Canadian Press as Misguided as American Mainstream Media

Responding to Canada’s recent over turning of long run registry The Toronto Star ran an editorial this week, and as we often find with American editorials, the facts don’t seem to matter when making an opinionated statement:

“And we remember the outrage when we learned that military-style weapons were being sold to civilians and that there were 6 million guns in Canada and no one knew who had them.”

What exactly are “military-style weapons? Handguns are used by the military, rifles with scopes are used by the military as well, and of course fully automatic electric powered machine guns with multiple barrels are used by the military. So what defines a small arm that is “military” vs. “civilian.” In Canada fully automatic weapons are nearly impossible for the private citizen to own.

So this is clearly another biased article that suggests just because a firearm looks like an M-16 that it must be an M-16! That’s of course nonsense. An AR-15 is a semi-automatic, civilian version. But if it was a more dangerous weapon why wasn’t it used for hunting? The reason is that it is better at close range, while a hunting rifle is better at a distance. But most militaries around the world still rely on traditional bolt-action rifles. In fact a civilian bolt-action rifle today is probably also more accurate than a true World War II military rifle. And as far as close range, a double barrel shotgun looks nothing like a military weapon, but it can be extremely devastating in close range situations – which is why it is preferred by criminals.

So what we’re saying is why all this nonsense about “military style.” If the anti-gun lobby can tell us what they mean, instead of trying to scare the public with this notion that anyone can buy an AK-47 at a gun show, we’d have a lot more respect for those opposed to our firearms.