 | |
| Formation | Autumn 2015 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Tracey Wilson |
CEO & Executive Director | Rod Giltaca |
| Website | firearmrights |
The Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR) is a Canadian gun rights organization.
| | |
| Formation | Autumn 2015 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Tracey Wilson |
CEO & Executive Director | Rod Giltaca |
| Website | firearmrights |
The Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR) is a Canadian gun rights organization.
The organization was founded by Tracey Wilson in the autumn of 2015 shortly after the Liberal Party of Canada won the 2015 Canadian federal election, splintering from the National Firearms Association. [1] [2] Rod Giltaca was the CCFR's first president and currently is the CEO and executive director. [3] [4] Giltaca said he shot his first firearm in San Diego, California, and later "shifted [his] entire career to the firearms industry". [3]
In 2018, a Liberal fundraising email described the group as "Canada's NRA", referring to the National Rifle Association of America. [2] The CCFR responded by stating the Liberal Party was "using scare tactics like implying American lobby groups or politics are influencing Canadians or American style-gun laws are imminent". [5] The Liberal Party later stated that the reference to the NRA was about the Canadian gun lobby as a whole, rather than the CCFR specifically. [6]
In 2019, the organization encouraged members to make official complaints about medical doctor Najma Ahmed who was advocating for legal prohibition of assault rifles and pistols in Canada. [4] The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario rejected the complaints against Ahmed as "an abuse of process." [4]
The group is opposed to the federal government's Bill C-21 amendments for gun control. [7] [8] In November 2022 Giltaca said, "[the government's] plan is to ban all firearms from civilian ownership in Canada," adding that ideology was driving the ban. [9]
In November 2022, the group promoted an online shopping discount code "POLY" in relation to the PolySeSouvient gun-control group. The group's name derives from the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, in which a gunman killed fourteen women. [10] Massacre survivor and gun-control advocate Nathalie Provost criticized The CCFR on December 2, describing the code as "incredibly disrespectful". [10] [11]
On December 3, 2022, Montreal Canadians goaltender Carey Price posted on Instagram, expressing his support for the group and opposition to the Bill C-21 (firearms legislation) amendments. Two days later Price tweeted that he disagreed with the group's use of the promotional code. [7] Price then said he still stood by his opinion on the amendments, but acknowledged and apologized on Instagram to those impacted by the massacre. [12] On December 5, 2022, The group released a statement, clarifying that the code was a reference to PolySeSouvient's Twitter account, and not the Polytechnique shooting. [10] [13] [14]
On December 18, 2022, the Montreal Gazette issued a retraction of, and apology for, statements it previously published in a column that indicated the group's promo code was meant to reference and make fun of the mass shooting at École Polytechnique. It said that the promo code was instead a reference to PolySeSouvient's Twitter account. [15]
The organization rejects the politicization of gun control legislation and calls for evidence-led solutions. [16]
The group was described in the book Firearms Law and the Second Amendment as an "activist group". [17] In 2021, The Walrus described the CCFR as "Canada’s most prominent pro-gun group". [2]
The École Polytechnique massacre, also known as the Montreal massacre, was an antifeminist mass shooting that occurred on December 6, 1989, at the École Polytechnique de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec. Fourteen women were murdered; another ten women and four men were injured.
The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is a gun rights advocacy group based in the United States. Founded in 1871 to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA has become a prominent gun rights lobbying organization while continuing to teach firearm safety and competency. The organization also publishes several magazines and sponsors competitive marksmanship events. According to the NRA, it had nearly 5 million members as of December 2018, though that figure has not been independently confirmed.
In the United States, assault weapon is a term applied to different kinds of firearms. There is no clear, consistent definition. It can include semi-automatic firearms with a detachable magazine, a pistol grip, and sometimes other features, such as a vertical forward grip, flash suppressor, or barrel shroud. Certain firearms are specified by name in some laws that restrict assault weapons. When the now-defunct Federal Assault Weapons Ban was passed in 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice said, "In general, assault weapons are semiautomatic firearms with a large magazine of ammunition that were designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use." The commonly used definitions of assault weapons are under frequent debate, and have changed over time.
