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It shouldn’t be this difficult, but it is, in large part because the Liberals intentionally wrote the 1995 Firearms Act to be as ambiguous as possible and give prosecutors as big a net as possible in which to ensnare gun owners. Their intention was to make gun ownership as complicated and onerous as possible so as to encourage owners to give up their firearms.

For instance, the Canadian Firearms Program, run by the RCMP, instructs gun owners to “unload and lock all firearms,” when not in use. That seems clear enough. When not hunting, target shooting or killing vermin, gun owners should remove the ammunition from their guns and “attach a secure locking device, such as a trigger lock or cable lock,” or “lock the firearms in a container or room that is hard to break into.”

But is cleaning or repairing the firearm a legitimate “use?” Most judges have ruled that cleaning constitutes use when such cases have come to court, yet police forces across the country — and particularly in Ontario — continue to lay unsafe storage charges against owners whose guns are found out of their safes or locked cabinets, even though they are dismantled for cleaning on a workbench or kitchen table.

In Mr. Thomson’s case, the uncertainty revolves around the interpretation of whether or not he was storing the ammunition for his guns too close to the registered pistols he had locked in a gun safe. The Crown contends that because Mr. Thomson was able to gather up both a gun and its ammunition in less than a minute, then fire three warning shots at the masked men lobbing Molotov cocktails at his remote home, that the ammunition was too “easily accessible” and, therefore, by definition, unsafely stored.