.....................................................henry@nfa.ca 

Secretary.......................................................... 1-877-818-0393 

Ted Simmermon.......................................................info@nfa.ca 

Regional Directors 

British Columbia - Yukon...............................1-877-818-0393 

Sheldon Clare .................................................. sheldon@nfa.ca 

Blair Hagen ........................................................... blair@nfa.ca 

Alberta – NWT – Out-of-Canada...................1-877-818-0393 

Ed Lucas ................................................................... ed@nfa.ca 

Ted Simmermon ..................................................... info@nfa.ca 

Saskatchewan ..................................................1-877-818-0393 

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Vacant ………...................................................1-877-818-0393 

Ontario .............................................................1-877-818-0393 

Bill Rantz .................................................................bill@nfa.ca 

Henry Atkinson ....................................................henry@nfa.ca 

Quebec .............................................................1-877-818-0393 

Phil Simard ............................................................ phil@nfa.ca 

Stephen Buddo ..................................................... steve@nfa.ca 

Maritimes – Newfoundland & Labrador..........1-877-818-0393 

Sean Penney........................................................... sean@nfa.ca 

Creative Design by The AD Guys ...................... 780-488-5776 

Angie Hutchison ....................................... angie@theadguys.ca 

Canadian national Firearms assoCiation 

Box 52183 Tel: 780-439-1394 

Edmonton, Alberta Toll Free 1-877-818-0393 

Canada T6G 2T5 Fax: 780-439-4091 

info@nfa.ca www.nfa.ca 


Preserving Our 

Firearms Heritage 

By Gary K. Kangas 

For Tom Kieffer preserving our firearms heritage 

began at an early age. Tom was born August 19, 

1927 in Ridgeway, Ontario and became aware of 

the area’s storied history as a young boy. He lived 

on Garrison Road and the local church has a plaque 

commemorating the Fenian Invasion of Canada in 

1866. 

For those who do not know, the Fenians were Irishborn 

veterans of the U.S. Civil War. They wore the 

green and gold uniform of the Irish Republican Army 

and their goal was a free Ireland. In this cause, the 

battle-hardened Fenians launched an invasion of 

British-ruled Canada. Their goal was to secure the 

Canadian capital and in order to use it as leverage and 

force the British to relinquish control of their Irish 

homeland. 

However, the Canadian Militia, civilian volunteers 

and British regulars, who 

rallied in defence of their 

homeland, eventually 

fought the Fenians to a 

standstill - despite their 

initial gains. In subsequent 

battles, Canadian Militia 

sharpshooters forced a 

Fenian withdrawal back 

across the border; where 

they were summarily 

arrested by U.S. Marshals, reinforced by units of the 

U.S. Army. 

The sense of wonder, action and romance growing 

up in such a place central to Canadian history helped 

shape Tom’s early life, and sparked his interest in our 

firearms heritage and military history. At age 12, Tom 

joined the local bugle band as a drummer. Two years 

later he found himself a member of the militia as a 

newly-minted cadet 

Although Tom came from non-firearms owning 

parents, his fascination with Canadian history, 

firearms and the ‘Old West’ was unabated. Eventually 

his mother bought him his first pair of cowboy boots; 

setting him on a path to become the consummate 

outdoorsman; just like so many of his childhood 

heroes. At age 15 Tom began hunting and acquired 

his first personally- owned firearm, an Ithaca 16 gauge 

pump. By age 17 he had 

advanced to big game, 

and had started hunting 

deer with his trusty Ithaca 

and rifled slugs. He then 

bought his first handgun 

in Pembroke, Ontario, 

a .22 Colt single action. 

He was to later explore 

the continent, camping, 

hunting and fishing his 

way from Ontario to British Columbia 

and south, to California. 

While growing up as a teenager, 

during the height of WW II, Tom 

could not resist the siren-call of duty 

and attempted to enlist in the Regular 

Army in 1944 at age 17. The recruiter 

sent him home saying, “The war is 

nearly over, so go home and stay in 

school”. 

Tom joined the Pembroke Hunt Club 

in 1956, continuing to pursue his 

passion for hunting and shooting. 

He eventually became involved in 

bullseye and silhouette shooting, as 

well as archery. 

Tom emigrated to California in 1963 

and found his first antique cowboy 

spur while roto-tilling his garden. He 

found himself intrigued by the history 

his find represented and thus began a 

quest to add to his collection; and in 

some small way help preserve our 

history. His collection is now the envy 

of many. 

During his time in California, Tom 

continued to hunt and shoot, and it 

was there that he also acquired his first cowboy gun, a 

Ruger 3-screw .357 Magnum revolver. 

Tom returned to Canada in 1969, and while he 

continued to shoot regularly, it was not until 2000 

that he discovered Cowboy Action Shooting. Shortly 

thereafter, he became a full-fledged SASS (Single 

Action Shooting Society) member and has become a 

formidable competitor - winning the Elder Statesman 

category on a regular basis. 

Tom’s ever-present smile and light hearted manner 

endear him to those he meets. He has a rascally glint 

in his eye and his approach is always inviting. 

Tom is a student of Canadian history and the old west, 

a discerning firearms aficionado and hunter. At age 

83 he is spry, active and a keen competitor. He is 

an incredible role model for all of preserving our 

Canadian Firearms Heritage. 


Politics 

& Guns 

by Tyler Vance 

SelF-deFenCe: 

Absolute Right 

Growing up in small-town, rural Canada, a regular police presence 

was never part of daily life. There is no ‘911 Emergency Service’ in 

our area and the ‘local’ RCMP detachment is close to an hour’s drive 

away. After business hours, calls to their switchboard are routed to 

another central detachment another hour’s drive further away. 

Under perfect conditions, police response time may be measured in 

hours. Usually, by the time police actually show up, the issue has been 

resolved by area residents, or the miscreants are long gone, and the 

only useful service responding RCMP can provide is to file a report 

for insurance purposes. Unless wholly inept, the perpetrators are 

almost never caught. In very real terms, most rural residents quickly 

realize that they are on their own. 

Mine is not a unique story, and small towns across rural Canada are 

forced to deal with similar circumstances every day. Unfortunately, 

not every town has been lucky enough to have avoided the taint 

of increasing bodily violence, home invasions and violent crime 

as has my own. Far too often, average, law-abiding citizens are 

being left with no other recourse but to take up arms in defence of 

themselves, their family and their homes; when calls to police for aid 

go unanswered or are tragically late in the coming. 

Yet, self-defence, as both word and concept, has become almost 

taboo within the mainstream media and is increasingly viewed with 

disdain amongst many urban populations. The latter seem incapable 

or unwilling to recognize the simple truth that in a life-or-death 

situation, where seconds count, waiting hours or days for a policeman 

to respond to your frantic requests for help is simply insane. 

Somehow, it has become more preferable and seemingly more 

‘respectable’ for Canadians to be publicly mourned, as tragic victims 

of violent assault, rather than celebrated as self-sufficient and live 

survivors. In many cases the latter are often bizarrely criticized for 

their actions and are classified by many as being equally culpable as a 

consequence of their refusal to accept the ‘victim’s mantle’ - instead, 

by choosing to take responsibility for their own safety they have 

somehow become just another ‘combatant’ to be judged. 

Such attitudes fly in the face of common sense and can only be a 

direct result of the past four decades of liberal social re-engineering. 

To an amazing degree, ‘progressives,’ have seemingly ingrained 

repugnance for self-defence, at least on a theoretical level, in many 

Canadian’s psyche, and on a practical level, throughout much of 

Canadian law-enforcement. 

Fellow Canadian Firearms Journal contributor and noted scholar, 

Professor Gary Mauser, has dubbed self-defence, the ‘troublesome 

right.’ As Mauser has argued, all individuals have the right to selfdefence, 

including the use of physical force, to protect themselves 

from assault. Our Canadian Criminal Code bears out this assertion. 

14 January - February www.nfa.ca 

(See S. 34, 35, 37, 40 & 41) For certain stake-holders, including 

gun control advocates and law-enforcement agencies, such 

rights run counter to the equally important (from their 

perspective) belief in the ‘rule of law.’ As Mauser has noted, 

when firearms are inserted into the mix, the subsequent debate 

becomes even more volatile. Reconciling these diametrically 

opposing perspectives and priorities, has served to transform 

self-defence into Mauser’s ‘troublesome right.’ 

Recent events, have served to inflame this debate anew, and we 

are now seeing a noticeable change in the attitudes of not only 

rural Canadians, but suburban and urban dwellers as well. And 

not all of them necessarily gun 

owners either. 

It is almost impossible to point 

to any one single cause for this 

dramatic shift in the Canadian 

socio-political paradigm, but 

perhaps it can be argued that it 

is more a culmination of events 

and variables over the past 

number of years. The political 

and legal fall-out from such 

high-profile policing fiascos as 

the Robert Dziekański affair 

at Vancouver’s international 

airport and the G-8 and 

G-20 protests of last summer 

have most certainly served 

to highlight this increasing 

‘disconnect’ between the 

Canadian political-left, and the 

moderate political-center. 

The increasingly questionable 

decision-making processes 

employed by our lawenforcement 

agencies when 

dealing with clear-cut cases of self-defence have only 

exacerbated things. In response, there is no question that leftwing 

pundits, political commentators and anti-gun advocates 

opposed to self-defence are becoming increasingly strident in 

their public statements and arguments. Yet, their faux-outrage 

and poorly-concealed repugnance for the actions of those 

individuals opting to ‘take the law into their own hands,’ or 

more correctly to exercise their right to self-defence in the face 

of violent assault and criminality are falling on increasingly 

deaf ears. 

law-enforcement in Canada has responded with initiatives such 

as Operation Zero Tolerance, Operation Safe City and the retasking 

of greater resources to national and provincial ‘weapons 

enforcement teams, such as NWEST, (whose ostensible raison 

d’être was to keep guns out of the hands of criminals), and retasking 

them to essentially remove legal, registered firearms 

from the hands of Canadians. 

Denied the means of competently defending themselves, such 

individuals would therefore no longer pose any danger to ‘the 

rule of law,’ and would be forced back into a more comfortable 

role for the part of both law-enforcement agencies and leftwing 

‘progressives.’ 

The problem for the latter players, however, is the revolution 

in technology that is severely hampering their ability to control 

the ‘facts’ and thus the larger debate. Internet forums, blogs 

and social networking sites such as Canadian GunNutz.com, 

Small Dead Animals blog, Facebook and YouTube are ensuring 

that the unvarnished truth, rather than their ‘spin’ is getting 

distributed to the greatest number of Canadians in our history. 

We are truly living in the ‘Information Age,’ and with advances 

in technology, it is far 

easier for proponents of 

natural justice, along with 

self-defence advocates, 

to mount credible publicrelations 

campaigns and 

legal challenges, and 

to successfully lobby 

for increased public 

accountability from state 

actors - ranging from 

politicians such as the 

Ontario Attorney-General, 

to federal, provincial 

and even municipal lawenforcement 

such as the 

RCMP, OPP and Ottawa 

Police Service. The Robert 

Dziekański Taser incident, 

the G-8/G-20 Protests, the 

unjustifiably brutal stripsearch 

of Stacy Bonds, and 

the savage arrest of Buddy 

Tavares are just a few cases 

in point; all of which can 

be viewed on video sharing 

sites such as YouTube 24/7. 

As Justice Richard lajoie, of the Ontario Court of Justice, 

has argued, such video has become extremely important as 

it, “… Provide us with these extra details that put meat to 

simple words that are spoken by witnesses.” Justice lajoie 

was responsible for the release of the disturbing seven-minute 

Ottawa police video showing the strip search of Stacy Bonds, 

following an official filing by the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. 

While the Bonds case doesn’t exactly tie-in with the central 

issue of this article, the comments of Chief Justice lajoie most 

certainly do, especially in the case of Port Colborne, Ontario 

resident, Ian Thompson. Thompson is a 53 year-old former 

firearms instructor and crane operator. In August of this past 

year his home was attacked by three masked assailants tossing 

flaming bottles of gasoline, commonly known as ‘Molotov 

cocktails.’ 

Thompson’s security cameras recorded the entire attack. The 

video shows three masked attackers lobbing a minimum of six 

www.nfa.ca January - February 15

Molotov cocktails at Thompson’s house, showering his roof 

and rear deck in burning gasoline and singeing one of his prized 

Siberian Husky dogs kenneled in the back yard. 

Mr. Thompson, awoken from a sound sleep by the crash of 

breaking bottles, the smell of burning petroleum and the frantic 

barks of his dogs, jumped from bed. Seeing the attack in 

progress, he rushed to his firearms safe, grabbing his Smith & 

Wesson revolver and loaded it. Rushing outside, clothed only 

in his underwear, he confronted the three masked men who 

continued to firebomb his home. He responded by discharging 

his revolver several times in their direction. The attackers were 

unhurt by the shots. However, 

when their assault was met 

with steadfast resolve and a 

proportionate measure of force 

on the part of Mr. Thompson, 

they immediately opted to flee. 

local police were called to the 

scene and were provided with 

copies of the video recordings. 

Subsequently, Mr. Thompson 

was taken into custody by the 

Niagara Regional Police for 

his role in the incident, charged 

with ‘careless use of a firearm,’ 

and his modest collection of five 

pistols and two rifles, along with 

his firearms license were seized. 

The local Crown attorney later 

added insult to injury, laying 

subsequent charges of ‘pointing 

a firearm,’ along with two counts 

of ‘careless storage of a firearm;’ 

with a recommendation that Mr. 

Thompson serve jail time! 

The above charges and the 

brazenness of the firebomb 

attacks, and the unqualified 

miscarriage of justice in charging 

Ian Thompson has resonated 

with average Canadians, and the 

story has gone viral, with even 

a number of American media 

outlets reporting on the incident. 

Critics of Mr. Thompson, his decision to defend himself, 

especially with a firearm, have firmly voiced their disdain for 

the outrage the case has engendered both within and without 

Canada. Their delusional moral superiority has seen statements 

to the effect that Mr. Thompson is a criminal because there 

is no Canadian ‘Castle Doctrine,’ and thus no right to selfdefence. 

His crimes are compounded by his rash decision to 

use a firearm in his defence, especially since Canadians do not 

enjoy the same protections granted to Americans via their much 

vilified Second Amendment. 

What so many fail to realize, and the fact that so many preceding 

liberal governments have worked so hard to conceal, is that 

Canadians actually enjoy similar protections, including the 

right to self-defence – and the right to exercise lethal force 

in the prosecution of such actions. The difference being that 

in Canada, they simply aren’t quite as clearly quantified as in 

American. 

Modern American and Canadian law share a common pedigree, 

drawn from English Common law, the English Bill of Rights, 

and a legal tradition that can be traced as far back as the Magna 

Carta. Central to this tradition were three key legal concepts, 

or what English constitutional scholar and writer William 

Blackstone dubbed, the 

three “absolute rights.” 

