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Looks like 4 of them got conspiracy to murder charges along with all the weapon charges. How serious is this for Canada? I know what it is here for folks in the us, but not as familiar with Canadian law. How common are weapons charges? Because I know the laws are significantly different for weapon ownership.
It is serious. As you no doubt are aware, Canada has no Second Amendment. So owning guns is a privilege, not a right. Regardless, many Canadians own guns.
With that said, guns are as common as anything here in southern Alberta (note that I am only an hour or so north of Coutts, where the accuseds and their weapons were arrested and seized, respectively). Long guns are popular with hunters and target shooters, and with farmers too--pretty much every farmer has a varmint rifle. Handguns are perfectly legal also, as long as one is willing to jump through the additional hoops needed to own one.
In spite of the many law-abiding gun owners here in southern Alberta, weapons charges are, sadly, common. At least once a week, there is news of a drugs-and-gun bust in Lethbridge and surrounding area. Mostly, the guns are there to protect the drugs; but the guns are definitely not your average farmer's varmint rifle--they are often illegal under Canadian law (for example, you may not own an AR-15), and so both guns and drugs are seized and the owners charged criminally.
So it was with the firearms seized in the Coutts bust. From the photos I've seen, few of the guns seized were legal under Canadian law; and the goods seized with them (flak vests, etc.) had markings on them indicating that the cache of everything belonged to a white-supremacist organization.
Despite that, there are no hate crime charges. But "conspiracy to commit murder" seems reasonable under the circumstances--you don't use what was seized to shoot varmints; you use them to shoot people. And you'll need protection, such as a flak vest, if there is any return fire. You wouldn't need any such things at a peaceful protest, which the protesters were claiming it was. These people brought illegal guns, and they were prepared to use them against other people.
This matter is being prosecuted through the Lethbridge courthouse. I may just head there and sit in the public gallery when these accuseds' matter is before the court. It might get interesting.
Its gotten to the point where improperly parking a car in Canada carries a heavier sentence than openly stealing $800 worth of things from a store in California.
Looks like 4 of them got conspiracy to murder charges along with all the weapon charges. How serious is this for Canada? I know what it is here for folks in the us, but not as familiar with Canadian law. How common are weapons charges? Because I know the laws are significantly different for weapon ownership.
Any canadian perspective on the charges of conspiracy to murder and weapons charges on the trucker protesters?
I’m not Canadian of course — but I expect that the Mayor of Coutts is Canadian and so are the Mounties who made the arrest. They both said these men are NOT members of the Freedom Trucker Convoy.
That said, Conspiracy to commit Murder is always serious,.
The mayor of Coutts told DailyMail.com that those arrests were not members of the Freedom Convoy, despite them being initially tied to the ongoing anti-vaccine protests.
'The people who were actually involved in the arrests were not part of the blockade group,' he said. 'They were outsiders.'
The mayor described the individuals as outside agitators who came to town after the protest began.
‘As time went on, the protest began to attract people from the outside,’ he said. ‘They were starting to attract the undesirable element. The people who were actually involved in the arrests were not part of the blockade group. They were outsiders.’
But in Canada those men would be charged with conspiracy to murder. Why else would you carry a gun?
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