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Saskatchewan’s top mountie says he is concerned about volatility in rural Saskatchewan, including reports of farmers carrying guns to protect themselves and widespread support for more relaxed self-defence laws among the province’s rural municipalities.

The RCMP understands concerns about property crime and slow police response times in some remote areas, but it is important that people “put down the firearm and pick up your phone,” RCMP Assistant Commissioner Curtis Zablocki said.

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“I don’t believe it’s the role of the police to comment or to speak to what the laws should be, (but) we are concerned when citizens decide to take things into their own hands, because there often can be unintended harmful results,” Zablocki said Friday.

Zablocki’s comments come almost eight months after the death of 22-year-old Colten Boushie in a farmyard near Biggar exposed what Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) Chief Bobby Cameron called a seam of “ugliness” in the province.