These included: the right 

to personal liberty, the right 

to private property and 

the right to self-defence. 

Such rights were enjoyed 

during the colonial period, 

they were enjoyed after the 

founding of the Dominion 

of Canada in 1867, and they 

continue to be protected to 

this day (albeit property 

rights have been sorely 

wounded thanks to the 

efforts of former Prime 

Minister Pierre Trudeau) 

under the Canadian Charter 

of Rights and Freedoms. 

Contrary to popular 

opinion, the right to selfdefence 

has never been 

abandoned in Canada, 

although it seems that many 

leftist elements within our 

society and government 

have conveniently chosen 

to forget this simple 

truth. Individuals such as 

Mr. Thompson already 

enjoy legal rights that any 

reasonable person would 

interpret as forming what 

constitutes a de facto “Castle Doctrine.” Blackstone himself 

argued that this right was so sacrosanct that Englishmen 

enjoyed not only the right to use deadly force in the defence 

of person and home, but that said rights extended so far as to 

legally permit the slaying of agents of the king found on one’s 

property after the fall of night uninvited! 

The roots of the American Second Amendment, along with 

our own right to use firearms for self-defence, shares a similar 

English pedigree that predates even the Magna Carta and may 

be traced back to the reign of King Canute, (995-1035) when 

subjects of the crown were legally required to possess arms 

suitable for the protection of life and were under threat of fine 

if they failed to do so. During the colonial period, Englishmen 

were similarly required to keep arms for self-defence, defence 

of property and they were to be maintained in such a state of 

readiness so as to permit the Crown to form a militia where 

and when required. This remained true of Upper and lower 

Canada, as well as for the thirteen American colonies; and right 

up until the 19th century, adult males in Canada were legally 

obligated by the Crown to be armed (at their own expense no 

less) such that they could properly effect their own defence, as 

well as be available for muster as militia for protection of the 

colonies. 

These rights did not disappear 

following Confederation. Selfdefence 

continues to be a legal 

right under current Canadian 

law and is even enshrined in the 

Criminal Code of Canada, the 

Charter and surprisingly, even 

the much-reviled C-68 Firearms 

Act; which recognizes the right 

to self-defence as one of the 

principal acceptable reasons 

for the acquisition of restricted 

firearms, including handguns! 

To be sure, these rights are not 

without their limitations and in 

cases where they are exercised, 

the level of force must be 

proportionate to the threat level 

posed by the attacker. Obviously, 

we do not have carte blanche to 

kill without provocation or just 

cause, simply because someone 

cuts us off in traffic or we get 

poked in the chest during a 

particularly heated argument. 

We do, however, have such 

a right when attacked in the 

early morning hours in our own 

home, by multiple assailants 

armed with firebombs, who 

are actively attempting to burn 

down our home and burn us 

alive, as in the Thompson case. 

Alas, forty years of liberal social re-engineering has caused 

most Canadians to assume that this most basic of rights was 

somehow abandoned or extinguished once we entered the 

‘modern era.’ There is no question that the concept of armed 

self-defence directly conflicts with the leftist progressive 

‘ideal’ and thus the interests of modern-day ‘big government’ 

and their heartfelt desire to expand the all compassing influence 

of the ‘nanny state.’ Remember Allan Rock’s now infamous 

quote that he, “...I came to Ottawa with the firm belief that 

only the police and military should posses firearms.” We 

see the same sentiment held by most senior police officials 

and many within the current firearms bureaucracy today, and 

was clearly evidenced during the debate over Bill C-391. 

The on-going attempt by the RCMP to accrue the power to 

unilaterally reclassify and ban firearms is another extension of 

this conviction. 

Self-defence has indeed become the ‘troublesome right’ for 

such actors. So much so that some would argue that all out 

war has been declared on the right to self-defence and those 

who successfully exercise said right by them. We see this 

most clearly in the almost automatic laying of charges against 

the victims of burglary, 

robbery, home-invasion 

and attempted murder that 

successfully employed force 

to protect themselves and/or 

their homes or property. 

The Canadian firearms 

bureaucracy has similarly 

refused to recognize or 

enforce key components 

of the current Firearms 

Act, including the clearly 

delineated right to acquire a 

firearm, including handguns, 

solely for the purpose of 

self-defence. Any individual 

listing such a justification, 

however real, will almost 

certainly find that their 

application to transfer said 

firearm to be immediately 

denied without cause, or 

alternately, bureaucratic 

inertia is allowed to run 

amok, causing indefinite 

delays in the processing 

of such applications. 

Eventually, applicants grow 

weary of the red tape and 

abandon their application, 

die or are killed. 

In truth few Canadian 

politicians, Crown prosecutors, legal scholars, justices, 

lawyers, civil servants and law-enforcement officials today 

choose to recognize Canadian’s right to self-defence, be it 

armed or otherwise. Somehow they have been infected by the 

bizarre ‘progressive’ ideal that it is somehow more desirable 

to permit the unhindered victimization and assault upon one’s 

own self, their family or home, and to cede such responsibility 

to the police alone. 

Again, the problem with such a proposition is that calling the 

police is oftentimes not an option, particularly when under 

imminent threat of death and seconds count. Remember too, that 

according to the Supreme Court of Canada, law-enforcement 


officers are under no obligation to provide personal protection 

to Canadians; rather they are more akin to a ‘clean-up crew’ 

that shows up after the crime has been committed. They cleanup 

the blood and gore left by the victims of violent crime, take 

photos and conduct an investigation in hopes of apprehending 

and convicting the perpetrators. This leaves many Canadians in 

an impossible position. 

Just ask retired Canadian Forces veterans lawrence Manzer 

and Brian Fox of Burton, N.B.. The victims of a relentless 

campaign of vandalism and theft; their repeated appeals to 

local law-enforcement for aid was completely ignored, as the 

crimes being committed against 

them were merely ‘property 

crimes’; and thus a low-priority 

to local police. What their 

local police failed to appreciate 

was the level of psychological 

damage and mental stress these 

men and their families were 

forced to endure as a result of 

such unchecked criminality. 

The perpetrators robbed both 

men and their families of their 

sense of safety and contentment 

in their own homes. Ultimately 

neither family could leave or 

return to their own home without 

a sense of impending doom or 

fear of what they would find or 

encounter. Their homes were no 

longer their ‘castles.’ 

That is until one March night 

last year when both men were 

awoken from their slumbers 

by three unknown prowlers. 

Manzer, responding to a call 

from his neighbour, Brian 

Fox for aid, immediately 

jumped from bed and grabbed 

his unloaded shotgun, along 

with several shells. Running 

from his home into -13 degree 

temperatures, clad in nothing 

but his night clothes, Manzer 

instructed his wife to call the police as he ran out into the dark 

in aid of his friend. He discovered Fox and his son confronting 

three prowlers. 

In an effort to support Fox and to prevent any of the prowlers 

from potentially utilizing any weapons they may have had 

concealed upon their person in the darkness, Manzer pointed 

his still unloaded shotgun in the direction of the prowlers. He 

voiced instructions for them to immediately halt, informing 

them that the police were on the way. 

With the situation under control and the now cowed prowlers 

under the control of Fox and his son, Manzer returned to 

his home, properly secured his firearm as per the Firearms 

Act and returned to wait with the Fox men for the police to 

arrive and take the miscreants into custody. A week later the 

police returned, this time to arrest Manzer, charging him with, 

‘pointing a firearm,’ while Brian Fox was charged with assault. 

It would be hard to argue that Canadian judicial and lawenforcement 

officialdom is actively conducting an all-out war 

on our right to self-defence based solely on the Thompson and 

Manzer cases. However, they are not isolated cases. In just 

the past several years have seen numerous high-profile cases 

where the victims have found themselves on the wrong-side 

of a Crown attorney’s charge as a consequence of their selfdefence 

efforts. 

Take for instance the case of 

Toronto grocer David Chen 

who was acquitted last year 

of assault and unlawful 

confinement of a notorious 

local thief who had been 

preying on area businesses 

with impunity for ages. 

When local Toronto police 

failed to stop Anthony 

Bennett, a 52-year-old drug 

addict with a long criminal 

record from attempting to 

rob his small family-owned 

market for the second time 

in one day, Chen, along 

with two employees chased 

down the fleeing Bennett 

and held him until police 

arrived. 

Rather than thanks, all three 

men found themselves 

facing serious charges, 

including assault, forcible 

confinement, kidnapping 

and carrying a concealed 

weapon. Chen and 

his compatriots found 

themselves potentially 

facing decades in jail, 

while the actual thief at the 

center of events was, himself, offered a plea deal by Crown 

prosecutors in exchange for his testimony against Chen and his 

fellows. Unbelievable! 

The charges of assault with a weapon and assault causing 

bodily harm, laid against Taber, Alberta oilfield consultant Joe 

Singleton last October, are just as preposterous as those laid 

against Thompson or Manzer. In the case of Singleton, he 

returned home to his rural property one day last May to find 

his home ransacked and a strange vehicle in the drive. Exiting 

his home, he discovered the thief ramming his own vehicle 

repeatedly in an attempt to flee. When the thief changed focus 

and seemed to be intent on running over his wife, Singleton 

grabbed a small hatchet and using only the flat side, hit the 


thief twice on the side of the head – stopping the attack cold. 

As inconceivable as it sounds, without even questioning the 

Singletons, local police laid the aforementioned charges based 

solely on the statements of the criminal assailant. The latter, 

just as in the Chen case, was charged with far lesser offences 

under the Code. 

For every victory, such as the Chen case, there have been 

defeats as well. Just days ago, Brian Knight, the rural, Alberta 

farmer who successfully apprehended a thief who stole his 

ATV on the night of March 26, 2009, pled guilty to criminal 

negligence causing bodily harm. In exchange, the Crown 

dropped several other charges. In order to apprehend the thief, 

Knight, who had armed himself with his hunting shotgun, fired 

a load of light birdshot over the thief’s head as he attempted to 

flee through a nearby field after abandoning the ATV. The thief, 

Harold Groening, caught several of the tiny pellets in his leg 

and was subsequently placed under citizen’s arrest by Knight. 

Groening’s partner got away, while the former thief was briefly 

hospitalized and released. 

The case of Shelburne County, N.S. fisherman Michael Goulden 

is somewhat similar to the Knight incident. Following the same 

pattern as most of the others, in the pre-dawn hours one autumn 

morning in 2009 the tranquility of the Goulden homestead was 

destroyed by the roar of racing ATV motors. Two unknown men 

were found to be recklessly driving their ATVs in circles around 

the Goulden home, tearing up the grounds, destroying property 

and generally intimidating and terrorizing the residents. 

Mr. Goulden jumped from his bed and retrieved his shotgun. 

loading it with birdshot suitable for small game hunting, he 

stepped out of his house intending to exercise his right to selfdefence 

and defence of his home. Following the discharge of his 

shotgun, one of the riders was hit by several pellets and slightly 

injured. The riders, Jeremy Shand and Cody VanBuskirk were 

apprehended and later charged with mischief and trespassing 

at night. Goulden was charged with assault with a weapon, 

assault causing bodily harm, pointing a gun and careless use 

of a firearm and his gun collection consisting of some 43 rifles, 

shotguns and a single pistol were seized. 

last fall, however, Crown prosecutors assigned the case opted 

to drop all charges after informing the Nova Scotia Supreme 

Court justice hearing the case that they had little hope of 

successfully prosecuting the case. 

Shelburne RCMP, in response to Mr. Goulden’s request to 

have his firearms returned to him, filed an application with the 

courts to prevent their return and to keep Mr. Goulden from 

References: 

http://www.garymauser.net/papers.html 

Criminal Code of Canada: http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/c-46/ 

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/11/25/ 

ottawa-bonds-video-115.html#ixzz1BzX2duKw 

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/11/25/ 

ottawa-bonds-video-115.html#ixzz1BzVucovO 

having access to firearms in the future. This is outrageous given 

the fact that Mr. Goulden has not been convicted of a single 

criminal offence related to the events in question and retains a 

clean record. 

Remember, the only time his firearms were used for anything 

other than hunting or target practice was solely in defence of 

his home. An action forced upon him by the actions of Shand 

and VanBuskirk. Obviously, Mr. Goulden poses no risk to the 

public at large; therefore the RCMP’s actions in this case are 

not justified. 

Perhaps it is this question of justice that we should most occupy 

ourselves with in such cases. Costs of mounting a successful 

legal defence in Canadian courts are spiralling upwards, with 

even the most simple of cases typically running into the tens of 

thousands of dollars. More complex cases, heard in the higher 

courts, along with multiple appeals by the Crown, can easily 

drive those same costs into the hundreds of thousands and 

leave defendants destitute. Police and Crown prosecutors do 

not operate under the same limitations, and essentially enjoy 

a limitless bank account provided to them by the public purse. 

That imbalance must be addressed, since, in essence when it 

comes to cases of self-defence, Canadians are innocent until 

proven broke. 

Too many innocent individuals, as a result, are being forced to 

plead to charges they are not guilty of due to a lack of resources 

necessary to mount a winning legal defence. In essence, such 

persons are doubly victimized. First by the criminals who 

attacked them, and then by the police, prosecutors and courts 

who seem more interested in punishing the survivors of 

violence than their assailants. The fact that such cockamamie 

prosecutions continue to happen certainly gives weight to the 

charge that the right to self-defence is most assuredly under 

attack by the legal establishment. 

Nevertheless, the only way they will succeed in this mission 

is if we let them, through our acceptance of their contentions. 

Regardless of how troubling it is to the law-enforcement 

establishment, self-defence is an absolute right that has existed 

for centuries. It predates the discovery of our continent and even 

the invention of modern democratic government in Canada. 

It cannot be unilaterally extinguished by bureaucratic fiat, 

unilateral law-enforcement ‘invention’ or even the actions of a 

rabidly leftist government. To do so would essentially unmake 

one of the key foundations upon which our entire politicojudicial 

system is based. 

Read more: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Right+self 

+defence+never+abolished/4151659/story.html#ixzz1Bsdimthk 

Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/01/20/ 

man-faces-jail-after-protecting-home-from-maskedattackers/#ixzz1BzgrZqUl 

Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/ 

archive/2009/05/25/store-employees-beat-suspected-shoplifter. 

aspx#ixzz1C3YTuk7x 


Gun Control 

and Magic 

By Bruce Gold 

“despite the claims of magic, 

the connection between paper 

and gun is so tenuous that 

the paper may continue after 

the gun ceases to exist and 

the gun may exist without any 

paper existing. “ 

In the often-technical world of the gun control debate, 

many people underestimate the importance of beliefs and 

ideas. We can demonstrate how important beliefs are by 

examining how a belief in magic underlies many of our gun 

control policies. This, often unstated, belief in magic allows 

bureaucrats to re-imagine how causation works in the real 

world and impose their will on reality. Magical aspects of gun 

control policies can be relied on to shape reality and enable 

a particular policy, a particular technology or a particular 

bureaucratic process to produce the desired results. In the 

following article, we’ll examine how this belief in magic 

and magical processes enables gun controllers to justify and 

celebrate their policy preferences. 

