Editorial - New gun law targets law abiding citizens

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Published on Friday, May 8, 2020

By Micah Waddell

Rivers Banner

For many gun owners, this past week’s announcement from our “great” leader was incredibly disappointing to hear. An unbelievably loose ban on “assault” firearms has effectively made it illegal to own any form of sporting and competition rifle. The Prime Minister was quoted, stating, “Why do you need an AR-15 to hunt deer?” A ludicrous statement, given that it has been illegal to hunt with such weapons for a long time.

The requirements for a weapon to be banned were found to be entirely cosmetic in nature (military in appearance), having nothing to do with the function of the weapon. Reasons such as “high capacity magazines” were also brought forward, another item that has been illegal for many years, the maximum magazine size for a semi auto rifle being five rounds.

The firearms that can now no longer be owned are almost all semi-automatic actioned firearms, weapons that require no cocking, racking, reseting, or reloading between shots; pull the trigger until the magazine is empty, not that that is a valid point given the number of hunting rifles that are made in that action. If the government wished to dissipate the violence in this country, changes to border security need to be made, as well as cracking down harder on gun theft.

The ban was “justified” by the past shootings throughout our country, almost all of which were carried out using illegally obtained firearms smuggled into the country, with the exception of the handgun used in the Nova Scotia killings. That particular firearm (the only gun that was actually a legal Canadian firearm) was taken from a RCMP officer who was shot down during that heinous shooting. In other words, the gun control changes will fix nothing.

This change in legislature seeks only to disarm the law abiding public, Canadian taxpayers, who only use these guns for target shooting. Under the new ruling, it has been found that due to calibre size, any unchoked shotgun is now also illegal. For some odd reason, even a break action 12-gauge shotgun got caught up in all this mess. Also banned is the Black Water BW15, an airsoft rifle, firing under 500 FPS. It is almost as though the government just did a Google image search and banned everything they saw that looked even remotely tactical, without checking if they were even real guns.

This is what happens when you give too much power to a minority government, whose interests do not align with the people they are intended to represent.

In the two photos, you will see two semi-automatic firearms, one being my CIL model 233 .22 calibre, a semi-automatic rifle, a small calibre, mind you, but in close quarters (where most shootings occur), the lethality would remain the same as a higher calibre. This tiny little firearm, used primarily for pest control and target shooting at the Rivers range for fun, is one of the easiest guns to obtain high capacity magazines for. A couple of clicks online and you can order a 100 round magazine (legal to obtain but illegal to posses) for this pest control tool. The .22 is cheap and plentiful and easy to obtain, but it doesn’t look scary.

Below that unassuming little guy is one of the banned fire arms an AR-15 chambered in .223, barely larger than the .22, but with a lot more velocity, due to a larger powder load. This gun is limited in magazine size to five rounds. It is much more expensive and difficult to get a higher round “mag” for these guns. These are also limited to recreational use only, sport and competition shooting at a gun range.

The difference between these guns? Aside from velocity and appearance, nothing. The current minority government has essentially banned a Canadian pastime on opinion and fear of some black plastic cosmetics. It will be interesting to see how this new regulation will be enforced, given that for many years now, Canadians have not had to register individual guns, only being required to register themselves as law-abiding gun owners.

Micah Waddell is the owner and publisher of the Rivers Banner. The views expressed in the editorial are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the Neepawa Banner & Press.