I recently had the pleasure of attending a gun show — a big, loud, packed-to-the-rafters gun show where you could barely navigate the floor without bumping into someone who had a very informed opinion about ballistics.

Yours truly was there to sit down with Blair Hagen, executive vice-president of the National Firearms Association. And I have to say, the turnout alone was a story. You'd think, given the way the federal Liberals have spent years trying to make firearms ownership less attractive, less popular, and frankly less socially acceptable, that the gun community in Canada might be shrinking. Withering. Retreating. You'd think that.

You'd be wrong.

"As you can see here," Blair told me, gesturing at the crowd, "it hasn't worked."

So what's driving this renewed interest? Blair says he'd been hearing the same answer all day from people who'd never previously shown much interest in firearms from a sporting angle: home invasions.

A crime that used to be genuinely rare in this country now seems to make headlines every couple of weeks. Canadians who've spent their whole lives thinking of themselves as perfectly safe in their own homes are suddenly reconsidering that assumption. And when they show up at events like this and find out that the very firearms best suited for home defence have been restricted or outright prohibited by the Trudeau-Carney government — well, Blair says they're not dissuaded. They're furious.

And here's the kicker. Even if you own a firearm and you use it to defend yourself in your own home against someone who has broken in, the courts may come after you. Because in Canada, the legal standard for self-defence is "reasonable force."

Which sounds perfectly sensible, until you ask: reasonable by whose definition? The judge's? The same justice system that has spent roughly 50 years trying to create what Blair called "a level playing field between criminal and victim"? Good grief.

Blair put it plainly: "To have to rely on the best intentions of a home invader — my God, why should a law-abiding Canadian in his own home be subjected to that?"

And I'd add, when someone kicks your door in at 3 a.m., the flight option is rather definitively off the table. You're past the finish line. You are forced to fight. The idea that you might then be charged for fighting back is, as Blair put it, offensive. And there's a reason he used that word.

A homeowner in Vaughan fought back last year, was not charged, and was not convicted. But Blair's assessment? He'll probably think twice about defending himself next time. Because even when you win, you lose — the legal bill alone can run into six figures. The process, as Blair said, is the punishment.

Pierre Poilievre has proposed reforming Canada's Castle Law to explicitly allow lethal force in defence of the home. Blair and yours truly are in agreement that it's the right call, a type of common sense dressed up as policy.

But the bigger story — and I mean much bigger — is what's happening in November.

The Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights will be at the Supreme Court of Canada challenging the constitutionality of the Liberal gun grab. The NFA is intervening with its own separate argument, run by Jason Gratl former head of the BC Civil Liberties Union.

The core question is deceptively simple: can the federal government pass law by order-in-council? Or do we have a Parliament for that? Because if orders-in-council carry the force of law, one has to wonder what exactly those 343 MPs are doing in Ottawa. Other than, apparently, not much, given that Parliament was dark all summer while the country is in the middle of a trade war.

I'll be there in November to cover it.