Firearms Registry 

The Firearms Registry is a database of legally owned guns 

in Canada. By definition, illegal guns or, as the authorities 

like to say, “guns on the street” are not in the database. The 

rationale behind the database is that if legally owned guns, 

the property of licensed law-abiding citizens, are carefully 

recorded and tracked it will help the police catch criminals. 

Even to the casual observer, the idea that paperwork controls 

on the law-abiding suppress violent crime is something of a 

stretch. 

However, gun control advocates can rely on the principle of 

Homeopathic Magic. Homeopathic Magic is the belief that 

if a specific action is performed on a stand-in object that 

is linked to a target, then the action on the stand-in will be 

magically transferred to the target. (This is the theory behind 

the use of a Voodoo doll.) Therefore, the ability to control 

a piece of paper containing a formalized description of the 

object gives government bureaucrats the magical ability 

to “control” the actual object, in this case a particular gun. 

The use of Homeopathic Magic lets the bureaucrats ignore 

the reality that a piece of paper is merely a piece of paper 

separated in both time and space from the inanimate object 

it describes. The happy bureaucrat, using Homeopathic 

Magic, can reliably tell the police where the gun is and whose 

possession it is in. In this way, the bureaucrat assists the 

police and provides positive, reliable gun control in support 

of public safety. 

The Firearms Registry also works through the process 

of Symbolic Magic. Symbolic Magic operates on the 

principle that an object is more than just itself, more than 

just a particular physical object. An object also symbolically 

represents a larger category. Thus a particular gun, say the 

gun of a law-abiding duck hunter in Flin Flon, is a symbol of 

all guns and as such is mystically connected to all other guns, 

for example the unlicensed handgun of a drug gang member 

in Toronto. 

Accordingly, they can work their gun control magic through 

two mechanisms. The registration form by the process of 

Homeopathic Magic is connected to a physical object - 


a particular gun. In turn, the mystic process of Symbolic 

Magic extends our control from this one gun to all guns. 

With these magical mechanisms, the bureaucrat can control 

objects at a distance. Paper controls over legal guns (the 

Registry) not only gives magical control over distant guns 

held by the law-abiding; it exploits the symbolic connection 

to extend this control to illegal guns held by criminals. In 

this way, two separate types of magic are utilized to give 

a federal bureaucrat in an office in Miramichi the ability to 

“control” guns in Canada and keep the Canadian public safe. 

Gun control advocates can also rely on Binding Magic. 

Binding Magic refers to the mystical force that binds all that 

exists in the universe. like the “Force” in Star Wars, this 

magic links objects together and allows the mystical adept to 

trace the linkage across time and space. The bureaucrat can 

start by asserting the truth that some crime guns can be traced 

through the registration system. They can then assert that 

since there is always a connection between a crime gun and 

a gun crime the principle of Binding Magic can be utilized to 

establish the connection in their paper universe. Accordingly, 

the very limited ability of the registration system to provide 

leads (only 7.5% of homicide guns in Canada can be traced) 

can be presented as a universal ability. All these traces can 

then be assumed as useful to the police. (It helps to blur the 

distinction between “might be” and “actually are” and never 

mention the number of “actually ares.”) 

Of course, in reality, even if the gun can be identified in the 

registry there is no guarantee that the information will be the 

slightest use to the police. The registration on a gun stolen 

years ago is a waste of police time not an effective lead. The 

registered status of a gun recovered from a killer who has 

already been caught red handed is irrelevant to crime solving. 

An unbeliever, who didn’t like spending millions on the 

Firearms Registry, might observe that the actual crime 

control payoff in the system was minimal. In the real world, 

a piece of paper is not actually a gun and the information on 

the paper may or may not be correct. Indeed, despite the 

claims of magic, the connection between paper and gun is 

so tenuous that the paper may continue after the gun ceases 

to exist and the gun may exist without any paper existing. 

Statistics Canada data demonstrates that on average only 

thirteen homicide guns a year are traceable through the 

registration system. Whether any of these traces are of actual 

use in crime solving remains unanswered. 

Firearms Licence 

Firearms owners in Canada must have a license to legally 

possess firearms. Since firearms licenses are restricted to the 

law-abiding, criminals are excluded from legal ownership 

of firearms. The idea that criminals are best controlled by 

Magic... Continued on Page 37 


One of the fastest growing 

demographics in our 

recreational firearms 

community is lady shooters. 

Firearms being the great 

equalizer, our lady shooters 

have put to bed the myth that 

they are the ‘weaker’ or ‘fairer’ 

sex. Most instructors will tell 

you that they far prefer female 

students to teach, as they make 

for better pupils, are more 

attentive, have less bad habits 

to unlearn and generally have 

better hand-eye coordination. 

lady shooters, when introduced 

to the sport properly can excel. 

Just look at women such as 

Smith and Wesson’s, Julie Golob, 

10 time U.S. Practical Shooting 

Association National Champion; 

Canadian born, Susan Nattrass, sixtime 

Olympian and triple medalist at 

the 2006 Commonwealth Games in 

Melbourne, Australia; and Germany’s Sonja Pfeilschifter, 

Women’s Olympic Rifle Shooter. These are but a few of the 

women who compete on a professional level in shooting 

sports. Before these ladies became champions, they all 

started with little or no firearm experience. As they were once 

new to firearms, you now have the opportunity to become 

knowledgeable and skilled with them as well. 

Here’s what I’m recommending for you to get started in 

the shooting sports. Start by looking in your phone book or 

on the web for local shooting clubs and ranges. See if they 

offer beginning shooters classes for women and recommend 

this idea to them if they don’t. Seek professional firearms 

instructors, they will teach you the latest techniques and help 

you shoot safely. It is easier to build on a foundation of good 

shooting instruction than to erase bad habits that may get 

you, or someone else hurt or worse. Professional instructors 

will also provide you with a list of starting equipment you 

will need for the course. In some cases the club or range 

will provide you with the equipment and firearm you will 

need for the class with your course fees. Women only classes 

will allow you to feel comfortable and ask questions without 

feeling intimidated. Remember, the only bad question is the 

one not asked. You are there to learn to shoot, so get your 

money’s worth and have fun doing it. 

If you need to bring your own equipment, here is a simple 

list of things you will need. Purchase or borrow one pair of 

hearing 

protection, either 

earmuff style or foam ear plugs. I recommend 

the earmuff style as they will be reusable and easy to put 

on and take off as needed. There are many styles and colors 

available and even electronic options that offer enhanced 

volume while speaking and noise reduction while shooting. 

It is very important to wear your hearing protection while 

shooting or around others who are shooting. Exposing your 

ear drums to high decibel levels of noise will damage your 

hearing. Using your equipment properly will protect your 

hearing and help you concentrate on shooting, not flinching 

from the noise the firearm makes. Prices begin at $15.00 and 

up and can be purchased at most sporting goods stores. I 

would suggest buying the best quality you can afford, as they 

will last for years with proper care. 

Also, be sure to purchase a pair of proper safety/shooting 

glasses with poly carbonate lenses. These lenses are impact 

resistant and in the rare event of a mechanical failure of the 

firearm or ammunition, your eyes will be saved. High quality 

construction safety glasses offer a good value if properly 

rated and come in many styles and colors. They can be 

purchased at any good home improvement store. I suggest 

a wrap around style with dark lenses for daylight and clear, 

yellow or amber lenses for indoor ranges. The prices for good 

eye protection will run from $20.00 to $35.00 for a basic 

pair. Never skimp on safety equipment. You wear them for 

protection and they can be replaced. You must always wear 

your eye and ear protection while shooting; you get only one 

set of eyes and ears, and they can’t be replaced. 


If your budget doesn’t allow you to attend expensive shooting 

classes don’t let that stop you. You may have more alternatives 

than you know. Many Canadian gun clubs are now running 

regular BOW classes (Becoming an Outdoorswoman) free 

of charge or at a nominal fee. If that fails, chances are you 

already know someone who shoots. Don’t be afraid to ask 

them about their sport, or if they could recommend someone 

to help. Just be sure the person you choose is someone you 

trust and with whom you feel comfortable enough with to 

teach you the skills you will need to shoot safely and well. 

Once you have found your teacher, you need to decide upon 

the best venue for your impromptu classes. If using restricted 

firearms, you are limited to only approved ranges and clubs. 

Ideally you want a safe venue, with proper backstop, that is 

absent major distractions so that you may concentrate fully 

on the task at hand. Ranges tend to be busiest during the 

weekends and are often loud and full of distractions for a 

novice shooter. Range rules may also preclude needed oneon-one 

instruction demonstrations, etc. while the firing line 

is hot. Check with range staff or execs to see when the range 

is the least busy. You’ll learn far more quickly if you are able 

to leave the distractions of the world at home, thus enabling 

you to soak up the information that’s being presented to you. 

Now your chosen instructor will no doubt bring all the tools 

of the trade with them, like targets ammunition and shooting 

gear, but the one most important thing is the firearm you will 

be using. Not everyone has an arsenal of firearms to choose 

from, but I would suggest you buy or borrow a small caliber 

rimfire revolver such as a .22lR. Rimfire .22lR revolvers 

are relatively inexpensive and the ammunition is cheap and 

plentiful. They are also easy to load, shoot and unload and 

do not offer much in the way of noise or recoil (the upward 

force caused by the ammunition firing inside the pistol) to 

distract you while shooting. 

If a rimfire firearm is unavailable, my second choice would 

be a full size center fire revolver, these usually have a 5-6” 

barrel, and are relatively easier to hold and control, especially 

when firing reduced power loads. Avoid compact and subcompact 

pistols as they are harder for beginners to master. I 

would also stay away from semi-automatic pistols for now 

until your shooting skills improve. Semi-automatics are 

generally more complex in their operation and require more 

training to handle and shoot properly. 

When starting out, you don’t necessarily have to hit the range 

for your very first lesson. Allow yourself enough time to learn 

the basics and enjoy yourself. Preparation helps and you 

can learn many techniques at home. Using dummy rounds 

(ammunition that does not contain powder or primers), you 

can learn safe loading and unloading procedures and even 

move on to more advanced techniques such as dry firing. The 

latter should only be attempted using an empty and doublechecked 

pistol! Dry firing is an important exercise that aids a 

student in developing a proper shooting grip, as well as with 

target acquisition and trigger control. Students may become 

intimately familiar with the firearm, which will serve to 

enhance their confidence on the firing line. When it comes 

time to shoot live ammunition, always allow yourself time 

to learn and enjoy your new hobby. Rushing around is not a 

productive way to learn to shoot and will cause mistakes and 

can be costly. 

Your first trip to a firing range will most likely be as a guest 

of your friend or instructor. That may work for the shortterm, 

but don’t hesitate to check out local shooing clubs 

in your area and choose one that best suits your needs. 

Your instructor’s range may not be the best fit for you. If 

you’re using non-restricted firearms, such as a .22lR rifle, 

remember to obey all provincial hunting regulations and try 

to find a safe practice area, with a good backstop. 

In terms of shooting conditions, a cool, sunny day is 

preferable but weather doesn’t always cooperate. Wear 

appropriate clothing for the weather and bring along water 

and snacks. Take at least one 15 minute break per hour to 

refresh and hydrate as needed. About two hours is a good 

start, but you may be having so much fun you don’t want 

to stop. Time passes quickly on the firing line and it is very 

easy for a two-hour lesson to turn into a full day’s excursion. 

The more time you spend shooting, the more comfortable 

you will become. But comfortable can be dangerous if you 

forget the basic rules of firearms safety. 

1. Always keep your firearm pointed in a safe direction. 

2. Always keep your finger off the trigger until you are 

ready to shoot. 

3. Always keep your firearms unloaded until ready to use. 

Other good rules to follow: 

1. Know your target and what’s beyond it. 

2. Treat every gun as if it were loaded always. 

3. There is no such thing as an accidental discharge, only 

negligent ones. See rule number 2 

Now these rules may vary widely, but the message is the 

same and when you stop obeying them, someone gets hurt. 

Remember, shooting is an acquired skill that takes time 

to develop. I have seen women and men get discouraged 

because they can’t hit the bull’s eye from the start. You must 

learn the basics, and as you become better at those, the rest 

will follow suit. A good instructor watches you shoot, not 

necessarily the target, so they can make improvements and 

suggestions as you learn. They watch for certain signs and 


help you make adjustments, like making sure you know how 

to use your sights correctly. Getting you comfortable and 

using a few tricks along the way helps improve your overall 

performance. If your instructor has the heart of a teacher, 

they will be patient with you and guide you. Watching you 

improve and keeping you motivated is what an instructor 

is there for. If you do it right, you’ll quickly appreciate the 

adage that, “Your worst day at shooting beats your best day 

at work.” 

To keep things fun and students motivated, I also incorporate 

a mixture of ‘reactive’ targets in the lesson such as spinners, 

gongs and clay targets. Shooting paper 24/7 can get boring, 

even for the most hardcore shooter. If you stay dedicated 

and learn all you can, whether through instruction, reading 

or practice, you will do great. As your gain experience 

and knowledge you may wish to explore other shooting 

disciplines such as Trap, Sporting Clays, Benchrest or IPSC. 

Please don’t let yourself get dissuaded by the politics of gun 

control or the uninformed opinions of the anti-gun elements 

within our society. Such groups believe that guns are 

somehow inherently bad regardless of circumstance. They’re 

wrong. Firearms are tools like any other and can provide 

hours of fun, put food on the table and protect you and your 

family in the hands of a law-abiding owner. 

If you find you like what you’re doing, becoming a 

responsible gun owner just makes sense, and will help make 

our community that much stronger. Join like minded people 

and groups that fight to save your right to target shoot, self 

protection and hunt such as the NFA. The National Firearms 

Association wants and needs your support. 

I hope you have found this article as fun to read as I had 

writing it. My passion for the shooting sports is only eclipsed 

by the love of my family, who are all shooters. My goal here 

is to see you become a law-abiding, responsible and safe 

shooter. One day you may very well get the opportunity to 

teach other women the skills you have mastered as a result. 

Please do not let it pass you by. It only through sharing and 

mutual support that our gun rights and sport will survive, so 

be proud of what you do. That said I hope to see you on the 

firing line very soon! 

Congratulations Mr. Paul Jacobs! 

National President Sheldon Clare presents NFA 

Member Paul Jacobs, a veteran of Yugoslavia and 

former member of the Royal Canadian Regiment 

with his new Tikka Prize Package- Grand Prize of 

our recent Recruit a Friend Promotion. 

