The National Rifle Association

Counting over 2.8 million members, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has been called “perhaps America’s most powerful political lobby,” and “serves as spiritual godfather to gun groups around the world.”[1] The Chief Executive Officer of the NRA, Wayne La Pierre, is a member of the Council for National Policy.[2] Under his direction, the NRA has been extremely active in pursuing its anti-gun control agenda abroad, especially in Canada.[3]

According to Tony Bernardo, Executive Director of the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action (CILA), a gun lobby group, the NRA was “instrumental to the formation of the CILA” and provides “tremendous amounts of logistic support.” [4] On July 4, 2001, La Pierre stated “the National Rifle Association of America supports and endorses the work done by the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action,”[5] which works with the National Firearms Association to advocate for the “rights” of gun owners.[6]

Although the NRA does not provide funding for gun lobbies, “[i]t promotes lines of argument, strategy, and political tactics that others adopt for local use.”[7] The NRA has taken a special interest in the 2006 election, sending Glen Caroline, the Director of NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, Grassroots Division,[8] to Ontario during the first weekend in December 2005 to “advise the Canadian Shooting Sports Association how to lobby Canadian politicians in the lead-up to the Jan. 23 election.”[9] The CSSA has indicated that it will use these tactics to help the Conservative Party, especially in “close swing ridings.”[10]

Conservative party anti-gun control rhetoric also strongly echoes that of the NRA. On October 26, 2005, the NRA denigrated Liberal plans to consider suing U.S. gun makers for products smuggled into Canada and used to kill other Canadians by saying “[b]laming the U.S. is nothing more than political claptrap. If the government was half as good at fighting crime as they are at fighting elections, Canada would be a much safer country.”[11] Conservative Leader Stephen Harper used these same talking points in his crime address on January 5, 2006: “We know that a large part of the gun problem exists because of our porous borders. But the answer is not to blame the Americans for weapons smuggling. We have had the United States next door longer than any of us have been alive. But it is only this government that has been unable to deal with the gun flow.”[12]

Conservative Party legislative strategy also follows that laid out by the NRA on property rights, the defence of which the NRA has used as a rallying call for preventing government from regulating gun ownership, since government interference with such ownership would infringe on such “rights”.[13] Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz has been particularly active in this regard, having proposed four separate private member’s bills in the House of Commons in defence of property rights during his time in the House of Commons.

The Conservative platform released on January 13, 2006 calls for enshrining property rights in the Charter, and echoes the NRA’s thinking on property rights, asserting the Conservatives have a plan to “enact legislation to ensure that full, just and timely compensation will be paid to all persons who are deprived of personal or private property as a result of any federal government initiative, policy, process, regulation or legislation.”[14] 

While the main purpose behind such a bill would seem to be a desire to prevent the federal government from restricting gun ownership, it would have much broader consequences, effectively preventing the legislature and ministries from protecting the environment, in-land fisheries and any other federal action that infringed on property rights such as taxes and levies. In a Charter amendment form, this platform property rights plan would seriously jeopardize provincial anti-discrimination law, work place safety codes, and legislation protecting union membership that could be interpreted to infringe on freedom of contract rights that courts have associated with property rights.

Members and funders of the Council for National Policy endorse this property rights rhetoric precisely for its environmental impact. Seven members of the Coors family, owners of the Coors Brewing Company, are members of the Council, [15] and funnel financial support to property rights advocacy organizations like the Mountain States Legal Foundation through the Coors family’s philanthropic Castle Rock Foundation.[16] The Executive Director of the Castle Rock Foundation, Linda Tafoya, is also a member of the Council. [17] The Mountain Studies Legal Foundation seeks to use property rights as a basis to open access to federal lands and resources for business interests, curtail the reach of legislation to protect endangered species and the environment and prevent further government regulation.[18] It is part of a complex of organizations and law firms in the United States that promote the radical right-wing “Constitution-in-Exile” movement, which seeks to dramatically curtail the state’s ability to regulate in all areas of society, especially the environment and the workplace.[19] Former employees of the Mountain States foundation include Gale Norton, the United States’ current Secretary of the Interior, who controls natural resource regulation, wildlife protection and substantial environmental protection rules through its control over federal lands.[20]