Civilian Range Project

	For the past forty years the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) has been at the forefront pressing for strong firearms control measures. Canada’s police leaders have adopted twenty-five resolutions on firearms control, including support for the Firearms Act and registration of all firearms, in the interests of public and officer safety.
— Steven Chabot, Deputy Director General, CACP, April 7, 2009

A sign on a private gun club's range indicating their participation in the protest against the mistreatment of Canadian gun owners at the hands of several police associations.

The Civilian Range Project is an ongoing and rapidly growing exercise of protest by Canadian gun owners and gun clubs in which private gun clubs in Canada have begun barring on-duty law enforcement personnel and non-privately owned firearms from their shooting ranges.

It began with a single gun club in British Columbia in the summer of 2009, in protest against the ongoing public assaults on gun rights in Canada by several officially sponsored and other high profile groups — in particular the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) and the Canadian Professional Police Association (CPPA), both of which adamantly insist on claiming that they faithfully represent the interests of the public's wellbeing and opinions of virtually every police officer in Canada, in defiance of all evidence to the contrary.

The storm of outrage and disgust among normally staid Canadian gun owners has, arguably, been a long time in the makingbut apparently was finally provoked by an April 7, 2009 press release from CACP Deputy Director General Steven Chabot, who opened the release with the statement quoted at the top of this page. As if the opening statement were not insulting enough to long-maltreated Canadian gun owners, the remainder of the release, in the word's of the NFA's Christopher di Armani, "reads as if it was written by Wendy Cukier."

The rationale behind the protest is simple and to the point: Every member of every Canadian agency that carries firearms must qualify with those firearms annually, or they are removed from active duty. If you can’t shoot, you can’t carry a gun, and telling the CACP and CPPA that front-line police officers are no longer welcome on private ranges, because of their actions, might just get their attention.

As of October 27, 2009, neither the NFA nor the CSSA — the two largest pro-firearms rights organizations in Canada — have officially endorsed or rejected the idea of the CRP or made any public speculation of the possible results of the action.

Official overview

The following is taken word for word from the official CRP overview document, which is available on the web:

One of the problems we have as firearms owners in Canada is getting Government to take our concerns about the oppressive and ineffective aspects of gun control seriously.

Recently we have had a ray of hope that sanity was starting to prevail when Commons Bill C-301 was introduced. Unfortunately the government was lobbied intensely by the Chiefs of Police Association of Canada. In addition, the RCMP has been similarly exerting pressure on all political parties to defeat the bill, while at the same time creating lists of long guns that would be moved to the restricted category if the bill became law.

The elephant in the room that no one wants to mention and in the end the most important aspect of Bill C-301 is the requirement for the Auditor-General to report on the cost effectiveness of the Firearms Act within two years, and then every five years. Chretien commissioned such a report and buried it under cabinet secrecy laws, one suspects because it revealed the law to be an unjustified exercise in political and social engineering that does nothing to enhance the safety of the public and according to unbiased studies actually detracts from public safety.

Over the past twenty years or so we, the firearms community of Canada, have written letters to our MPs, our Senators, the newspapers; we have rallied, marched and created political organizations. None of our efforts have had any effect at bringing justice to our cause.

While some activists have engaged in Civil Disobedience to bring our cause before the courts (Bruce Montague and Pierre Lemieux, among others, come to mind) most firearms owners choose not to challenge the law by disobeying it, at least not openly.

RCMP, municipal police, sheriffs, border guards, prison guards and wildlife officers in most of Canada do not have access to government ranges for training, qualification or practice. Such ranges are few and not feasible in most areas. Government agencies therefore arrange time on private facilities for these activities. Most clubs do in fact make a substantial amount of money towards their operating expenses by renting their facilities to armed agencies.

We are not powerless in responding to the anti-gun efforts of the RCMP and the Chiefs of Police. We can get their immediate attention, and keep it, as well as that of our politicians, the press and our fellow Canadians, by denying range time to all government agencies. We can also establish and enforce a range rule prohibiting club members from using our range facilities while on duty or in uniform or using agency owned firearms.

We can expect a staring match for months. We will blink if we let our need or desire for government money in the form or range rentals get the better of us. We will need to find alternative sources of income or reduce our need for income. They, on the other hand NEED to train and qualify. They have no choice. They can hold out for months, but they cannot hold out for a year.

We would not be doing anything illegal by denying government agencies use of our ranges. They are, after all, private property. We would be doing the single most effective thing within our power to obtain compliance by politicians and agencies that marginalize us. The beauty of the project is that it does not depend upon the support of anti-gun voters for it to succeed.

We can, I believe, convince the government to pass bill C-301 by denying government use of our ranges. If the will is there, we could even get the entire Firearms Act audited and corrected to reflect our Rights as opposed to the anti-rights politics that hold our freedom to ransom.

Civilian Range Project declaration

The following declaration has been drafted in order to outline the aims and purpose of the CRP:

Whereas we, the Citizens of Canada, are unjustly denied our Right to firearms for historically legal purposes central to the maintenance of a free and just society; Whereas fraud and party politics were used to establish a legal framework for the seizure of traditionally legal firearms and firearms uses in Canada; Whereas the original fraud and party politics are entrenched in the maintenance of this legal framework today and for the foreseeable future; Whereas unelected and powerful interests within the Government of Canada including the RCMP and key bureaucrats (some going back to the Trudeau era) and associations allied with these interests - in particular the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police - lobby parliament and propagandize through the media thereby putting themselves in a conflict of interest; Whereas a double standard has emerged in Canada, whereby police and other armed agents of the state believe their badge gives them special rights over and above the rights of other Canadians; Whereas the major political parties of Canada are complicit in creating and maintaining the bad law known as the Firearms Act; Whereas the Conservative Party of Canada refuses to enact legislation scrapping the Firearms Act as mandated by party policy; Whereas all independent, impartial studies find laws denying citizens access to firearms, including licensing and registration laws, have shown no relationship between such laws and public safety, while laws promoting firearms use for self defense provide undeniable benefits; Whereas writing letters to and meeting with our Members of Parliament and representatives of government committees and agencies this past twenty years has had no effect; Therefore the management of this range refuses to allow federal, provincial and municipal agencies use of our facilities until our grievances are addressed.