Tikka Prize Package Courtesy of Warehouse 

Sports, St. Paul, Alberta T: 780.645.4665 

BOOKSHELF... Continued From Page 5 

provided that will interest the modern day owner of an 

antique single shot or any other cartridge rifle. Whether 

casting bullets, loading cartridges, sighting or shooting, the 

techniques provided will help you obtain the best possible 

accuracy from your firearm. 

I highly recommend Reloading Tools, Sights and Telescopes 

for Single Shot Rifles to anyone who has an interest in old 

firearms. There are a variety of specialized books that cover 

these individual topics in greater detail but they tend to be 

quite expensive and difficult to locate. Finding an inexpensive 

book that contains sufficient detail to satisfy most readers is 

quite unusual. 

Searching the internet located copies of Reloading Tools, 

Sights and Telescopes for Single Shot Rifles at a number 

of online book dealers. Prices quoted for the book were 

very reasonable ranging from $12 used to $13.95 new. 

However, shipping and handling costs are extremely high. 

Dixie Gunworks, for example, has this book listed at $13.95, 

plus $5.95 shipping, as well as a $10 surcharge for Canadian 

orders for a total of $29.90, US if ordered individually. 

Perhaps you could ask your local gun store if they could 

obtain a copy for you. This may encourage dealers to stock a 

variety of gun books for their customers to purchase. 

Wm. R. Rantz 


IT IS CRITICAL THAT ALL 

MEMBERS ANSWER THIS SURVEY! 

WE NEED YOUR OPINION TODAY! 

In order to provide the best value to our membership we urgently require feedback from all of our members 

to effectively represent, protect and fight for your Canadian firearms rights. We need to know what benefits 

are important to you and how the NFA can best use your membership fees and donations. You can help us 

by filling out this short membership survey below, and mailing it TODAY to the NFA or you, your family and 

club members can also fill it out on-line NOW at www.nfa.ca 

1) Your Canadian Firearms Journal (CFJ) is mailed with Canada’s Outdoor Sportsman magazine 6 times a year. Please circle 

the answer that best applies to you. 

I read the Canadian Firearms Journal 1 Always 2 Sometimes 3 Rarely 4 Never 

I read The Canada’s Outdoor Sportsman Magazine 1 Always 2 Sometimes 3 Rarely 4 Never 

2) Currently the NFA covers the mailing costs of both publications and pays a subsidized subscription rate to Canada’s Outdoor 

Sportsman for members to receive both publications. Please check only one of the three statements that would best apply. 

I would prefer to continue receiving both publications paid by my NFA membership fees. 

I would prefer to receive only the Canadian Firearms Journal and have the NFA use the savings for other 

important firearms rights programs. 

I would prefer to receive the Canadian Firearms Journal and be given the option to continue to receive 

Canada’s Outdoor Sportsman Magazine at discounted subscription rate of $1.75 per issue equal to an additional 

$10.50 a year. (A savings of $14.50 off the regular rate) 

3) Please answer the following statement with either a true or false response. 

If I no longer received Canada’s Outdoor Sportsman magazine with my Canadian Firearms Journal 

I would not renew my membership. True False 

4) As a not for profit organization with an all volunteer, elected executive, comprised of members just like you, from across 

Canada, we are looking at ways to reduce mailing costs and maximize effiency. Please answer the following questions with a 

yes or no response. 

I would prefer to receive my yearly renewal by a secured email to help save cost rather than have it printed and 

sent by mail. YES I would prefer email NO I would prefer to be mailed my renewal 

Would you be willing to receive other information and updates on important firearms issues or NFA 

matters by email. YES NO 

Thank you for providing your feedback regarding this valuable information that will help the NFA make some important 

decisions as to how you and other members would like to see your membership fees managed. Please complete the survey, 

fill out the information below, enclose this page in an envelope and mail it to the NFA Box 52183, Edmonton, AB T6G 2T5 

First Name Last Name: Membership No 

Respond 

to our survey 

and WIN 1 of 3 

fantastic NFA 

Swag bags! 

Address City Postal Code 

If you would like to receive your membership renewal and other communications by email please print your email 

address clearly in the space provided. Check out our website at www.nfa.ca for our newest membership benefits from 

Uniglobe GEO Travel offering exclusive travel discounts to NFA members. Go to the member’s section and enter your 

membership number to find incredible savings from the city closest to you. Don’t forget our hotel and car rental savings. 

Now you can become a friend of the NFA by joining us on Facebook. 

YES, I would like to be contacted by email to save costs Email address 

Please note: The Canada’s National Firearms Association is a not for profit organizations and abides by all the privacy laws and rules. 

While you may receive additional marketing and general information from the National Firearms Association, our members information is 

protected. We do not sell or provide list information to private, corporate or government organizations. 

www.nfa.ca January December - February 25 

Thank you to all of you that have responded so far. Your feedback is excellent! 5

When do you introduce children 

to guns and shooting? Once you 

decide it’s time how do you go about 

doing it? I didn’t grow up in a home 

with firearms so I really didn’t have any 

experience of my own to draw on when 

I had my own children. I thought back 

to when I was younger myself. What 

did I think of firearms and how did I 

react to them? 

The first thing I wanted to do when 

exposing my kids to guns was to 

demystify them from day one. I 

think this was one of the single most 

important things I accomplished. From 

early on they knew there were guns in 

the house, even if they didn’t understand 

what they were or what they did. When 

they started to become curious about 

Dad’s guns I answered their questions 

as simply as I could. If they wanted to 

touch or hold a firearm I’d show them 

that it wasn’t loaded, explain why they 

shouldn’t put their finger on the trigger 

and make sure they didn’t point it at 

anyone in the house. I made sure they 

knew that guns could be dangerous if 

you didn’t treat them properly, but if 

you paid attention to being safe they 

wouldn’t hurt you. The house rule 

was that if you wanted to see or hold 

a gun you could any time you liked. I 

just had to be there with them. As my 

kids grew up, guns to them essentially 

became part of the landscape of our 

home; every bit as intriguing to them 

as the dish washer or kitchen range. 

You don’t touch unless there is an adult 

present and all you had to do was ask. 

When my daughter turned seven she 

came up to me out of the blue and asked 

what it felt like to shoot a rifle. As I was 

trying to explain it the best I could she 

simply asked if she could shoot the rifle 

herself. I figured that if she had reached 

the point where she wanted to try this 

out it was time for her to get her chance. 

I didn’t know of very many seven year 

old bench rest shooters so I grabbed 

some empty cans from the recycle bin. I 

thought that some sort of reactive target 

would be best to keep her attention. We 

Kids & 

Guns: 

Introduction 

to Modern 

Sporting 

Rifles 

By Troy Jones 

packed up the Ruger 10/22 rimfire rifle 

I’d been keeping for this day and off 

to the range we went. The 10/22 had a 

bipod, a lightweight Hogue stock and a 

four power scope on it so it was pretty 

much what I figured a kid would do 

well with. I set up the targets, loaded 

the magazines, explained how the 

scope worked and went over how to be 

safe with the rifle one more time. We 

were ready! 

As she fired off her first rounds into the 

tin can I was already figuring out what 

mods we were going to need for “her” 

new .22lR. A pink stock was the first 

purchase. I’d have to figure out where 

to track one of those down, then maybe 

start looking to upgrade the optics. 

What, time for another magazine? let 

me load that up for you while I think 

about the new carbon fibre barrel we’re 

getting. “I’m done, let’s go home” she 

says with all the awe of a child looking 

at the dishwasher. I finally understand 

the strange words being spoken to me 

and came the conclusion that I was 

about to save a great deal of money on 

10/22 accessories. 

In the end I decided the range trip 

wasn’t a total wash. She still got to see 

what it was like to shoot a gun, even if 

it wasn’t her idea of a good time. She 

also knew that if she ever wanted to 

go again all she needed to do was ask. 

In time I sold the .22lR and put the 

money where it was more useful... into 

my pistol and black rifle shooting. 

Fast forward three years and my 

daughter is almost eleven now and 

being bothered to no end by a five year 

old brother. I’m still mostly shooting 

handguns and black rifles. The world as 

we know it has carried on. Once again I 

hear the words I’ve been waiting for, “I 

want to go shooting”. As glad as I am to 

hear this I have a problem, I don’t have 

my 10/22 anymore. I told her we’ll go 

shooting soon; so now I’m scrambling 

to find another rifle for her. I consider 

buying another .22lR, but who knows 

if we’ll get more than twenty rounds 

into a target before she’s done with 

guns again? 

I could call up some friends and see if I 

can borrow a .22lR for her I suppose, 

in fact I’m about to go shooting with 

a friend who’s daughter just started 

shooting too. He must have some ideas. 

Well to my surprise he had a very 

good idea. like me he runs a rimfire 

conversion in one of his AR-15’s. For 

us it’s a cheap way to get trigger time 

with your .223 rifle. For the kids it’s 

even better he says. No recoil from an 

eight pound rifle, less time reloading 

thirty round magazines and best of 

all the collapsible stock can be sized 

perfect for a short shooter. His daughter 

loves shooting it. 

I figure he’s on to something so first I 

head off and trade in some Canadian 

Tire money for a metal rimfire target 

stand. This thing is great because it’s 

fun to shoot (who wouldn’t like making 

lots of noise when they hit the target 

and watch it spin around) and it resets 

itself. There are no holes to tape and I 

don’t even have to walk down to reset 

it. I install the .22 rimfire kit in the AR- 

15, load up some ammo, glasses and 

electronic ear muffs in my range bag 

and as soon as school is over we head 

off for a surprise trip to the range. 

When the three of us get to the range we 

go over the safety rules again. We talk 

about what you can and can’t do with 

the rifles along with how important it 

is to stay behind the people with the 

gun. My AR-15 is a lot heavier than 

your standard .22lR so I brought an 

old roll of carpet to act as a tall bipod 

for aiming. I explained how to load 

the rifle, the safety and how to use the 

optics to sight in her target. We tried 

with just the red dot then with the three 

power magnifier that she preferred. She 

started shooting and she started hitting 

the clangers. This time when she ran 

out of ammo in her first magazine 

she wanted another... and another. I 

was pretty busy reloading, maybe this 

resetting target wasn’t such a good idea 

KIDS... Continued On Page 45 


Battle Rifles of the Central 

Powers of World War I 

By Bob Shell & Sean Penney 

Germany 

The German Empire of Kaiser Wilhelm was the 

principal aggressor opposing the Allied Powers 

during World War I. It was the driving force 

behind the Triple Alliance and the strongest of the 

allied “Central Powers.” The latter consisted of the 

German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 

the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria. 

The name “Central Powers,” simply enough, was 

derived from the geographical location of the 

countries in question; as all four were located 

between the Russian Empire in the east and France 

and Britain in the west. 

As senior member of the alliance, we will start with 

the battle rifles of the German Empire. While even 

the newest of military surplus collectors is familiar 

with the justly famous Model 98 Mauser, it was 

not the only battle rifle deployed in the trenches 

of WWI. 

Model 88 Commission 

Rifle - 

In addition to the Model 98, many 

earlier Model 88 “Commission” 

rifles also saw action during the 

war. The Commission or Gewehr 

88 rifle entered production 1888, 

replacing the Mauser model 71/84, 

which had fired a black powder 

round. Also known the Gew 88, it 

was a turn-bolt design that utilized 

the first smokeless round fielded 

by Germany, as well as the first 

rimless cartridge design. Firing 

a 226 grain round nose bullet of 

ostensibly 7.92x57mm caliber, the 

rifle produced an average muzzle 

velocity of approximately 2100 fps 

out of its 29” barrel. The Gew 88 

was by no means a speed demon. 

Originally having a magazine 

capacity of five rounds, the Gew 

88 required the use of Mannlicher 

clips in order to feed properly. later 


modifications saw the elimination of the Mannlicher clip 

requirement, yielding the model of M-88/05. 

Perhaps the rifle’s most striking feature was the full-length 

steel tube that enclosed its barrel and it owed this, and many 

of its other unusual features to the actual process used during 

its design. Rather than a single designer or team, the Gew 

88 was designed by committee, or “commission,” thus its 

popular appellation. 

Ultimately, the rifle’s faults are laid at the feet of the 

commission and the haste with which it was developed. 

Some historians believe that the German high command felt 

threatened by the development of the French 1886 lebel 

rifle, which was superior to any weapon then fielded by 

the German Empire. The new German design sported dual 

front locking lugs and cocked on opening. The action to 

be relatively smooth, in operation and generally displayed 

quality machining. 

While the Gew 88 was fairly reliable, it suffered from weak 

extractors and ejectors, and the lack of a safety venting feature 

that would permit gas to escape in the event of a ruptured 

case. Its most obvious feature, the barrel jacket, was to create 

far more problems than solutions and became infamous for 

trapping water between it and the barrel. Rusting became 

a major issue for the Germans, while the jacket ultimately 

proved to offer little or no enhancement of accuracy. 

Some argue that it wasn’t as good as the competing Mauser 

designs of the period; however it served Germany as a 

front line weapon for a decade, and was to later see service 

throughout the Great War and beyond in the German, Austro- 

Hungarian, Bulgarian and Turkish armies. later, a shorter 

carbine, featuring a 20” barrel, full stock and marked “Kar. 

88” was produced as well. 

Original examples of the Gew 88, in unmodified, good 

condition are extremely rare and command premium prices. 

Far more common are the Model 88 Turkish reworks, 

modified to the Model 88-05 pattern sporting Farsi numerals 

and are less desired by collectors. Generally, the examples I 

have shot have offered acceptable, battle-field accuracy, even 

with poor barrels. Even today, those I’ve handled or had the 

pleasure of shooting have proven pretty reliable for a design 

almost a century and quarter old. 

Mauser Model 1871 – 

Although it saw only limited use during WWI, the Mauser 

Model 1871 was the first, in a line of successful battle rifles 

designed by Peter and Wilhelm Mauser. Setting up shop in 

1869, the Mauser brothers quickly demonstrated a unique 

talent for weapons design. 

Development of their 1871 model can be traced back to the 

1860s and the design was influenced in part, by an even earlier 

Dreyse “Needle Gun.” The latter design employed a long 

Top Photo: Model 1871 

Mauser action and 

raised rear sight 

Middle Photo: Model 

1871 Mauser action - 

side view 

l: 11x60mm Mauser 

cartridge in original 

wrapping 

firing pin which penetrated the cartridge in much the same 

manner as a sewing needle penetrated fabric. The striking 

‘needle’ ignited the primer, followed by the powder charge. 

In addition to the Dreyse design, the French “Chassepot” 

rifle also had some influence upon the 71. 

The Mauser’s first serious attempt at winning military 

orders, completed in 1867, was not a success. Nevertheless, 

they persevered and after partnering with Samuel Norris, 

an American designer, they succeeded in building a better 

rifle. The improved design was submitted to the Prussian 

commission for consideration. After some additional 

improvements were made at the suggestion of the Prussian 

munitions board, including the addition of a safety, the 

design was accepted. 

