‘Screw Canada’: Arrest of gun-toting American at Canadian border enrages
U.S. firearms community


“Screw Canada.”

“Another reason not to venture to the dark north.”

Gun-related message boards lit up this week over news of the arrest of
an American man at the Canadian border.

Retired U.S. Army sergeant major Louis DiNatale and his wife were on a
romantic getaway from Kentucky to Vermont when they say their GPS led
them astray to the border.

When DiNatale failed to declare a loaded handgun in the centre console —
he says he simply forgot it was there — he was detained for four days
and now faces gun-smuggling charges that could land him in prison for
three years.

“It was an honest mistake,” DiNatale, 46, told Postmedia News Wednesday
from Louisville, where he works as a paralegal for the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers.

“There’s not even a traffic ticket in my background. Why would I come to
Canada to bring a small weapon to smuggle in?”

DiNatale’s Ottawa lawyer, Bruce Engel, said border officers could have
shown more discretion, but he also understands that they have to make
quick decisions.

Engel said his bigger beef is with Crown attorneys and how they have
been unwilling to cut his client any slack.

Given the gun culture south of the border, “it’s not beyond the realm of
possibility that someone would forget a gun in their car,” Engel said.
It’s no different than leaving a pair of hockey skates in your car up here.

Officials with the Canada Border Services Agency did not respond to a
request for comment by late Wednesday afternoon.

The CBSA website states clearly that visitors must declare all firearms
when entering the country.

- - -If you are too dumb to remember you have a gun in your car, you are
too dumb to have a gun in your car- - -

Yeah, because hockey skates are just like guns.