Firearms in Canada are federally regulated through the Firearms Act and related provisions of the Criminal Code. Regulation is largely about licensing and registration of firearms, including air guns with a muzzle velocity of more than 500 ft/s or 150 m/s and muzzle energy greater than 4.2 ft⋅lb or 5.7 J.
Gun politics is defined in the United States by two primary opposing ideologies concerning the private ownership of firearms. Those who advocate for gun control support increasingly restrictive regulation of gun ownership; those who advocate for gun rights oppose increased restriction, or support the liberalization of gun ownership. These groups typically disagree on the interpretation of the text, history and tradition of the laws and judicial opinions concerning gun ownership in the United States and the meaning of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. American gun politics involves these groups' further disagreement concerning the role of firearms in public safety, the studied effects of ownership of firearms on public health and safety, and the role of guns in national and state crime.
Brady: United Against Gun Violence is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for gun control and against gun violence. It is named after former White House Press Secretary James "Jim" Brady, who was permanently disabled and later died in 2014 as a result of the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt of 1981, and his wife Sarah Brady, who was a chairwoman of the organization from 1989 until her death in 2015.
The Canadian Firearms Registry is the gun registry of Canada, requiring the registration of all restricted and prohibited firearms in the country. It is managed by the Canadian Firearms Program of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as part of the RCMP's responsibilities under the Firearms Act, 1995.
Gun laws in the United States regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition. State laws vary considerably, and are independent of existing federal firearms laws, although they are sometimes broader or more limited in scope than the federal laws.
The American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA) was a United States-based non-profit 501(c)(4) organization which operated from 2005 to 2010. The group described itself as a national grassroots organization for responsible gun ownership and advocated for increased gun control. The organization's president, Ray Schoenke, said the AHSA was intended to bridge the gap between urban liberals and rural gun owners, but closed down due to a lack of support from the Obama administration.
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. It ruled that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms—unconnected with service in a militia—for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense within the home, and that the District of Columbia's handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" violated this guarantee. It also stated that the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that certain restrictions on guns and gun ownership were permissible. It was the first Supreme Court case to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense or whether the right was only intended for state militias.
Everytown for Gun Safety is an American non-profit organization which advocates for gun control and against gun violence. Everytown was formed in 2013 due to a merger between Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that found that the right of an individual to "keep and bear arms", as protected under the Second Amendment, is incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment and is thereby enforceable against the states. The decision cleared up the uncertainty left in the wake of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) as to the scope of gun rights in regard to the states.
The National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) is a gun rights advocacy group in the United States. They maintain an affiliated PAC and a nonprofit legal foundation. Officially incorporated in Virginia on March 29, 2000, NAGR was founded by Dudley Brown as a national companion organization to Rocky Mountain Gun Owners. NAGR is a rival to the more moderate National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and considers itself to be a more "conservative alternative" to the NRA. The group spends most of its energy focused on lawmakers and moderates who are deemed too compromising on Second Amendment issues. This is achieved via direct mail, robocalls and low-cost television ads. The group has gained notoriety for its lobbying tactics and attack ads.
Gun culture refers to the attitudes, feelings, values and behaviour of a society, or any social group, in which guns are used. The term was first coined by Richard Hofstadter in an American Heritage article critiquing gun violence in the United States.
International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights (IAPCAR) is an association of gun rights organizations, with over 29 member organizations.
The 2016 Proposition 63, titled Firearms and Ammunition Sales, is a California ballot proposition that passed on the November 8, 2016 ballot. It requires a background check and California Department of Justice authorization to purchase ammunition, prohibits possession of high-capacity ammunition magazines over ten rounds, levies fines for failing to report when guns are stolen or lost, establishes procedures for enforcing laws prohibiting firearm possession by specified persons, and requires California Department of Justice's participation in the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
Nathalie Provost is a Canadian gun control advocate who was shot in the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre. She became a spokesperson for the PolySeSouvient gun-control advocacy group, created by survivors of the shooting.
PolySeSouvient is a Canadian gun-control advocacy organization.
The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) is a gun rights organization in the United States, which aims to advance gun rights in the United States via legal action, in keeping with its stated goal to "restore the essential right to keep and bear arms in the United States." The FPC seeks to approach gun rights advocacy in a more targeted and effective way than the National Rifle Association of America (NRA), specifically by working with targeted legal teams to advance legislation in support of gun rights causes.