The new rifle, as adopted, was the first German metallic 

cartridge rifle, with production beginning in 1875. It featured 

a turn-bolt single-shot action and fired an 11x60mmR 

cartridge. There was no mechanical extractor or ejector, thus 

fired cartridges had to be extracted manually. Weight was 


about 10 lbs. The new 11mm German round utilized a black 

powder propellant, launching a 370 to 387 grain bullet at 

about 1400fps. It was and is a potent short to moderate range 

cartridge; however, it was quickly rendered obsolete with the 

advent of smokeless powder. 

Model 71/84 - 

Improvements were made to the Model 1871 in hopes of 

extending the operational life of the design, and in 1884 

an eight round tubular magazine was added along with 

a mechanical ejector. The improved design, essentially a 

gussied up ’71, was designated the Model 71/84. like its 

parent, the new model weighed approximately 10 lbs and 

had a barrel length of 31.5”. It entered service in 1886, and 

some 900,000 were eventually produced. 

like the earlier model, the new 71/84 was a black powder 

design. As a consequence it lacked locking lugs, with the 

exception of the bolt handle itself. However, given the very 

mild pressure loads generated by the black powder round, 

this design feature was adequate for most black powder and 

it later even handled light smokeless loads. 

In terms of actual combat, by the time WW I rolled around, 

both the 1971 and 71/84 was regulated to home guard use and 

second and third line units, along with the Gew 88. Neither 

the 1871 nor 71/84 were sufficiently strong to make the 

conversion to full-power smokeless loads and were obsolete 

well before the start of the Great War. 

This author has shot his regularly and has never experienced 

any functional difficulties due to the rifle’s design flaws. 

Between the two designs, several million rifles were produced 

and they remain commonly available on the military surplus 

market. If anyone is interested in obtaining a fascinating 

piece of military history, either model offers a great value, 

especially for those who cast their own lead bullets. 

There were a number of additional Mauser designs completed 

and/or put into production in the several decades prior to 

the start of World War I. These included the models: 88, 

89, 90, 91, 93, 95 and 96. The 88 was basically a beefed up 

version of the 71 chambered for the 7.65x53mm. It enjoyed 

little success and was superseded by the Model 89. The latter 

was the first Mauser design built specifically for modern high 

power cartridges. Improved designs followed rapidly, with 

most sharing a number of design commonalities such as dual 

front locking lugs, but lacking a safety lug. 

They were all relatively rugged 

and reliable designs, but 

ultimately proved to be stepping 

stones in the evolutionary 

progression for the Mauser 

design team - from the Model 

1871, to their crowning success, 

embodied by the unparalleled 

Model 98 Mauser main battle 

rifle. During the war years, 

limited numbers were employed 

by various secondary units, 

home guards and paramilitary 

forces due mostly to production 

shortfalls of the Model 98 rifle. 

Model 98 Rifle 

(Gewehr 98) - 

In 1898 the Germans started 

production on their Model 98 

main battle rifle and it would 

remain in constant production 

until 1918. Best known of all 

Mauser designs the M98, which 

was alternately known as the 

G.98 or “Gew 98,” was to prove 

one of the most successful 

rifle designs ever. Many have 

copied it including American 

designers from the Springfield 

Armory, who borrowed so 

Top L: Side view of Model 

Mauser-1871/84 action 

L: Top view of Model 

Mauser-1871/84 action 

R: Gewehr Model 98 - with 

‘Rollercoaster’ Rear Sight 

Top to bottom: Gew 98 ‘Rollercoater’ Rear Sight 

Gew 98 Receiver displaying clear model stampings 

Top view of Model 98 action 

heavily from the Mauser design for their Model 1903 

Springfield rifle that they were sued by the Germans 

and eventually forced to pay a royalty for each rifle 

produced prior to WW l. 

It was a manually operated, control-feed bolt-action 

design, with a much improved three-position manual 

safety. The issued rifle also had a 29” barrel, 5-shot 

flush fitting internal magazine and a full-length wood 

stock with a half-length upper hand guard, under 

barrel cleaning rod and weighed approximately 9 lbs. 

As issued, the M98 had two sling swivels, open front 

sights, and a curved tangent-type rear sight, known as 

the lange Visier, which many collectors today refer 

to as the ‘rollercoaster’ sight 

Chambered in 7.92mm or 8x57mm, it originally 

utilized the old .318” diameter “J” bullet. However, 

in 1905 the decision was made to adopt a new .323” 

spitzer bullet with the aim of improving terminal 

ballistics and combat performance. Dubbed the “S” 

bullet for ‘spitzer,’ the German design team had 

a winner on their hands. The new 154 grain load 

delivered a blistering fast velocity of 2900 fps and 

extended the rifle’s effective range considerably. 

Designated the 8x57mm IS cartridge, the new round 

had a much flatter trajectory than the previous load. 

Consequently the original lange Visier rear sight had 

to be modified to account for the ballistic difference. 

Rifles so converted also had a small “S” stamped 

directly above the chamber and again at the back of 

the rear sight base on the barrel. This was a safety 

precaution, since while it was possible to safely shoot 

the “J” stamped ammo in an “S” bore, the reverse 

was not true. 

The model M98 corrected all of the flaws of the older 

M88 rifle. It had a much stronger locking system and 

provisions were made to allow for gas to escape in 

the event of a case rupture. The extractor and ejector 

were beefed up and proved much studier and more 

reliable under battlefield conditions as a result. 

The design was to prove so good that it remains in 

commercial production today with limited revisions. 

Modern sporting rifles such as the Winchester Model 

70 are little more than a refined M98 in civilian guise. 

Perhaps the only major design drawbacks to the rifle 

revolved around magazine issues. As a controlledfeed 

design, it was intended to pick-up cartridges 

directly from the magazine only. Single feeding was 

problematic, as the extractor could possibly slip 

over the case rim, causing a jam. limited magazine 

capacity was also a criticism levied against the M98. 

While the rifle could be quickly recharged using 5 

round stripper clips, it was simply out-classed by 


the British SMlE in terms of pure firepower. The latter rifle 

boasted twice the magazine capacity of the German rifle. 

There was some experimental models produced utilizing a 

25 round non-detachable magazine, however it was never 

perfected and the experimental design was never put into 

mass production. Accuracy for the M98 was on par with 

most other military weapons of the period. The sights, while 

fair for a battle rifle of the era, often shot high but did offer 

rugged repeatability. The K98 fielded by the Germans in 

WW ll, was little changed from the earlier WW l version. 

Austria-Hungary 

Model 1885 - 

Whereas the Mausers dominated the German military 

market, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire it was Mannlicher. 

The Model 1885 Mannlicher was the first magazine fed battle 

rifle fielded by the Austro-Hungarian military. A straight-pull 

action design, the Model 1885 required the use of clips in 

order to load the magazine and were ejected from the top of 

the action once emptied. Chambered for the 11.5x58mmR 

black powder cartridge, the rifle had a 31” barrel, weighed 

approximately 10 lbs., and sported two barrel bands. Never a 

success story, only a handful of rifles were actually produced. 

Model 1886 – 

The Model 1886 rifle was much more successful than its 

predecessors and was produced in large numbers. Originally 

chambered in the same 11.5x58mmR black powder 

cartridge, after 1888, most were converted to the newly 

adopted 8x50mmR smokeless powder cartridge that offered 

superior lethality to the older round. Re-designated the 

Model 1888/1890, new sights were added to accommodate 

the different ballistics of the new round and a much stronger 

bolt locking wedge incorporated. Barrel length was 30” and 

weight was a little less than 10 lbs. like the 1885 model, the 

newer design also utilized clips, however, in the latter design 

the empties were ejected from the bottom of the magazine. 

Bulgaria, Greece and Chile were among the countries that 

placed orders for this model and both Mannlicher and Steyr 

Austrian Model 1890 Carbines 

manufactured them. Something of an anomaly, the model not 

only saw combat in WW I, they could be found in the hands 

of irregular units right through WW II. 

Model 1890 Carbine – 

A real departure from earlier designs, the Model 1890 

Carbine incorporated a much stronger action that was better 

suited to handling the higher pressures of modern smokeless 

powder rounds, especially the now standardized 8x50mmR 

cartridge. The bolt head on the new carbine also contained 

the extractor. As a consequence the trigger groups was now 

located behind the end of the actual bolt handle. The clipfed 

box magazine retained a capacity of five rounds and it 

had a barrel length of 19.5” The shortened barrel and other 

changes saw weight reduced to a svelte 7 lbs. 

Model 1895 Infantry Rifle 

(Steyr-Mannlicher) – 

The 1890 Carbine never saw wide issue, but instead helped 

form the basis for the creation of the rifle that did see wide, 

general issue, the Model 1895 Infantry Rifle. The standard 

Austrian battle rifle of WW I, it utilized essentially the same 

straight-pull action as the earlier carbine. Barrel length was 

again increased to 30”, and a new style of ‘leaf’ sight was 

incorporated into the design. The rifle was chambered in the 

now standard 8x50mmR round and shared the same basic 

five-round, clip-fed magazine design of its predecessors. It 

tipped the scales at around 8 lbs. 

The Model 95 was manufactured in several locations, 

including both Austria and Hungary. Most easily identified 

by the large “M95” stamped in the top of the receiver ring, 

the rifle was produced in massive numbers starting in 1895 

and not ending until 1918. In addition to the Austrians, the 

Model 1895 was fielded by Bulgaria and Greece during WW 

I and many saw action in Italy and the Balkans right through 

WW II as well. 

The Model 95 ‘Steyr-Mannlicher’ was generally well-liked 

by the troops and it enjoyed a good reputation for durability. 

The quality of workmanship and finish of both metal and 

wood was generally quite good and from personal experience, 

those examples that I have fired demonstrated relatively fine 

accuracy for a battle rifle. 

Starting in the 1930s large numbers of these rifles were 

rechambered to 8x56mmR, with many also having their 

barrels shortened and being converted into carbines. The 

conversions can be identified by the “S” or “H” stamped 

directly over the rifle’s chamber. 

Originally designed by Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher, the 

Austrian straight pull action could be cycled much faster than 

a more conventional bolt action rifle. At least in theory, as the 

number of mechanical steps required of the operator to cycle 

the action was significantly reduced. All that was necessary 

to operate the action was to pull the bolt straight back and 

forth. The rifle eventually was dubbed the “Ruck-Zuck” by 

the troops who developed a genuine liking for the weapon. 

The trade-off for this increased speed of action is increased 

stiffness and potentially greater probability for difficulties 

cycling the rifle, as the bolt has less camming power then a 

more conventional turn-bolt design. Of little concern on the 

parade ground or practice range, the reduction in camming 

power could play havoc when operating the rifle under 

less than optimum conditions. The gooey, sticky mud and 

debris that was to become a constant part of trench warfare 

throughout the Great War consequently placed greater 

demands on soldiers to keep their rifles as clean as possible 

Top to Bottom: 

Austrian M1895 Steyr Rifle 

Austrian M1895 Short Rifle Chambered in 8x50mmR 

L: Cartridges of the Central Powers of WW I - 

From L-R - 11 mm Mauser, 8 x 57mm J, 8 x 57mm S, 

7.65 x 53mm & 8 x 50mm 

and properly maintained. Interestingly, the actions proved to 

be relatively strong and they handled high pressure modern 

cartridges with aplomb. 

Conclusion – 

The Armistice ending the hostilities of the Great War was 

signed in a rail car at Compiegne, France on November 11, 

1918. The war changed the map of Europe forever, breaking 

up many of the old empires and establishing a number of 

independent countries in their stead. Ironically, the harsh 

conditions and high reparations that Germany was required 

to pay in punishment for their aggression was to ultimately 

set the stage for a second great world war. Europe had not 

heard the last of gunfire. Many of the fine old weapons 

manufacturers and firearms factories were broken-up by the 

Allies following the war in a deliberate attempt to stymie 

the German’s ability to wage war. In part, they succeeded, 

since, as we now know, shortages in small arms forced many 

participants to open up dusty arms depots and re-issue what 

should have been wholly obsolete infantry rifles. Yet with 

only minor improvements many WW I era small arms gave 

yeoman service throughout WW II, while others were issued 

unchanged. This fact is perhaps most revealing as to the 

quality of infantry small arms fielded during the era. 

Editors Note: Part II of Battle Rifles will appear in the 

March/April issue of CFJ. 


By Jesse l. Hardin 

like so many hard core “black rifle” fans, 

I’ve forgotten the number of times I’ve 

debated the merits of Eugene Stoner’s 

AR-15 vs. Mikhail Kalashnikov’s 

AK-47. Having adopted Townsend 

Whelan’s famous quote that, “...Only 

accurate rifles are interesting,” few of 

my shooting buddies were surprised 

when I always sided with the Stoner 

design. At least that was until I had the 

opportunity to shoot several ‘Combloc’ 

rifles selected from a friend’s extensive 

collection a number of years ago. 

I’ll admit I had a blast and while I’m now 

a fan of the AK-47/AKM, I ended up 

falling in love with a Czech-made looka-like 

called the Vz. 58. The original Vz 

was a 7.62mm, select-fire rifle designed 

and manufactured in Czechoslovakia for 

their military in the late 1950s. While 

the Vz may have externally resembled 

the Soviet AK-47 it was completely 

different internally, employing a shortstroke 

gas piston operating system. 

Thanks to the efforts of two of our 

largest Canadian firearms importers, 

shooters have had the opportunity to 

purchase their own newly manufactured, 

civilian-legal, semi-automatic copy of 

the Czech Vz. 58, in both restricted and 

non-restricted guises. For the purpose of 

this article I opted to purchase one of the 

latter models, known as the CZ-858. 

It is a well built rifle and offers very 

Made Right heRe: 

North Eastern Arms 

A New Force in Canadian 

Firearm Parts Design 

By Sean G. Penney 

good accuracy when compared to 

competing military-style rifles from the 

era. However, the 50 year-old design is 

dated. As issued, the rifle sports dark red 

Bakelite-style resin furniture that is nonadjustable, 

and no provision is made for 

the mounting of optics of any sort. 

This is where North Eastern Arms 

saves the day. NEA is a relatively new 

company that was founded a little 

over two years ago and is currently a 

division of North Eastern Aerospace, 

a well-respected name that is instantly 

recognizable to most aviation buffs. 

Origins - 

According to NEA founder and 

president, Mr. Jeff Hussey, the company 

grew out of what he saw as a growing 

demand for high quality firearms 

components designed to offer improved 

versatility and usability. It didn’t hurt 

that Jeff was also a dedicated gun owner 

and active recreational shooter. 

Yet, his path to becoming head of 

one of the hottest new firearms parts 

manufacturing companies in North 

America was certainly not something 

he had imagined for himself. In fact, 

Jeff only became involved in the 

recreational firearms community as a 

young adult; the result of his then desire 

for a career in military/law enforcement. 

