New York Times Offers Biased Take on Canadian Gun Laws

In an article from The New York Times this week it sounds like the old gray lady believes Canada to be more enlightened about firearms, and health care!

“OTTAWA — Like public health care, Canada’s tight gun-control laws help distinguish the country from its powerful neighbor to the south. But as Canadians commemorated the 20th anniversary of one of the country’s most notorious shooting sprees on Sunday, their Parliament was on course to eliminate one of its most significant gun-control measures.”

The question we’d like to ask is whether these laws actually distinguish Canada in a good way? Anyone? But let’s look at some other questionable points in the article. First up, note how the firearm is described in this passage:

“A decade before the Columbine high school shootings set off a national debate on gun violence in the United States, an angry, unemployed 25-year-old armed with a semiautomatic hunting rifle stormed the École Polytechnique, an engineering school in Montreal.”

Then the article goes a bit further, and note the use of the wording here:

“The current debate does not involve handguns, whose registration has been required since 1934. Nor does it involve a variety of military-style weapons like assault rifles and sawed-off shotguns, which are banned outright. And the law’s repeal would not alter the requirement that gun buyers take safety courses and obtain a license.”

A “military-style weapon” is not a “hunting rifle” nor is a “sawed-off shotgun” a military weapon or hunting weapon. This is just another case where lots of different scary sounding words are thrown around to confuse the reader. Not exactly solid reporting, now is it?

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