Border shapes Attitudes on firearms
Firearms sellers on either side of the border offer stark differences and many similarities
MISSOULA, MONT., AND CANORA,
It’s the last day of Montana’s SASK. biggest gun show and Hayes Otoupalik is angry.
He’s berating a man whose “buddy” has asked to set up an exhibit inside. It would feature — to Otoupalik’s horror — massage equipment.
Otoupalik’s custom-made bolo tie hangs steady as he talks, anchored by tiny replica Confederate pistols at each end. He has run this show for 50 years. He knows his customers.
“They don’t come to look at rocks, they don’t come to look at sausage dressings, they don’t come to look at reproduction samurai swords and fake shit and crap,” Otoupalik yells.
“It’s a gun show. It should be guns and gun-related collectibles and frontier stuff.”
And there are guns here, hundreds and hundreds of them filling the University of Montana’s Adams Center. There are magazines with 30 rounds and drums with 50. There’s an Uzi, a handful of AKS, a slew of ARS and a whole lot of love for the Second Amendment, protecting the right to keep and bear arms.
“Every country in the world should have a second amendment in their constitution,” says Otoupalik.
“It gives us the right to protect our freedoms.”
But inside the Adams Centre, respect for the rest of the nation’s gun-control framework is spotty at best.
Otoupalik says he runs a “real clean show.” He has security stationed at the door, armed police officers patrolling the floor and an information booth staffed by two employees of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Norman Frick doesn’t care about any of that.
Frick is selling Luger pistols. He has an 84-year-old copy of Mein Kampf on his table. He insists he’s not a Nazi and calls Hitler a “psychopath” to prove it. But he admits his political leanings are “to the right of Attila the Hun.”
He reads out a list of rules from the ATF, handed out to every dealer at the show. As an out-of-state private seller, he knows he’s not supposed to sell his handguns to Montana residents without going through a federally licensed dealer. “Who cares?” Frick says. He says he’ll sell his Lugers to anyone who speaks English.
“Nobody pays any attention,” he explains. “People are saying, ‘ What are you going to do about these laws?’ I’m going to do the same as I did with the old ones. I’m going to ignore them.”
Two aisles over, a pair of women behind the ATF booth say private sellers have to ensure customers reside in their state — whatever gun they’re selling. They know some don’t and admit they don’t want to “get into people’s business.”
Would Frick check his customers?
“Hell no.”
In a curling rink about a thousand kilometres to the northeast, there are no AKS or Uzis. None of the wares even resemble an AR-15. It’s hard to find anyone like Frick in Canora, a small town near Yorkton. While many share his love of firearms and all they stand for, they reject such overt contempt for the law.
That’s where I’m in agreement with my American cousins: An unarmed society becomes vulnerable to dictatorship.
Will Bilozir is one of them. For one weekend in June, he counts the town’s curling rink among the safest spots in Canada. The reason is simple: Like the Adams Center, it, too, is full of guns.
Far fewer than in Missoula, to be sure. The River Ridge Fish and Game Gun Show can’t match Montana’s biggest gun show. But Bilozir believes that anyone who came through the rink’s door and tried to open fire would still be “dead in 30 seconds.
“No one has ever been shot or killed at a gun show,” says Bilozir, who runs a ranch and potato farm near Calgary and sells finely crafted Italian firearms. “You can’t say that about shopping malls.”
There have been documented cases of gunshot injuries at U.S. gun shows, usually accidental. But it remains a rare occurrence.
Bilozir was once a college professor. He uses terms like “non sequitur” and “Aristotelian logic.” He has a lot of respect for the principles behind the Second Amendment. In his view, firearm ownership helps keep Canadians safe and free.
“That’s where I’m in agreement with my American cousins: An unarmed society becomes vulnerable to dictatorship,” he says.
“If you are unarmed, you don’t have the ability to resist tyranny.”
But Bilozir says he would never defy Canada’s firearms laws, which require buyers to show a valid possession and acquisition licence (PAL) before purchasing a gun.
“I’m not going to go to jail to sell a $1,700 gun,” Bilozir says.
In fact, he believes that would be “unethical.” He thinks the existing licensing system makes basic sense with its mandated safety courses and background checks.
Clint Davisson agrees. A firearms dealer from Eastend, he says he wouldn’t sell a gun to anyone if he didn’t feel “comfortable.” He says he always errs on the side of caution.
He can’t imagine that anyone at the River Ridge show would sell to a customer without a PAL. He wouldn’t dream of it.
“If I did and it was found out, I would lose everything,” he says.
In both Montana and Saskatchewan, gun shows are a place for vendors to reach new customers, visit with old friends and push a distinctly conservative brand of politics. But the Second Amendment stops at the border and Canadian laws and attitudes seem sufficient to rein in the excesses of our southern neighbours.
