RCMP had legal right to enter home and seize High River guns
Alberta Justice Minister Jonathan Denis criticized the RCMP for entering High River homes and seizing guns “in plain sight.”
I guess no one is surprised the owners of High River guns, and gun rights supporters, are outraged after police seized guns during flood inspections. But just how upset should the rest of us be?
If you want to know just how outraged Canadian gun owners are, check out the Facebook page of the Canadian Sport Shooting Association. Here’s the association’s executive director, Tony Bernardo, from a Friday press release.
“This act of aggression is further proof that the RCMP have a not-so-hidden agenda to take guns away from responsible gun owners,” said Bernardo.
“How is leaving your home for a flood any different than leaving to watch the kids play hockey or go on vacation? The police went rogue and operated way beyond their mandate.”
Act of aggression? Hidden agenda? The police went rogue? Sounds like the outer fringes of the Birther Movement instead of the head of a Canadian lobby group hoping to be taken seriously on the public stage.
Most reasonable citizens would agree that fleeing just ahead of a flood of almost biblical proportions is quite different than heading over to the local arena to watch your kid play hockey. High River was enveloped in a crisis. People feared for their lives. They prepared as best they could and left valuable possessions, including legal guns, on kitchen tables and second story beds where they would be dry and safe.
Then they got the hell out of Dodge and hoped for the best.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office was sharply critical of the RCMP actions in High River. Photo: Hand out.
Now imagine the RCMP and Canadian soliders going house to house, making sure that everyone had obeyed the mandatory evacuation order. They opened doors, or in some cases, kicked them in, and discovered the High River guns ”in plain sight,” as Inspector Garrett Woolsey told reporters Friday.
“And it appears, as best we can tell from being inside these homes, that some people removed their firearms from secure storage and left them either with the intention of removing them from the home, or putting them to higher ground where they could not be damaged or vulnerable to water,” he said.
Canadian law requires guns to be secure, which means locked away in a cabinet that can’t be easily broken into. Hiding a gun in the back of a bedroom closet doesn’t qualify. Leaving a gun on your kitchen counter probably doesn’t, either.
A reasonable interpretation is that High River gun owners who left their weapons in plain sight broke the law, and confiscation and charges wouldn’t be unreasonable under different circumstances.
But a flood evacuation is a different circumstance.
The entire town of High River was evacuated June 20.
There are two issues to consider. One, did the RCMP have the right to break into the homes, and two, were the guns an issue of public safety?
According to the Alberta Emergency Management Act, Section 19(1)h, once a state of emergency has been declared, and there were a dozen communities that had declared a “local state of emergency,” including High River, the government can, “authorize the entry into any building or on any land, without warrant, by any person in the course of implementing an emergency plan or program.”
Clearly, the RCMP had the authority to enter the homes, even if it meant knocking down the door, which they did in most instances.
No one has yet described the several hundred guns that were seized, but the RCMP’s willingness to return them suggests they were hunting rifles. No mention was made by Inspector Woolsey or in the RCMP press release about illegal weapons being found.
Was public safety comprised by a few shotguns and deer rifles falling into the wrong hands? Probably not. Drug dealers and gang members prefer handguns and automatic weapons, judging from the crime stories published in Beacon News.
Still, you can see the RCMP’s point. What if teens broke into a house, stole a gun, then deliberately or accidentally shot someone? What if a vengeful spouse saw his opportunity, stole a gun and killed an estranged wife and children?
Both of these scenarios are unlikely, but it was equally unlikely that Travis Brandon Baumgartner would kill three of his security guard colleagues in a clumsy robbery or that target piston shooter Derek Jensen would gun down two Lethbridge baseball players and his former girlfriend on the shoulder of the QE II Highway.
The lesson from those two horrific experiences is better to be safe than sorry.
If any politician would be expected to criticize the RCMP for seizing guns it would be Danielle Smith, leader of the Wildrose Party, whose justice critic Shayne Saskiw has called publicly for looser Canadian gun laws. Instead, she said she was ok with the RCMP’s actions as long as the seized guns were returned to their owners.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on the other hand, was critical of the RCMP’s handling of the gun seizures. PMO spokesperson Carl Vallée said in a statement Friday, “We expect that any firearms taken will be returned to their owners as soon as possible. We believe the RCMP should focus on more important tasks such as protecting lives and private property.”
Let’s recap. The RCMP legally entered people’s home and discovered guns in plain view that were illegally stored. Instead of charging the owners, police tagged the weapons with the information necessary to return them to their rightful owners. Then they publicly pledged to do just that, essentially assuring that they would be held to account for their promise.
The public was protected from the (admittedly unlikely) illegal use of those weapons in a violent crime and the gun owners themselves had their property protected from flood waters and looters.
What am I missing?
If we were talking about kids’ plush toys instead of guns, no would care. But somehow guns are in a category of personal property that are more sacred and deserving of legal protection.
At least for some people.
And those people seem to include Canada’s prime minister and the Alberta solicitor general and justice minister, Jonathan Denis, who was publicly critical of the RCMP.
Harper and Denis should quit pandering to the loony toon, tinfoil hat wearing NRA-wannabes. They should also be embarrassed that self-described libertarian Smith showed more sense on this issue than did they.
The RCMP acted correctly. Let’s hope the guns are returned promptly to their owners and High River – and all Canadians – can put this shameful episode behind them.
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