One of my readers recently offered me the chance for a mutual suicide – and I laughed and laughed.

When the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – and the aches and pains and misfortunes of modern life are too much, I was to obtain a box of .308 rifle ammunition, and transport it to his home in the wilds of the Ohio outback.  We would load similar guns, face each other, and on the count of three, shoot each other dead.

That’s how it would work, In Principle.  In Fact, if his gun-handling abilities matched mine, we’d probably shoot someone’s pig, and flatten the tire of a passing farm wagon.  The Amish Mafia would kidnap and abuse us.  The part that I laughed hardest at, was the American-centric notion that I could just, somehow, waltz into a local Canadian establishment, and be handed a box of shells.  Even with me not owning a gun, the Government is afraid that I might throw them at someone.

Canada is not like Russia, or China, or North Korea, where civilian gun ownership is banned, prohibited, and strictly prevented.  In Canada, Anyone can own a firearm – as long as they have a healthy bank account, and the patience of Job.

To possess anything firearm-related, you have to sacrifice a tree to produce enough paper to satisfy all the bureaucratic boondoggles, and to print enough money to pay for it all.  There are forms for this, licenses for that, and certificates for everything else.  Only when you have generated enough paper documents to equal the weight of the gun, are you actually allowed to acquire and keep it.

I would require a background/psychological evaluation form, a signed permission slip from the wife, to have and keep it in our home, a carry permit to bring it there from point of purchase, a different carry permit to take it (Only) to and from home, to a licensed shooting range.  None of this target practice at bottles at the dump.  I would need a form proving to Police officers where and how I was safely and securely storing the gun – with any ammunition locked in a different location, and they all cost money. The police – local, Provincial, and RCMP – have a license to randomly search my home, a minimum of once a year, to ensure that I am complying with all the rules.

It would all begin with – despite the fact that I have almost 300 hours of gun safety training, the government would force me to attend their $200/$300, 30-hour course and test, where, if I carelessly used the vernacular terms bullet, or shell, instead of their OCD-authorized word, cartridge, I would be failed, and my wallet and I would have to start all over again.

Twenty years ago, when I still rode a motorcycle, I would occasionally ride to the north end of town, where there was a company called Shooter’s Choice, a combination of retail sales, and a supervised shooting range.  They had a glass display case with most of the handguns that I would never be able to afford.  I was warned to stop drooling on the counter.

The fact that there was also a nearby strip-club, and one of the Region’s best French-fry wagons, might help explain the attraction – one-stop sin shopping.  Alas, they are all gone.  The strip club was too close to a Mennonite Worship Hall, and the city cancelled their license.  Now it’s just a road-house bar.  Skin is taboo, but booze is okay.  The fries-wagon moved to a smaller city.

An automotive repair had me nearby recently.  Just for old-time’s sake, I drove over.  The glass handgun display case now contains fishing lures, archery equipment, hikers’ trail-bars, and rifle scopes – to be used to watch our gun-owning (non)-rights disappear into the distance.  😀