So-called private-party sellers, like Frick, are the reason for the much-debated “gun-show loophole” in the United States. They escape the stringent requirements that apply to federally licensed firearms dealers like Jerry Lema.
A burly, bearded man, Lema customizes rifles based on the AR-15 platform in his Idaho home and sells them at gun shows in several states. He runs a Fourth of July fireworks stand and believes fervently in the Second Amendment. He’s also living proof that there are responsible firearms vendors at the Missoula Gun Show.
“I don’t want to give a gun out to somebody that shouldn’t have it,” he says.
Lema’s AR-15S get a lot of attention, especially one with a red, white and blue hand guard engraved with a bald eagle and the word “freedom.” Kids gawk, parents ask questions.
Some customers ask whether he’s licensed and don’t like the answer. “They just keep walking,” he says. As a licensed dealer, Lema is obliged to go through an Atfmandated form with his customers (at least those who don’t have a concealed carry permit). Felon? No gun. Smoke marijuana? Sorry. Fugitive from justice or committed mental hospital inmate? Nope. He puts it all through a computer linked up to the FBI to make sure.
But that requirement only applies to those “engaged in the business of dealing firearms.” Frick and other private-party sellers don’t count because they claim to sell only on occasion, trading guns as part of their hobby.
Lema has some qualms about that. “I think everybody should follow those guidelines,” he says. “I do think that having the form is a pretty good safeguard that no criminals are getting weapons.”
Frick’s position isn’t unusual, though. Larry Merical, a Vietnam veteran who says his family members have fought in almost every U.S. war, says the ATF is made up of bureaucrats “usurping ” the role of Congress. He doesn’t think their rules have much legitimacy.
“They make up their own damn rules just about,” he says. “For instance, they tell me that I cannot sell a weapon to anybody from another state.” But there’s hope for Merical. He’s happy Donald Trump is president, accusing Barack Obama of coming from a family of “avowed communists.” He says the Democrats are owned by financier George Soros, who, in his view, “hates this country.
“Now they’re right up saying they want to be socialist,” Merical says of the Democrats.
Gun-show vendors don’t hide which side of the political battle lines they’re on. On both sides of the border, they connect efforts to further restrict firearms with tyranny and — for many — a looming threat of socialism, even communism.
The colours and the parties are different. But the slogans are hard to tell apart.
In Missoula, Frick wears a bright blue hat. “Make America a Shithole Again,” it says. “Vote Democrat.”
In Canora, a vendor named Brad Hanson wears a red T-shirt: “Make Trudeau a Drama Teacher Again.”
“A free man without weapons is no longer a free man,” says Bilozir, his words reminiscent of a sticker on Merical’s table:
“An Armed Man is a Citizen. An Unarmed Man is a Slave.”
In Canora, the time seems ripe for action. There’s a lot of anger at the River Ridge show over the federal government’s proposed firearms bill, now working its way through the House of Commons.
Bill C-71 would extend the period covered by background checks from five years to life. It would make it more difficult to transport certain firearms and require additional record keeping for vendors. But the vendors in Canora seem especially worried about provisions that would force them to call the Registrar of Firearms whenever they sell any firearm, even a hunting rifle.
They complain that the registrar isn’t even open on weekends to take those calls, which are now only required for restricted and prohibited weapons sales.
“It will make my life more tedious and difficult,” says Bilozir, who calls parts of the law a “backdoor registry.
“As it is, I will comply, but I will not be very happy.”
Davisson says he’ll follow the law too. But he isn’t sure what to expect.
“If it turns out that the government makes it hard for me to run my business, I might have to close,” he says.
Many think the federal government is targeting law-abiding, rural gun owners as a smokescreen, a misplaced sop to urban concerns about gang violence.
Every country in the world should have a second amendment in their constitution. It gives us the right to protect our freedoms. No one has ever been shot or killed at a gun show. You can’t say that about shopping malls
(in Canada).
“It has nothing to do with the criminals,” says Bilozir. “It has very much to do with farmers in Saskatchewan.”
Some want to fight back. But gun owners and vendors here are less organized than their American counterparts. Davisson says Canada’s National Firearms Association (NFA) has been “gaining ground” in recent years. He’s seen them signing up gun owners at larger shows, like Calgary’s.
But he admits the NFA has nowhere near the influence of the National Rifle Association, which is well represented at the Missoula Gun Show. So is the Republican party.
A cardboard cut-out of President Donald Trump looks over a booth in the Adams Center, where Niki Sardot is campaigning for votes. She’s running for Missoula state Senate (she lost to Democrat Bryce Bennett earlier this month) and says she’s dedicated to defending the right to bear arms and live free from socialism.
She made a sign to prove it: “Republicans have protected your gun rights over 200 years,” it says.
