Gonzales, Texas is small city between Houston and San Antonio. Like many places in that region, it was the site of a number of battles in the 1800s from the Texas Revolution to the Mexican-American war..The most noteworthy skirmish in Gonzales came when Mexican authorities tried to repossess a bronze cannon that had been given to local settlers to defend themselves from native bands. First, the Gonzales residents buried and hid the cannon and told authorities they wouldn’t be returning it. Mexico responded by sending 100 troops to get the gun. Texan rebels then dug it up and used it to fire back against the Mexican forces..Local women among the settlers sewed a flag that was flown during the Battle of Gonzales. It depicted the cannon with the Texan star above it and the words “Come and take it” embroidered below. The rest is literally history..The city still celebrates that revolution today. When passing through, one can see the flag flying everywhere and there is a brisk local trade in selling the image on hats and tee-shirts for visitors..The attitude from then and today reflects Texas perfectly. They never had use for distant authorities, and they still don’t today..Moving on to more contemporary and domestic issues, Western Canada is having its “Come and take it” moment as Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are united in telling Ottawa that they will refuse to participate in the latest federal gun grab. Nobody is proposing to use those guns to start a revolution or shoot at federal authorities of course, but Westerners are making it clear they want no part of Trudeau’s arbitrary firearm ban and if they want to seize that property, they are going to have to find and take it themselves..The federal Liberals have always wanted to take firearms away from Canadians. They understood that in order to seize the property, they needed to know where it was. That was why they hatched the long-gun registry in the 1990s. The registry turned out to be an expensive catastrophe. The budget swelled to hundreds of millions of dollars, it was rife with inaccuracy, and it never managed to accurately get even 60% of the firearms owned by Canadians registered. Stephen Harper scrapped the failing registry when he came to power..The database from the registry was supposed to be deleted but we know that never happened. Copies of the data were surely widespread and never deleted by many who had it. During the Alberta floods in 2013, the RCMP repeatedly broke into the homes of firearms owners who had been evacuated, searched the homes, and seized the firearms. The RCMP denies it, but clearly they had some sort of list they were working from. One home was entered four times before police found a rifle hidden behind some boxes in a basement after a thorough search. Why were they so hellbent on seizing legal firearms and how did they know where they might be?.The RCMP broke trust with Canadian firearm owners that year and made it much less likely that firearm owners would voluntarily share their firearm information with authorities again..Trudeau has grand plans to take the property of Canadians but he won’t be able to succeed until he knows where it all is..Handguns have been registered in Canada for nearly one hundred years. That’s how Trudeau was able to begin the work towards fully banning them so quickly. Many of the 1,500 newly banned firearms were categorized as restricted, thus are registered as well. Many of the newly banned firearms were never restricted thus never registered and they are owned by people who aren’t eager to give them up..The Trudeau Liberals will be pursuing a registry soon. You can count on it. They are ideologically driven and won’t back down on their efforts to take the property of Canadians..The time to prepare for the registry and the next gun grab is now. I suspect many firearms are already figuratively buried in the peach orchard like the Gonzales cannon was. When the government inevitably starts demanding citizens register and then forfeit their property to the state, citizens need to dig in their heels and tell the government “Come and take them!”
