Naughty Vicar
Regular
- Location
- Central Ontario
Hello Canada from central Ontario!
Being born and raised in rural Ontario, I was walking in my uncle's hay fields with a .410 as soon as I was big enough to carry it. My whole family hunted, it was just a way of life on the farm. Duck, moose and deer season were always huge deals, and there was always fresh meat on the table. The guns were kept in the front hall closet, with boxes of ammunition kept on the top shelf. You just walked in, opened the closet door and shouted "Gram, going out to shoot some groundhogs!" and off you went for the afternoon. There were never any accidents because we were taught from the start firearm RESPECT and RESPONSIBILITY (and coincidentally, the house was never broken into despite the door never being locked).
After high school, I decided the only natural path was to join the Armed Forces. As a Ammunition Technician, I spent the next 7 years either fixing things that go BOOM, or if they couldn't be fixed, turning them into 20 foot craters. I always was a bit of a pyromaniac. I spent the last 3 years of the 80's in Europe staring at the Soviets across barbed wire and minefields, waiting for "the big one". Needless to say, that never happened.
I came home in 1990 as a new civilian to find that Canada's gun laws were going from silly to absurd. I had just spent 7 years firing everything from my privately-owned Baretta to anti-tank rockets and now I had to fork out money to apply for permission to take a shotgun out to hunt duck? I've got to admit, I was more than a little insulted, but I did it anyway because as Tom Clancy would say, "I Like To Shoot".
Then came registration (insert dramatic music here). That was the last straw.
I gave all my guns to family members (or so I thought, maybe more on that issue in a separate post), let my FAC expire, and that was that. I swore that I would never own a firearm in this country again, and I didn't for almost 20 years.
Fast forward to the 2011 Federal Election and the promise to end the registry. Now I can be a responsible shooter and hunter again. I recently got my PAL, plan to get my guns back and burn off 20 years of frustration - I figure a couple of hundred rounds should take care of that.
It's good to be back....
Being born and raised in rural Ontario, I was walking in my uncle's hay fields with a .410 as soon as I was big enough to carry it. My whole family hunted, it was just a way of life on the farm. Duck, moose and deer season were always huge deals, and there was always fresh meat on the table. The guns were kept in the front hall closet, with boxes of ammunition kept on the top shelf. You just walked in, opened the closet door and shouted "Gram, going out to shoot some groundhogs!" and off you went for the afternoon. There were never any accidents because we were taught from the start firearm RESPECT and RESPONSIBILITY (and coincidentally, the house was never broken into despite the door never being locked).
After high school, I decided the only natural path was to join the Armed Forces. As a Ammunition Technician, I spent the next 7 years either fixing things that go BOOM, or if they couldn't be fixed, turning them into 20 foot craters. I always was a bit of a pyromaniac. I spent the last 3 years of the 80's in Europe staring at the Soviets across barbed wire and minefields, waiting for "the big one". Needless to say, that never happened.
I came home in 1990 as a new civilian to find that Canada's gun laws were going from silly to absurd. I had just spent 7 years firing everything from my privately-owned Baretta to anti-tank rockets and now I had to fork out money to apply for permission to take a shotgun out to hunt duck? I've got to admit, I was more than a little insulted, but I did it anyway because as Tom Clancy would say, "I Like To Shoot".
Then came registration (insert dramatic music here). That was the last straw.
I gave all my guns to family members (or so I thought, maybe more on that issue in a separate post), let my FAC expire, and that was that. I swore that I would never own a firearm in this country again, and I didn't for almost 20 years.
Fast forward to the 2011 Federal Election and the promise to end the registry. Now I can be a responsible shooter and hunter again. I recently got my PAL, plan to get my guns back and burn off 20 years of frustration - I figure a couple of hundred rounds should take care of that.
It's good to be back....