The Democrats, her campaign manager says, are cracking down on Second Amendment rights in some of Montana’s more liberal cities, including Missoula. She worries they’ll do the same across the nation. The two women worry a lot about the Democrats.
“I’m scared to death,” says Sardot. “Socialism to me is communism. It’s one step: You vote for socialism and you get forced into communism.”
On the last day of the show, the cardboard cut-out of the president went up for auction. While Sardot had to deal with the occasional Democrat, she says she met a lot of people there who “are so glad they lived to see Trump voted in.”
The president is also popular among some in Canora. Don Balaski, a vendor from Tobin Lake, says he’s a Trump supporter. “I think he is a good man,” he says. A longtime opponent of gun control, Balaski once drove across Saskatchewan with a “Say no to gun control” sign during a previous Liberal government.
“We still have to watch the Liberals very closely and by that I mean don’t trust them,” he says. “First comes taking our guns and then comes the communism.”
But Balaski is still Canadian and his politics differ from the American line in other ways. While he opposes Bill C-71, he sees the logic in many existing Canadian restrictions on gun ownership.
He doesn’t see any need for the more powerful weapons on offer at the Missoula gun show.
“I think full 200-round or 100-round magazines for military rifles are not made for hunting,” says Balaski. “We are sporting people here.”
He’s not the only one who feels that way. Hanson, the man who wants Trudeau to return to drama teaching, says guns are just a hobby. He enjoys clay shooting, hunting and collecting. For that, an oldfashioned Winchester or Stevens rifle is enough.
“I just don’t find anything appealing about the new ones that have got a lot of black plastic stocks,” he says. “They don’t do anything for me.”
Hanson knows they’re easy to find in the United States.
“They will have a lot of handguns down there. Some of the gun shows down there will have automatic weapons, neither of which I find that interesting.”
In Montana, they are considered very interesting. Lema’s AR-15S are only semi-automatic, but he sells bump stocks that can increase their rate of fire. That’s a legal impossibility in Canada.
While Hanson and Balaski might wonder what Lema’s guns are good for, Lema doesn’t.
“If we want to stand up against a tyrannical government, we need to have the firepower to do it,” he says. “That’s common sense.”
That’s where Lema’s patience for gun control ends. He opposes any efforts to limit the kinds of weapons people can own. To those who say the Second Amendment was written in a time of muskets, he has a simple answer: For the next revolution, the authorities will come with tanks, not muskets.
But he says most of his customers are simply “looking for something to go out and have fun with.” He recalls one older woman who told him an AR-10 is easier on her shoulder than other options. She wanted it for elk hunting.
Lema pointed to another purpose: Protection.
“It’s a bit of a home-defence weapon, too,” he says, while acknowledging that the fast-travelling round may penetrate walls and are thus “sub-optimal.”
For Bilozir, that’s where gun culture in the United States diverges from Canada.
“Both Americans and Canadians use firearms for hunting, that’s obvious,” he says. “They use them for target shooting, again obvious. They use them in the farming and ranching community for predator control.
“This is the big difference: The right for concealed carry, open carry and self-defence — defence of the person with a firearm — is well entrenched and in Canada it doesn’t exist.”
Missoula’s gun show is threaded through with fear. Not just fear of Democrats or communism, but a visceral fear of everyday violence.
Dave Nickerson, a vendor in Missoula, keeps a firearm in the console of his pickup truck. He’s worried about the militant left-wing group Antifa.
Otoupalik says Nickerson’s preparation makes sense.
“What good is it going to do for you if you’re sitting there and the thugs are chasing you and you don’t have a gun to save your life?” he asks. “It would be like having a car without gas … Nearly everyone here has got a concealed-weapons permit.”
Merical has similar fears. Echoing the sticker on his table, he says that those who can’t protect themselves are slaves to those who can. To make the point, he painted a nightmare scenario of a home invasion.
“A guy can kick your door down, walk in your house, tie you up, throw you down in a chair and let you watch while he brutalizes your daughter and your wife and then cuts their throat in front of you,” he says. “But if you have a firearm in your house, you have a chance.”
That kind of fear is something Canadians might recognize, though it likely wouldn’t drive them to visit a gun show.
That’s not the case for Ravyn, though. The young Idaho woman didn’t want to give her full name. She’s spent years living in fear. But she thinks a little pink handgun might be the answer.
“For me it’s personal protection. You know, I’m a domestic-abuse survivor,” she says.
The gun she bought is small — small enough to fit in her purse and small enough to be a prohibited weapon in Canada.
“My ex-husband tried to kill me,” Ravyn says, standing outside the Adams Center with her young son. “I was on the run for five years.
“I’m not running anymore.”
I think full 200-round or 100-round magazines for military rifles are not made for hunting. We are sporting people here. I don’t want to give a gun out to somebody that shouldn’t have it.