Criminalizing long guns impacts inherent right to hunt, say chiefs

Chiefs have added their voice to the growing outcry against the federal government’s gun control legislation by passing an emergency draft resolution on the final day of the three-day Assembly of First Nation’s Special Chiefs Assembly. Bill C-21, An act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms,) potentially criminalizes long guns (rifles), which, reads the emergency resolution, are used by First Nations peoples “in exercising their Aboriginal and Treaty rights to sustenance hunt and harvest.”