When those plans were derailed by an 

unfortunate injury, he got involved 

with the family business, developing 

his marketing expertise and gaining 

experience and insight into the world of 

precision industrial manufacturing. 

According to Jeff, it was during this time 

that he became familiar with the Vz.58 

family of firearms and, as he put it, “Fell 

in love with the simplicity and elegance 

of the design,” which, in his opinion, 

was, “Far superior to the cruder AK-47 

design.” It is as a result of this happy 

‘discovery’ that the idea of forming a 

new gun parts company first took root. 

As good as the Vz. 58 was, it had its 

limitations and like so many other 

admirers, Jeff discovered the distinct 

lack of after-market accessories 

available for the Czech rifle. Advances 

in tactical training and the on-going 

revolution in optical aiming solutions 

made the paucity of quality parts that 

allowed the individual shooter to adapt 

his rifle to his own particular needs 

proved especially frustrating. Most of 

what was available on the Canadian 

market at the time originated from 

offshore manufacturers and consisted 

mainly of cheap moulded plastics. 

The Concept - 

It wasn’t long thereafter that the idea for 

a new, high-quality modular picatinny 

hand guard set for the Vz. 58/CZ-858 

was born. Basing his design on his 

own personal experiences and that of 

a number of experienced shooters in 

the industry; Jeff quickly refined his 

concept, focusing on building a product 

that would permit easy mounting of 

optical sights, tactical BUIS, vertical 

battle grips, weapons lights, and other 

accessories. 

Since the family firm was involved in 

the aerospace manufacturing industry, 

Jeff had access to state-of-the-art, multiaxis 

CNC mills and advanced CAD 

software. It wasn’t long before he had 

what would become the pre-Generation 

1 prototype milled and undergoing beta 

testing. 

The advantage of having access 

to million-dollar, multi-axis CNC 

machines permitted Jeff and his 

fledgling North Eastern Arms company 

to exponentially accelerate their R&D 

process. Consequently, the team was 

able to virtually eliminate the normal 

delays and impediments that most other 

manufacturers have to contend with. 

Turnaround time from beta tester, to 

revised CAD program with suggested 

improvements, to production quality 

unit ready for further field testing was 

measured in hours and days, not the 

weeks and months that is the norm 

Jeff noted that he credits much of 

his early success to the support and 

encouragement he received from 

industry stakeholders such as Joe from 

CQB Services, John at Wolverine 

Supplies, Dave from NEIT ARMS, and 

JR at The Shooting Edge. In his words, 

“They were instrumental in helping us 

arrive at a practical, consumer ready 

product. That was the Gen 1 modular 

hand guard set.” 

Since then, NEA has constantly striven 

to improve and perfect the design, so 

much so that they’re now carrying out 

production of their fourth generation 

hand guard set. This is a reflection of 

Jeff’s own personal & company motto: 

“Never be content.” 

NEA’s business model flies in the 

face of that adopted by many of their 

competitors, who are focused on 

maximizing profit before all else. With 

the rapidity of their design 

refinements and the regular 

addition of new products to 

their product line, there is 

certainly ample opportunity 

for NEA to take advantage 

of those who are compelled 

to always have the ‘best and 

latest’ designs. However, that 

isn’t how Jeff and the gang at 

NEA do business. They are 

committed to never leaving 

their customers “hanging,” and 

according to Jeff, 

“We made a conscious business 

decision to make sure we gave 

back to our original customers 

by offering heavily rebated 

offers to exchange, purchase 

latest generation hand guards 

or gift certificates for NEA products 

as a gesture of appreciation for their 

past support. Many of our distributors 

thought we were crazy to do so, but here 

at NEA, we want to treat our customers 

the same way we ourselves want to be 

treated. After all, we were customers 

too!” 

Manufacturing the Product – 

When Jeff said it was his intention to 

bring to market the absolute highest 

quality firearms accessories and parts 

he wasn’t kidding. All NEA products 

are 100% Canadian made and are 

produced on state-of-the- art, multiaxis 

CNC machines. Only the finest 

metals and alloys are used, including 

6061T Aluminum, 4140 steel and 

303 stainless steels in the production 

of NEA products. They’re currently 

exploring new opportunities that may 

allow them to incorporate a number of 

new “space-age” alloys that will offer 

longer service lives and lighter weights 

– drawing, on their parent company’s 

decades of aerospace engineering and 

manufacturing experience, where there 

is an inherent need to build parts strong, 

yet try and maximize weight savings. 


Review – 

Having wasted too much money on 

some of the plastic junk that was on 

the market for my CZ-858, I had high 

expectations as I unpacked my NEA 

order this past fall. 

I generally take a KISS (Keep It Simple 

Stupid) approach when running any 

firearm. If I add a new part or accessory, 

there is a practical reason for it. For 

this project my primary aim was to add 

additional versatility to the CZ platform 

that would enhance its adaptability and 

allow it to better compete against more 

modern designs such as the AR-15. 

With that in mind I ordered one of 

NEA’s latest generation Modular 

Picatinny Hand Guard sets, along with 

an extra 2” and 4” section of picatinny 

rail, one of their fantastic AR-15 stock 

adapters with integral sling plate, and a 

new old-school Soviet “Krinkov” style 

flash suppressor. 

The hand guard set, picatinny rails and 

stock adapter displayed a flawless hardcoat 

anodizing and were gray in colour. 

All parts were beautifully machined 

from 6061T aluminum and I couldn’t 

find a single flaw, even after a detailed 

examination. 

Installation was a snap and even the 

most mechanically handicapped out 

there should have no trouble completing 

the project without help. Detailed 

Instructions for installation were 

included, along with clear photos that 

really aided in simplifying the process. 

Tolerances are tight, so it is helpful to 

have a bench block, punch set and brass 

hammer on hand to give various pins 

and parts a light tap or two if needed. 

According to NEA this is a result of the 

metal finish. However, after stripping 

the rifle a few times this issue will 

correct itself. 

Installing the NEA “Krink” flash 

suppressor was even easier, taking just 

a few seconds and requiring no tools. 

Shooting the full-length rifle with the 

new suppressor installed was fun, 

although it had no effect upon felt recoil. 

It did produce a neat flash pattern that 

can only be appreciated under low-light 

conditions. Overall, I was impressed 

by how well the NEA product stood 

up to use, and abuse; after running 

close to 1000 rounds of mixed surplus 

Czech corrosive and Chinese silver box 

7.62X39mm ammo through the rifle 

over the course of a single weekend. 

While covered in soot and carbon 

residue, a simple wipe with an oily rag 

was all that was necessary to clean up 

the surface of the machined stainless 

steel of the suppressor. Amazingly it still 

looked almost new! 

Since the range I used for accuracy 

testing was limited to 200 meters, a 

high magnification optic wasn’t needed. 

For testing purposed I set up a mix of 

paper targets and reactive steel, ranging 

from distances of 50-200M. I found 

that mounting my favourite Aimpoint 

CompM2 red dot optic, using a laRue 

cantilever mount, was a breeze with the 

installation of the NEA picatinny hand 

guard. 

The rifle handled and balanced well, 

even with the new additions. The new 

optic helped, and I noticed an immediate 

reduction in group sizes. The modular 

hand guards were rock-solid, and I used 

the quick detach function of the laRue 

mount to remove and replace the optic 

several times without any significant 

loss of zero. 

I had also opted to install the 2” NEA 

picatinny rail on the bottom hand guard 

to permit mounting a Tango Down 

vertical battle grip. The longer 4” rail 

was bolted to the near-side of the bottom 

half of the hand guard for potential use 

with a weapon light. The latter rail also 

has a quick-detach sling mount hole that 

worked perfectly with several pushbutton 

quick detach swivels I tried. 

Unlike a number of other rails I’ve 

purchased over the years, every NEA 

picatinny slot was cut to true “1913 

Picatinny” specs and I experienced zero 

problems while test fitting a broad range 

of different picatinny accessories. 

The final task I faced was getting the 

NEA stock adapter installed. After using 

this for a while, it is one upgrade that 

I highly recommend, as it permits the 

shooter to easily mount their choice of 

adjustable AR style stock. This wasn’t 

simply a ‘tacticool’ affectation of mine, 

but a practical decision. As with so many 

“Combloc” rifle designs, the CZ was not 

built for larger-framed Western soldiers/ 

shooters that generally were taller and 

had longer arms than their Warsaw Pact 

counterparts. 


The addition of the AR stock permitted 

me to increase the length of pull, making 

the rifle much more comfortable to use. 

I also appreciated the convenience of 

the integral sling plate that was actually 

machined as part of the adapter. The 

latter worked quite well, and I had no 

trouble mounting a Blue Force Gear 

“Vickers” sling. However, I did notice 

that the relatively sharp corners of the 

Magic... Continued From Page 21 

subjecting the law-abiding to elaborate regulatory paperwork 

is counter intuitive, but it can still be justified with an appeal 

to magic. 

As the Registration System controls inanimate objects, the 

licensing System controls people, in this case gun owners. 

Homeopathic and Symbolic Magic can be relied on to project 

their mystic influence from the paper license in a government 

office out onto real people. The bureaucrat can then tell the 

police who has guns, where they are and what is being done 

with them. This control, imposed on the law-abiding, is then 

assumed by the influence of magical processes to also apply 

to criminals. The legal and regulatory restrictions that fall 

on target shooters in Halifax will symbolically extend to the 

armed car thieves of Winnipeg. 

Keeping the Police Safe 

Another justification of our registration and licensing system 

is the Canadian Firearms Registry Online (CFRO is part of the 

Canadian Firearms Information System). This system allows 

the police to query the licensing and registration database for 

information on where guns are located. Officials claim the 

system is key to officer safety because it warns them about 

gun threats 10,000 times a day. What is left unsaid is that 

most of these queries are automated responses to name and 

licence plate queries and are not gun related. 

protruding sling plate 

occasionally hung up 

on gear. I also somehow 

managed to scratch my 

inner forearm while 

doing an off-shoulder 

transition. 

I’d like to see the corners 

rounded or some sort of 

‘melt’ treatment done to 

eliminate this possibility. 

At the same time I also 

would’ve liked to have 

seen a little more metal 

left to form the outer part 

of the sling plate. I have no fears that 

it will ever fail, break or even bend; I 

just prefer a ‘beefier’ look. Otherwise 

performance was outstanding. 

Conclusion - 

As a company, NEA brings to the table 

over 50 years of combined experience 

in aerospace manufacturing. That 

experience and technological expertise 

is clearly evident in the quality of their 

products. Just as attractive for me is their 

commitment to their customers and their 

obvious desire to ensure our satisfaction, 

-- not only before purchase, but long 

afterwards as well. That attitude is far 

too rare in business today. Yet, their 

gamble is paying off. NEA continues 

to expand exponentially and along 

with their VZ product line, they now 

offer everything from complete AR-15 

barrels to M-14 bolt releases. NEA is a 

company on the move and last year they 

successfully partnered with American 

firearms accessory manufacturer TROY 

Industries to distribute their Vz. line 

in the United States under the TROY 

name. That is impressive for a company 

barely two years old. 

You can check out NEA products on 

their website: www.northeasternarms. 

com or drop them an E-mail: 

info@northeasternarms.com 

However, the number of queries is critically important 

because it allows the authorities to invoke Ritual Magic. 

The sheer volume of enquires, like the repetitive chanting of 

Buddhist Monks or the endless revolving of Tibetan Prayer 

Wheels will magically waft to heaven and keep officers safe. 

Numbers from statistics Canada show the Firearms Registry 

database can only be used in 2.2% of homicides so one might 

reasonably assume that it would have a 97.8% failure rate as 

a homicide warning system. (Despite some technical issues, 

this statistic gives a good ballpark idea of just how dangerous 

reliance in the CFRO is.) This dismal rate of effectiveness is 

not surprising when you realise the database consists solely 

of the guns of the law-abiding and completely excludes 

illegal guns and criminals. 

Nonetheless, rest assured Canada, the Government is doing 

“something” about crime – it’s controlling guns. Magical 

processes are at work supporting the contention that 

regulating the guns of the law-abiding is an effective way to 

regulated criminals. In Canada, major police organizations 

and political parties support these polices. After all, they 

have magic on their side. 

Bruce Gold is a freelance researcher and writer interested 

in a number of public policy issues. He has a website at 

http://www.FactFallacyFirearms.org and can be reached for 

comment at goldb@shaw.ca 


Liberal IED’s and 

the United Nations 

By Gary Mauser 

Thanks to the Conservative government, Canadians recently 

dodged new restrictive gun regulations that are as destructive 

as an IED. late in 2010 Stephen Harper’s government wisely 

post-poned for another two years the UN marking regulations 

and the gun club regulations implementation. This is not the 

first time these regulatory packages have been deferred. The 

liberals deliberately improvised these explosive devices 

and set them in our path in an attempt to cripple Canada’s 

recreational firearms community. These new regulations, if 

they ever came into force, would create new legal difficulties 

for anyone legally owning and using firearms and would 

severely damage the rights of all Canadians. 

Note, I said postponed, not eliminated. This means that in 

two years the government will again have to decide what 

to do about them. Unfortunately, this was the best they 

could do since the Conservatives only control a minority 

government. Any important change in the gun regulations 

requires parliamentary approval, and the opposition controls 

a majority in parliament. 

As we saw in the battle over Bill C-391, all three opposition 

parties remain wedded to the claim that firearms in the hands 

of citizens pose a dangerous threat. The opposition opposes 

any relaxation of the gun regulations. In fact, they want 

the laws to become even more restrictive. In the words of 

Michael Ignatieff, the liberals remain committed to “strict, 

relentless gun control.” If the liberals -- by themselves or in 

a Coalition -- ever return to power, they will impose new and 

more draconian gun laws. Count on it. 

What is so dangerous about these regulatory packages? In 

brief, they impose even more bureaucracy in a futile attempt 

to solve nonexistent problems. Costs and impediments 

will increase, accompanied by further losses of privacy. 

By increasingly criminalizing aspects of owning and using 

firearms, the bureaucracy continues to strangle normal, 

legal gun ownership. Firearms ownership is becoming an 

endangered activity. 

UN marking and tracing regulations 

Implementing the UN marking regulations would require 

Canadian importers to stamp or engrave the country code 

(CA) and the last two digits of the year of importation on the 

receiver or frame of all imported firearms. For example, any 

firearm imported in 2012 would have to be marked CA 12. 

That may sound less dangerous than dancing with Godzilla, 

but requiring importers to so mark each imported firearm is 

potentially disastrous. 

We can thank the liberals that these regulations are 

mandated by Canadian law. UN protocols are quite general 

and rely upon individual nations to pass laws to implement 

them. In November, 2004, the Canadian parliament amended 

the Firearms Act (Bill C-10A) in order to implement 

international agreements with the UN and the Organisation 

of American States. This Canadian legislation was justified 

by the infamous Firearms Protocol adopted back in May 

2001. 

