Pop quiz, my fellow Canadians: are you carrying a gun right now?
Of course not, you indignantly reply. How horrendously un-Canadian!
Are you sure?
Threatening someone with a gun may be enough to warrant being charged with a firearms offence, even if one isn’t being carried, Canada’s top court ruled Friday.
In a unanimous ruling, the nine-member Supreme Court of Canada upheld a court decision in B.C. that convicted a man of gun possession, even though he argued he never had the weapon on him during a break-in four years ago.
It didn’t matter whether 25-year-old Andre Omar Steele or his three accomplices carried a gun during the crime, the top court said.
The weapon in question was in the man’s car, not in his hand, when he broke into a grow-op with his buddies. Steele & co. (doesn’t that sound like an extravagantly mediocre men’s clothing chain?) never actually used a gun during their escapades.
But they talked about it:
According to court documents, Steele and three accomplices warned the residents inside, “We have a gun,” and repeatedly told one another to “Get the gun, get the gun.”
At one point, one of the men pulled a dark metal object from his inside jacket that was described by the victims as “about the size of a gun.”
Sounds like a scene from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, doesn’t it?
It’s apparent from this account of the crime (apparently, “Get the gun, get the gun” really means “Get the gun; well, on second thought, don’t get the gun”) that the gun in the car played no actual part in the break-in. In particular, nothing would have changed had that gun not been in the car.
But it was in the car, and that makes this (gasp!) a gun crime.
There is some weapons-grade surreality going on here. The Supreme Court has ruled that talking about a gun (even if it isn’t actually present, but merely “readily accessible”, whatever that means) is the same as using it.
An offender “uses” a firearm when he or she makes it known “by words or conduct” that it is available, and as long as it is on the body or readily available, Justice Morris Fish wrote.
Have we been reading too much Kafka lately, Mr. Fish?
Now, I’m perfectly happy that Steele and his band of merry thugs are behind bars, but when the courts start twisting reality (claiming that mentioning a gun is the same as using it, for example) in order to convict people of emotionally-charged offences, I get nervous.
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