To the editor;
As expected, the shootings in Moncton have drawn Canada’s “gun control” experts out of the woodwork, all demanding something be done about semi-automatic rifles.
Despite having studied the progression of gun control in Canada (and even writing a book about it), St. Mary’s history professor R. Blake Brown still couldn’t get it right in an article for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.
Fully automatic firearms were prohibited in 1978, not “in the 1990s” and “changes in long-gun technologies” did not trigger gun control “reforms”, politics did.
The availability of small, fully automatic firearms to lawful citizens pre-dates their registration by over 30 years and their prohibition by 60 years.
The Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle was not designed as a “military style” weapon but, rather, as a popular hunting rifle for rural vermin control.
Militarized versions with extended magazines (illegal in Canada since 1991) were later modified for use by law enforcement, but the extra cosmetic features do not make the firearm any more lethal or “high-powered” (to use an anti-gun catch-phrase).
The focus on semi-automatic rifles is a red herring.
They are preferred by deranged individuals mostly because of Hollywood’s obsession with, and glamorization of, armed conflict and a glance at any perpetrators’ Facebook page will clearly show this.
But shotguns are every bit as lethal and all of our mass killings could have been carried out with any common hunting rifle.
Back in 1989, French schizophrenic Christian Dornier killed 14 people with a double-barrelled shotgun and several French and British maniacs have used low-powered .22 hunting rifles to kill over a dozen people each.
As gun owners have predicted, none of the gun control measures cooked up over the past few decades can prevent tragedies like we saw in Moncton.
The elephant in the room is (as always) undetected, undiagnosed or inadequately treated psychotics.
Meanwhile, gun-obsessed activists are pushing to waste billions trying to control inanimate objects and millions of good citizens rather than properly deal with a few aberrant individuals.
Barry Glasgow
Woodlawn, Ontario
