Bob Zimmer is the victim of both bad timing and bad choices.
Last month, the Member of Parliament for Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies presented a petition (and announced he was "honoured" to do so) calling on the federal government to make it easier for Canadians to acquire and use the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
On Sunday, that very same brand of rifle was the primary weapon used to slaughter 49 people at a night club in Orlando. Sadly, this isn't the first time the AR-15 has been used for this purpose, nor will it be the last.
It was the weapon of choice in the terrorist attack in California last year, the Colorado movie theatre shooting and the Sandy Hook school massacre.
To be clear, Zimmer did not sponsor a private member's bill in support of the petition, signed by more than 25,000 people. Furthermore, the petition states that this rifle once enjoyed non-restricted status in Canada and should again, meaning it could be used for hunting purposes. As Tony Bernardo, the executive director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, explained to the Alaska Highway News, making the AR-15 a restricted weapon doesn't make it illegal to own or use in Canada. As it stands right now, an AR-15 can only be owned by Canadians who have gone through the effort to acquire a Restricted Possession and Acquisition License and the gun can only be discharged on an approved firing range and the owner requires a permit each time it is transported to a firing range, a gun show or anywhere else.
It's also important to stress that the brand of gun tells only part of the story. In the same way that there can be a big difference in power between the same models of pickup truck, depending on what's under the hood, same goes for the AR-15. The size of the clip (meaning the number of bullets it can hold before the shooter needs to reload), whether it's automatic or semiautomatic and a host of other variables determine a gun's efficiency as a killing machine.
To say, as the Globe and Mail breathlessly reported, that the AR-15 "is capable of spraying dozens of rounds from a single magazine" is as true as saying a Mustang is capable of going 300 kilometres an hour. Both have that potential to do so but only some of them really can and only in certain circumstances.
Rolling Stone magazine reported a 2013 estimate that there are between five million and 8.2 million AR-15's in ciculation in the United States. It's readily available and easy to use, whether the person pulling the trigger is hunting game or hunting people.
In short, everybody loves the AR-15.
So which is more disturbing: that there are so many of these guns in civilian hands or that the difference between the low end and the high end of the estimate is more than three million?
Or maybe this is more disturbing: it took Philadelphia Daily News columnist Helen Ubinas just seven minutes to buy one this week.
Or maybe it's this: the Poynter Institute pointed out how AR-15 manufacturers in the U.S. cheerfully promote the rifle's light weight and compact size, as well as add-on features such as a silencer and a flash suppressor. The main reason to make a rifle light and small is to make it easier to conceal, a feature which shouldn't matter too much to law-abiding hunters. As for equipping a gun so it is quiet and less blinding to the shooter when being fired in the dark, only someone out to harm people would be really be attracted to either of those firearm benefits.
There are plenty of types of rifles available to hunters with different strengths and weaknesses. Their right to hunt is not being infringed upon in the slightest by restricting their access to the AR-15.
Canadian hunters and Zimmer should be more discriminatory of picking their battles, just like they are in the forest when lining up a potential target through the scope. Not every animal is worthy of the hunter and not every gun is worthy of the hunter, either.
There is a significant amount of blood on the barrel of the AR-15 that should shame Canadians and Members of Parliament alike from condoning anyone wanting to own it or to use it. The honour should be in supporting the rights of hunters and gun owners, not in making it easier for them to acquire a firearm with such a sordid history.
