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“There are some weapons, quite frankly, in my opinion, that are so dangerous that there really is no place in a safe and civil society for them, and I think there are measures we can take to make those guns just generally unacceptable and inaccessible.”
– Organized Crime Reduction and Border Security Minister Bill Blair
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The AR15 syle rifle has come under great scrutiny because of its looks.
- fitzcrittle / Shutterstock.com |
I hate the term “weapon” when used in the context of hunting or sport shooting. However, according to the Oxford Dictionary, a weapon is “A thing designed or used for inflicting bodily harm or physical damage.” Which, I guess would include firearms of all types, including air guns. After all, when we pull the trigger on that white-tailed buck or that crow that’s been aggravating us in the backyard, we’re inflicting “bodily harm”.
However, the term weapon, especially the term “assault weapon”, conjures up images of military-style guns that the non-gun-owning public is fearful of. But how often do you refer to your hunting gun as a weapon? I would guess... never.
According to a 1988 report from the Violence Policy Center, a US anti-gun lobby, “Assault weapons are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”
From my research, the term “assault weapon” didn’t even exist until 1989 (after the 1988 Violence Policy Center report) when the anti-gun crowd started using it to expand the category of “assault rifles”, which, according to Oxford is “A lightweight rifle developed from the sub-machine gun, which may be set to fire automatically or semi-automatically.”
What followed was the non-gun-owning public’s belief that rifles like the AR15 are military-style machine guns, and even the media has wrongly portrayed these guns as such. The truth about “assault weapons” is that there really is no such thing.
According to Tracey Wilson, V.P. of Public Relations at the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, “This government has failed to address crime and violence so we find ourselves in the 11th hour before a federal election, with brazen campaign promises to ban ‘assault-style rifles’, a term that is simply undefined.”
The very first large-calibre rifle I owned and still own today was given to me by my father when I was 16-years-old. It is a Winchester Model 100 .308, a semi-automatic. A beautiful gun that now, because of its age, jams every now and then so I don’t use it anymore. However, I often take it out of the gun case just to look at it, as it has some nice engravings on it and I like it a lot; I should get it fixed. To people like Bill Blair, Wendy Cuckier et al, my .308 is an assault rifle, and it should be banned
Banning AR15 style rifles to prevent criminal activities is a complete waste of time and money, law-abiding gun owners know this. The various gun control laws that have been thrust upon us since the late 1970s have done nothing to curtail gun violence and new ones are simply window dressing to broader gun control. We all know, including Bill Blair, that the real problem is criminals, not guns.
However, in my opinion, the government should ban AR’s... because I’m sick and tired of Animal-Rights activists and their holier than thou attitudes. All AR’s need to be permanently banned... the sooner the better. The world would be a much better place without them. But please, leave our guns alone! ■
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