International firearms experts who have evaluated the 

UN marking requirements have testified that marking 

commercial firearms is redundant and potentially confusing, 

since countries differ widely in how they implement the UN 

protocol. Most troublesome is that attempting to permanently 

mark the receivers after manufacture could damage the 

firearm’s structural integrity, thereby compromising its 

safety. 

Foreign firearms companies will not mark firearms during 

manufacture, because they cannot know their annual sales 

ahead of time. The UN marking regulations will force 

Canadian importers to purchase expensive new stamping or 

engraving machinery. Importers estimate that this could add 

$200 to the price of a new gun. The additional investment 

costs will reduce the number and makes of guns imported 

as it will drive some importers out of business. Almost half 

of all firearm businesses closed their doors since 1990; 

dropping from 9,209 in 1990 to 4,720 in 2009. The UN 

marking regulations would be another nail in the coffin of the 

Canadian gun business. And in our own coffin as well; small 

gun retailers have traditionally been integral to communities 

of gun owners, rural or urban. 

Gun shows 

The proposed gun show regulations increase the power 

of the Chief Provincial Firearms Officers by putting them 

directly in control of gun shows. This not only unnecessarily 

increases the paper burden for organizers and vendors, but it 

invites the bureaucracy to invent more reasons to restrict the 

traditional right to own firearms. All vendors could be told to 

obtain business licences, and attendees be required to submit 

their POl to Ottawa. There have been no problems with gun 

shows that justify new regulations. All the police can do is to 

cite “concerns‚” with gun shows. 

Given the rabid anti-gun stance of some CPFOs (in Ontario 

and Quebec, for instance), this would mean that many 

gun shows would simply close their doors. More useless 

paperwork means more people will be discouraged from 

owning and using firearms. Gun shows are important as 

places to meet your neighbors, as well as sell or buy guns. 

Strangling gun shows is another step towards choking the 

life out of the recreational firearms community. 

Conclusions 

Stephen Harper may be PM, but the Conservatives do not 

control Ottawa. Not only does the opposition command 

a majority in parliament, but the bureaucracy remains 

adamantly opposed to almost everything the Conservatives 

wish to do. Most Ottawa civil servants were hired under 

the liberals and appear to believe that the next election 

(continually expected within a few months) will return the 

liberals to power. So they find every excuse imaginable to 

delay or undermine Conservative initiatives. As is the case in 

most modern countries, our politicians like to claim they are 

in charge, but the bureaucracy is really in control. 

The Conservatives are frustrated. Having only a minority 

government means that the government could fall at any 

moment, and, as we saw with Bill C-391, it makes it 

virtually impossible for the Conservatives to pass legislation, 

particularly changes in firearms regulations. Obviously, this is 

very disappointing for the firearms community. Despite being 

in government for five years, the Conservatives have not been 

able to dump the long-gun registry nor heal any other running 

sores in the Firearms Act that we have complained about for 

years. Solving these problems will only be possible when the 

Conservatives win a majority government. 

Cynics may claim that the Conservatives do not really want 

to do anything. Some even claim that “being a minority 

government” is just a convenient excuse. I cannot agree. 

I have spoken with MPs and Ministers in Ottawa. I am 

convinced that the Conservatives are honestly trying to do the 

right thing. 

We are not out of the woods yet. These regulatory changes 

have only been delayed. They are scheduled to come into 

effect on December of 2012, unless the Conservatives 

postpone them again. The Conservatives promise to renew 

them. If the liberals win the next election, we will have no 

friends in Ottawa. The noose will start tightening again. 

The battle continues. We are up against an entrenched 

bureaucracy and ideologues who do not like guns in the hands 

of civilians. Don’t give up. Our efforts have the best chance 

to be productive if we focus on educating and informing 

policymakers at the highest government levels. 

References 

Gary Mauser Making a presentation at the 

2010 Gun Rights Conference, hosted by the 

Second Amendment Foundation this past 

fall in San Francisco 

http://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2008/2008-12-10/html/ 

sor-dors298-eng.html 

http://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2009/2009-12-09/html/ 

sor-dors313-eng.html 

38 January - February www.nfa.ca www.nfa.canfa.ca January - February 39

Western LaWmen: 

Earp as he may have looked around the time of his badge swinging 

in Kansas, along with what is purported to be his actual signature. 

“This is the West, sir. When the legend 

becomes fact, print the legend.” 

(from The Man Who Shot liberty Valance, 1962) 

Welcome to the first in a series of articles on Wild West 

lawmen. Whether known as sheriff, marshal, deputy, ranger, 

policeman or peace officer, those who wore a badge found 

themselves caught between the demands of a city council 

or state government and the practical realities of hard-bitten 

frontier towns where freedom and opportunism were both 

worshipped and defended. Many received no pay other than 

Wyatt earp 

by Jesse Wolf Hardin 

a percentage of any money that those they arrested might 

be fined, contributing to the most honest officers having to 

moonlight at a second job, and others to turn to protection 

rackets or other crimes. Those who received salaries, usually 

made less than not only the saloon-keepers, but even the 

lowly saloon sweepers; a monthly wage no better than that 

of the cowpunchers they rode herd on come Friday and 

Saturday nights. 

Their work could best be described as weeks of boring tasks, 

punctuated by moments of high drama and sometimes deadly 

confrontation. For these reasons and more, very few of even 

the most famous lawmen actually spent that many years 

wearing the star. While some like famed, Jeff (Jefferson 

Davis) Milton could boast of lifelong lawman careers, they 

were the exceptions. Wild Bill Hickok, for example, served 

only a few stints between less officious gunslinging, while 

Wyatt Earp served as a lawman for less than three years in 

a couple of Kansas cowtowns; other than being temporarily 

deputized by his brother Virgil in time for the O.K. Corral 

gunfight. 

It is the image of Wyatt Earp and the O.K. Corral gunfight 

– or more accurately, the fight in a back alley near the O.K. 

Corral – that defines the western lawman for most people; 

especially as popularized by early sensationalist dime novel 

biographer Stuart 

lake. The gunfight 

has been featured in 

dozens of books in the 

years since, and the 

fictionalized account 

has essentially become 

In the 1950’s we were 

treated to inspiring 

Earp revisions like this 

Little Gold Book edition, 

portraying the upright 

virtuous champion of 

peace and justice that 

we in the larger Western 

tradition need. 

burned into our memory thanks in part to the highly inaccurate 

movie “Wyatt Earp” and moreso due to the powerfully acted, 

but also fictionalized film “Tombstone”. We are comforted 

in this case, by the notion of a brace of officers standing up 

for law and order and protecting the innocents with an air 

of nobility and panache; despite unintentionally setting off 

a firefight with their unbending enforcement of local gun 

control laws. less comforting is the reality of two contending 

politicized factions of part-time criminals, and full-time 

hustlers vying for control of the town of Tombstone; using an 

unpopular and seldom enforced ordinance against carrying 

guns as the excuse to confront a handful of cowboys who 

were already saddling up their horses and on their way out 

of town. There is something unsettling about the Marshal 

pinning a badge not only on Wyatt, but on the notoriuous 

gambler and killer ‘Doc Holliday,’ in order to carry out what 

some testified to be more akin to an execution than justified 

homicide. 

In the “days of yesteryear” and to some degree in these 

modern times as well, things like right, wrong, justice and 

law enforcement in the American West were anything but 

clear-cut. Instead of the proverbial black-hatted bad guys 

and white-hatted heroes, upon close inspection what we 

find are more like the gray hats of complex people acting on 

agendas that sometimes appeared – to certain vested interests, 

in specific situations – as being either dangerous threats 

to the community needing to be removed, or else its brave 

defenders upon whom civilization itself seemed to depend. 

Not only were they judged differently, depending upon the 

circumstances, but many at one time or other worked both 

sides of the fence. 

The job of lawman may have been underpaid, but it 

provided potentially valuable inside information and special 

advantages; sometimes contributing to officers branching 

out into extortion, or hanging up their badges altogether in 

exchange for a potentially more lucrative career of crime. 

L: Here we see Wyatt as 

a young man, dreaming 

about little more than 

making a mint as a 

buffalo hunter and then 

spending the proceeds 

on five cent floozies at 

the nearest “house of 

ill repute”. 

R: The sanitized and 

romanticized character 

that actor Hugh 

O’Brien played in the 

‘60s was about as far 

from the real Wyatt as a 

script writer could get. 

Whether they were praised or reviled for their forays outside 

the law depended on the situation and context, and just who 

was doing the appraising. The bounty hunter Tom Horn 

was treasured by the well-financed, and often Europeanborn 

cattle barons that hired him to both punish assumed 

rustlers and enforce their monopoly on grazing. However, 

he was hated by the small, struggling homesteaders whom 

he primarily targeted. The respected lawman Sheriff Henry 

Brown of Caldwell, Kansas, was awarded a gold plated, 

presentation model Winchester rifle by a grateful citizenry 

for his services, but then took this same rifle with him on 

a botched robbery attempt on the bank in nearby Medicine 

lodge. 

At the same time, experience as a gunslinger and lawbreaker 

were excellent qualifications for the post of sheriff, and it 

often required bending or ignoring the fine points of law and 

order to get the job done. In the cases of Hickok and the 

Earps, town managers were more than happy to overlook 

their zealous use of their Colt revolvers to bludgeon or shoot 

the miscreants, who were undeniably making life difficult for 

law-abiding folk. 

Wyatt Earp is a perfect case in point. Most today, accept 

the popular ‘legend’ of Earp as fact, with him representing 

the epitome of the western lawmen. More often, and more 

accurately, he was a gambler and provider of womanly 

flesh; a man whom many contemporaries referred to as the 

“fighting pimp”. 

He can neither be wholly lionized, nor villainized, being 

more than anything typical of the western “sporting men” of 

the era, who along with countless other opportunists, came 

west in search of riches and adventure. What distinguished 

him and others of his ilk, was a degree of hard-headed 

determination and a willingness to kill. But even given his 

various shooting scrapes, the primary reason we remember 

him is for the exaggerations and outright fabrications about 

his experiences that began with the release of those dime 

novels while he was still alive. 


The unrealistic lionization that began 

with Stuart Lake, was alive and well in 

the comics I and others read in the 1960’s. 

I grew up watching 

a fictionalized Wyatt 

Earp played by 

Hugh O’Brien on 

TV. His Earp was 

a morally spotless 

good guy who was 

always looking 

out for everybody 

but himself. To the 

contrary, the real 

Wyatt was in many 

ways a self serving 

and self aggrandizing 

scoundrel. 

Wyatt was actually 

born March 19, 

1848 to a family that 

locals came to call 

the “fighting Earps,” 

since anytime the 

father and brothers 

weren’t fighting other folks they could likely be found 

brawling amongst themselves. 

When he got his first law enforcement job as constable of 

lamar County, Missouri in 1870, he was heard to brag about 

how the badge made it possible to do as he liked without any 

more worry about being thrown in jail. A year later he had 

quit and moved on into the territory of the Cherokee, where 

he and a friend named Edward Kennedy were pursued, 

arrested and fined for rustling horses. By 1874 he could be 

found with his brothers Jim and Morgan and their mistresses 

in the then rowdy cow-town of Wichita, Kansas, where he 

made money gambling in the saloons and managing a stable 

of prostitutes... several of whom registered for business using 

the Earp last name. 

It was for kicks, it’s said, that he joined local officers in 

tracking down a wanted miscreant. However, the act of 

emptying their prisoner’s pockets of $148, for “expenses 

incurred” reminded Earp of the extracurricular ‘opportunities’ 

law enforcement work could provide. Wyatt then got hired 

as a Wichita policeman himself in 1875, his performance 

described by the Wichita Weekly Beacon newspaper as 

“unexceptionable.” Perhaps the most exciting incident he was 

involved in during this period was the accidental dropping of 

his revolver on the floor of a local saloon; narrowly missing 

shooting himself in the process. later that same year, Wyatt 

was himself arrested and fined for pummelling his boss’ main 

rival during the local election campaign for city Marshal. 

The Earps moved out of town two weeks after his dismissal, 

prompted by the city council issuing a warrant for their arrest 

as vagrants. 

Wyatt next worked 

two short stints as 

deputy of Dodge City, 

possibly shooting one 

wanted man out the 

saddle during a chase, 

clubbing dozens of 

rowdy party-goers 

with the butt of his 

sixgun, and putting a 

bullet in the leg of a 

Texas cowpoke in the 

course of enforcing 

the ordinance against 

carrying guns in 

town. 

Resigning his post, 

he fatefully chose 

the silver mining 

town of Tombstone 

A badge wearing Wyatt Earp during one 

of his short stints as a head-cracking 

policeman in wooly Kansas. 

for his next attempt to strike it rich - with as little effort as 

possible. It was there that he and his brothers came into 

conflict with an equally roguish band of part-time rustlers 

who called themselves simply “the cowboys,.” Falling in 

with the opposing political faction the Earps soon found 

themselves, being both romanticized and promoted by the 

self-proclaimed “champion of law and order,” in Tombstone, 

Epitaph newspaper editor, John Clum. 

Yet, in March of 1881, the Benson stage was robbed by 

someone with insider information, and Wyatt came under 

suspicion. Years later his brother Virgil’s wife wrote that she 

had hidden the masks and disguises they used, but regardless 

of the facts, things were heating up for what would be the 

shootout upon which much of Wyatt Earp’s future fame will 

be predicated. 

In June, the then Mayor, John Clum appointed Virgil town 

Marshal, who in turn temporarily deputized Wyatt and 

Morgan Earp, as well as the always “game” Doc Holliday. By 

October 15th things had heated up between the contending 

parties and their respective political bases, beyond the point 

of hope for a peaceful resolution. It was ironic, many would 

agree, that the gun-toting, often law-breaking Earps would 

again use the enforcement of early, widely resented gun laws 

to spark the confrontation that everyone had been so long 

expecting. 

On that infamous afternoon of October 26th, word had gone 

out that “cowboy” faction members Ike and Billy Clanton, 

Billy Claiborne and Tom and Frank Mclaury were armed 

and gathered in the aforementioned alley, saddled and ready 

to ride out, though clearly making a point of taking their time. 

As was indicated by later trial evidence, of the five cowboys 

only Billy Clanton and Frank Mclaury were “packing iron”, 

During his days in Dodge City, Wyatt 

was friends with the justifiably lauded 

lawman Bat Masterson, who later added 

both facts and flourishes to the growing 

Earp legend. 

while all three of the 

Earps and Holliday 

were carrying. While 

no hard documentation 

exists, it is reasonable 

to believe that each 

of the Earps carried 

ubiquitous Colt SAA 

revolvers in .45 or 

.44-40 caliber, the by 

far preferred handgun 

of the period, and that 

Holliday toted a double 

barreled shotgun in 10 

or 12 gauge, that Virgil 

had handed him, as 

well a Colt SAA and 

probably a backup 

Colt 1877 lightning 

or Thunderer double 

action pistol as well. 

What Wyatt most 

certainly did not carry, was the extra long barreled, so called 

“Buntline Special”. 

The fight apparently went down much as dramatized in 

the movie “Tombstone,” other than the ridiculous fanning 

of a dozen rounds into the nearby Fly Photography Studio: 

Virgil yells at the cowboys that “I want your guns,” as Wyatt 

draws his Colt and Doc jabs his shotgun menacingly at Tom 

Mclaury. The spunky Billy Clanton pulls his revolver in 

response, as an unarmed Tom Mclaury struggles to get 

his Winchester 1873 rifle out of the scabbard on his horse. 

Somewhere near 30 shots are fired in a space of 25 seconds 

or so; a wild melee in which Sheriff Behan pulls Billy 

Earp (on the right) wandered the breadth of the West after 

Tombstone, including spending time in Canada and in Alaska as 

pictured, engaging in bunko schemes and real estate fraud. 

Claiborne to safety, while the cowardly, trouble-making Ike 

Clanton runs. His brother, Billy Clanton, far more game, 

stands his ground and engages Wyatt. Wyatt targets the 

more formidable Frank Mclaury, both exchanging gunfire. 

Holliday, at the same time, puts his scattered gun to good use, 

putting two loads of buckshot into Tom Mclaury as his horse 

spins out of his grasp. The fight ends with the thrice-shot, 

and quickly bleeding-out teenager Billy Clanton hollering 

for more bullets as he clicked his emptied revolvers; and a 

dazed Morgan Earp and puckish Holliday now armed with a 

Colt handgun, facing down a wounded Frank Mclaury who 

bravely asserts “I’ve got you now.” “You’re a daisy if you 

do,” Holliday is reported to have replied, as he and Morgan 

simultaneously fire, finishing off the last remaining armed 

enemy combatant. 

Scorecard: The Mclaury brothers and Billy Clanton, 

deceased. Doc Holliday, a flesh wound to the hip; Morgan, 

a round in the shoulder; Sheriff Virgil Earl, a .45 caliber 

hole through is right calf; Wyatt, amazingly unscathed 

and movie-poster proud. later, Wyatt and Doc were both 

arrested, and then subsequently freed later that November. 

Judge Spicer felt obliged to drop charges in part because they 

hadn’t gunned down the despised but unarmed and retreating 

Ike Clanton. 

Dissatisfied with the ruling, members of the “cowboys,” 

armed with shotguns, later bushwhacked Virgil Earp. 

However, their assassination attempt was unsuccessful and 

resulted in the crippling of the elder Earp’s arm. Unfazed, the 

criminal band made another try for the Earps, ending with 

the successful bushwhacking of Morgan Earp as he bent over 

a billiard table. 

A .44 caliber Smith & Wesson #3 top-break with the trigger guard 

removed for fast acquisition, purported to have been abandoned to 

the Alaska police after Wyatt determined that a quick ship to Nome 

would be a better bet than staying in Juneau and submitting to yet 

another investigation. 


A truly epic blood-fued was born, with the Earps hell-bent on 

revenge. One of the suspected back-shooters of Morgan, was 

Frank Stillwell. Contrary to the movie version, Stillwell had 

been at work at the stockyards in Tucson, and not stalking 

the Earps when he first had his legs shot out from under him 

by the Earp party. He subsequently suffered two loads of 

buckshot and four rifle rounds to the torso. Earp and friends 

put five holes in a second suspect, Indian Charley before 

he could get away from the area; while the third suspect, 

Pete Spence, promptly asked Sheriff Behan to place him in 

protective custody. 

Satisfied at having taken the law into their own hands and 

extracted revenge, Wyatt and Doc left Arizona... not as 

triumphant lawmen, but as fugitives, with warrants sworn 

out for their arrest and a reward on their heads courtesy of 

Sheriff Behan. For Earp, 

the O.K. Corral shootout 

was the historical high 

point from which he 

slowly spiralled down 

into a life of increasing 

irrelevance and personal 

desperation. 

Hugh O’Brien aside, 

Wyatt never ever wore 

a badge again. Instead, 

in the ensuing years he 

travelled around the 

West with his brother 

Jim running confidence 

schemes and real 

estate scams, and was 

subsequently arrested 

a number of times, 

including in Idaho on 

two counts of claim 

jumping. Yet, his fame, 

or infamy, depending 

on your perspective, 

won him the honoured 

position of referee of the 

world champion boxing 

match in 1896; a bout 

which he stopped due to 

a foul he called against 

contender Fitzsimmons, 

a judgment it was commonly believed was made because 

of bets Wyatt had placed on opponent Sharkey. As late as 

1911, at age 63, Earp was arrested again for vagrancy and 

for bilking tourists in a ‘Bunco’ game. In the end, it was no 

shootout that did him in, but natural causes. On January 3, 

1929, the year of the stock market crash, Wyatt Earp died as 

he had lived: a “pain-in-the-arse”... not from bullet wounds 

but from prostate cancer. 

Wyatt spent much of his later period trying to get film star 

William S. Hart to publish his autobiography and make it 

into a movie, but Hart found problems with the manuscript’s 

veracity. Stuart lake held no such reservations, and printed 

his pack of colourful lies under the title “Wyatt Earp: 

Frontier Marshal.” 70 years later there have been several 

imaginative programs and movies made about his life, 

with little understanding 

of, or attention to the 

complexities and twists 

of this most famous 

lawman/outlaw. 

Neither wholly saint, 

nor sinner, Wyatt Earp’s 

legend may very well 

borrow more from the 

realm of fantasy than 

truth, but as the man 

said, “When the legend 

becomes fact, print the 

legend.” With that ‘truth’ 

in mind, unquestionably, 

Wyatt Earp was one of 

the ‘legendary’ Old West 

lawmen. In truth, most of 

us prefer the fiction, as 

the unforgettable image 

of Marshal Wyatt Earp 

facing down the Clanton 

gang at the O.K. Corral 

is held out by most of 

us to be one of the most 

powerful of Old West 

archetypes - the legendary 

lawmen, who represented 

the pinnacle of Western 

manhood, self-reliance 

and heroism. 

An aging Earp in Los Angeles, lobbying hard to get Hollywood to make a movie about 

him. That wish would come true more than once, but not until long after he was dead. 

KIDS... Continued From Page 23 

after all, because all I get to do is load! 

Things were progressing differently 

this time around. 

Finally, because he behaved so well I 

had to let her brother take a turn. At this 

age kids are less predictable. This was 

a bit different with a five and a half year 

old so I made some changes to how we 

would shoot. First I had to hold the 

rifle when he wanted to shoot. Then I’d 

always know it was pointing in the right 

direction. He also only had a few rounds 

loaded in his magazines for each string. 

He preferred just the red dot when he 

would shoot and I was very impressed 

that he hit the clangers far more times 

than he missed. This time, when arms 

got tired from holding the AR and ears 

were sore from wearing safety glasses 

under ear muffs, they both said they 

wanted to go out shooting again. Two 

new shooters have been added to our 

ranks and they got to experience it with 

a black rifle. 

I’ve taken our experience from these 

trips to the range and come up with 

some thoughts. 

Remember that regardless of whether 

your child is shooting a wood stocked 

bolt action rimfire, an AR-15 black rifle 

or a Remington VTR, the important 

thing is that they’re shooting. I believe 

that the future of “black rifle” shooting 

is with Canada’s youth. let them 

know that a firearm is a firearm right 

off the bat. There is enough animosity 

towards AR-15’s, HK’s, and VZ-58’s 

from the general public (and more than 

a few shooters) already. There are no 

good or bad guns, they’re just guns so 

get out there and use them. The more 

often black rifles are seen the less 

often they’ll seem strange or different. 

In actuality, they are what a modern 

sporting rifle looks like now. 

As far as hardware goes, the features 

that make black rifles so ergonomic to 

adults, work just as well for kids. The 

light weight on a standard black rifle, 

adjustable stocks, short barrels and 

rimfire conversions make the platform 

very adaptable for smaller bodies. The 

modular designs also make it fast and 

easy to switch the rifle back and forth 

from stock for the kids to tricked out 

with all the heavy add-ons adults want 

for target or three-gun match use. 

Converting my AR from .223 REM to 

.22lR rimfire takes well under thirty 

seconds from start to finish. 

The next time you think about picking 

out a rimfire rifle for your child, 

consider guns like the Remington 597 

VTR or the Ruger SR-22. As well as 

looking cool they have features that 

really shine when a kid needs a rifle 

sized for them and are non-restricted 

as well. If you already have an AR- 

15, seriously consider buying a rimfire 

conversion for it. They’re good value 

for you too. 

Now my daughter wants to start 

shooting handguns. looks like it is 

time to start looking for a second job 

if I’m going to keep my new shooting 

buddies in ammo; now if someone has 

a spare .22lR conversion for a Glock 

pistol...just so you know all donations 

gratefully accepted! 


Legal 

Corner 

By Grayson Penney 

by Sean & Grayson Penney 

Legal Update 

& R. v. Manzer 

Canada’s National Firearms Association 

continues to pursue a very aggressive 

legal agenda aimed at protecting and 

preserving our rights as responsible 

firearms owners. In addition to one-onone 

legal advice, briefing papers and 

related aid we provide, at no charge, 

to members of Canada’s recreational 

firearms community (you don’t have to 

be a member!), we are actively engaged 

in three important legal challenges at the 

present moment. 

Mini-update: 

R. v. Cancade 

Issue of concern: Are individual parts of magazines 

considered to be prohibited weapons, as some 

government agencies have contended? 

Status: Heard by BC Court of Appeal, awaiting 

decision. 

Norinco Type 97A Reference Hearing – 

Issues of concern: May the RCMP arbitrarily 

reclassify and prohibit firearms on their own 

authority? Should the Type-97A be prohibited 

on the basis of the RCMP’s contention that it is 

“easily converted to fully automatic?” Who or 

what has the authority to establish when such 

a conversion meets an acceptable definition or 

standard of “easy conversion” given the highly 

subjective nature of the debate. 

Status: In process - hearing scheduled February 

2011. (Donations can be made on-line at www.nfa. 

ca or phone, toll free: 1-877-818-0393) 

R. v. Manzer 

Issue of concern: Manzer charged under CCC, 

s. 88 (1) Possession of Weapon for Dangerous 

Purpose. 

Was Manzer properly exercising his right to selfdefence 

and defence of property as laid out in 

the CCC? Is it reasonable for a citizen to confront 

potential criminals while armed? 

Status: Hearing scheduled in Burton, New 

Brunswick on June 28th & 29th. Please see below 

for more details. 


Self Defence & the Case of 

Lawrence Manzer 

Meet Lawrence, “Laurie” Manzer. Laurie is a retired 

member of the Canadian Forces, a loving husband and 

doting father of four -- three boys and one girl. If his 

local police have their way, he’ll also be a convicted 

criminal very soon. Laurie is in legal hot water for 

doing what any reasonable person would do when 

confronted in the middle of the night by roving thugs, 

and a call for immediate help from a neighbour and 

friend. Laurie jumped out of bed and went to help. 

For his own protection, Laurie took an unloaded 

shotgun with him and some shells in case they were 

needed; fortunately, they weren’t. As a retired member 

of the Canadian Forces and a recreational shooter 

and hunter, Laurie understands how to use firearms 

responsibly. He was specifically trained to safely use 

firearms, even under the most adverse of conditions, 

and in high-stress environments. Confronting three 

unknown prowlers in the dark would certainly qualify 

in that respect. 

As it turned out, Laurie never even had to load 

his shotgun. Brian Fox, Fox’s son and Laurie were 

successful in apprehending the three miscreants in 

short order. The latter turned out to be a trio of area 

youths who were feeling the liquor they had been 

consuming that evening, and who were looking to see 

what trouble they could get into. 

No shots were fired in the apprehension of the vandals, 

and no injuries resulted from the actions of either 

Manzer or Fox. Local police arrived shortly thereafter 

to take the erstwhile prowlers into custody. But the 

vandals weren’t the ones in real trouble – instead, 

Laurie Manzer found himself facing charges relating 

to his carrying a firearm with him when he went to the 

aid of his neighbour. 

Without reservation, Canada’s National Firearms 

Association firmly supports every Canadian’s legal 

right to self-defence. 

Laurie’s actions, that dark night last year, were wholly 

justified in our estimation. Laurie was correct in the 

assumptions he made, he took reasonable safety 

precautions that were in the best interests of the public 

good, and from our perspective, offered a wholly 

proportional level of force in relation to the perceived 

threat posed by the miscreants involved. 

Rather than being treated as a criminal, and being 

forced to defend himself against such outrageous 

charges, having his reputation damaged, and now 

facing potential financial ruin in order to pay for his 

legal defence -- Laurie Manzer should have been 

lauded by the police for his courageous actions in 

standing by his neighbours, and for assuming an active 

role in ending the wave of property crimes, thefts and 

vandalism that had been wracking his community. 

Lawrence Manzer while still on active duty with the 

Canadian Forces. 

Local police and the Crown attorney need only to have 

looked to Peel’s Principles of Policing for guidance in 

the Manzer case. As Peel wrote: 

“Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship 

with the public that gives reality to the historic 

tradition that the police are the public and the public 

are the police; the police being only members of the 

public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties 

which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests 

of community welfare and existence.” 

Laurie merely did what each of us not only has a 

right to do, but that which we have an obligation to 

do as responsible citizens. He accepted the awesome 

responsibility of protecting himself, his family and his 

property; while offering the same aid to his friend and 

neighbour Brian Fox. 

Despite past requests for police help, Manzer and 

Fox were left with few options in the face of the 

local police being unable or unwilling to take more 

proactive measures to end the mini-crime wave being 

perpetrated against the pair that night, and in the 

months preceding the incident in question. Left with 

no other option, Laurie accepted the risks inherent in 

facing the unknown so that he could protect his home 

and family. 

Unbelievably, Laurie is currently scheduled to appear 

at the Burton Courthouse this June 28th & 29th 

to answer the charges. His lawyer is already hard 

at work prepping for the trial, but his legal bills are 

accumulating quickly. Laurie is one of the good guys 

and he can certainly use our support. If you can 

afford to help this good citizen defend himself, and 

prevent a gross miscarriage of justice, please send 

your donations in trust to Laurie’s legal counsel made 

payable to: 

“Lawrence Manzer - In Trust of Blair McKay” 

c/o Mr. Blair McKay, Attorney-at-Law, 

291 Restigouche Road, Oromocto, 

New Brunswick, Canada E2V 2H2 


Kelly Green 

Sand 

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Knife w/ 

carry pouch 

Travel Mug 

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Canvas Hat ..................................Qty. _____ x $15.00 = $__________ 

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