Large Fierce Mammal

An RCMP member in Burnaby, British Columbia, on patrol at Canada Day celebrations on 1 July 2018 armed with a C8 “patrol carbine” (CBC News). Colt C8 rifles are now defined by the Hon. Bill Blair, Minister of Public Safety, as, “Guns that belong on a battlefield, and not on our streets.”

“What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander — idiom — chiefly British: Used to say that one person or situation should be treated the same way that another person or situation is treated.” ~ Merriam-Webster

Further to my comments here a few days ago, I will speak today specifically to the officially stated reasons for, and parameters applied in, the defining and banning of over 1500 types of firearms that up until 1 May 2020 were legal to use, own, purchase, and transfer between licensed Canadians. It should also be emphasized that prior to that date, use of any of them was subject to the strictest of criminal penalties if such use already violated the Criminal Code of Canada.

The move was implemented by means of an Order in Council under the hyperventilation inducing title, Regulations Amending the Regulations Prescribing Certain Firearms and Other Weapons, Components and Parts of Weapons, Accessories, Cartridge Magazines, Ammunition and Projectiles as Prohibited, Restricted or Non-Restricted:SOR/2020-96, and clicking here will lay out the entire list for your perusal.

I will not try your patience, Goode Reader, by subjecting you to the eye watering boredom of the Prime Minister’s official announcement on the grounds that, here in Canada, all official statements made on the Prime Ministerial level are spoken in segments, first in English and then repeated in French, and each piece of this is painful enough to listen to the first time let alone the second. That being said though, us Canadians still have to sit through all of it, both to get to the end and to make sure the speaker isn’t trying to slip a fast one through in the other official language. We all have our cross to bear.

Instead, here is Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, under whose file this matter falls, making his announcement in English, as he has come to know it.

I would now like to transcribe a few key points from Mr. Blair’s statement, with my emphasis added, that are the crux of my issue here today, most particularly his official position on the banned firearms he describes thus:

“Guns that were designed for soldiers to kill other soldiers, and not for recreational purposes.

“Guns that belong on a battlefield, and not on our streets.

“Guns that were designed to kill people. They were intended in their purpose to kill people, and they have been used in Canada to kill innocent people ….

“Today, as the Prime Minister has said, we are announcing an immediate ban on over one thousand five hundred models of assault style firearms, and effective immediately, these newly banned firearms cannot be legally used, sold, or imported in our country, and as of today, the market for assault weapons in Canada is closed.

“Enough is enough, and we are ending the proliferation of these weapons and the militarization of our society. From this moment forward, the number of these guns will only decrease in Canada.

“We’ve heard many people express concern about the militarization of our police, and this is a direct consequence of the militarization of our society. And Canadians deserve to live in a society where they can be safe and secure ….

“Banning assault style firearms will save Canadian lives.”

“I’d like to take a moment if I may to speak to speak to the law abiding Canadian gun owners. I know from the very many years of experience as a police officer that the overwhelming majority of gun owners in this country are law abiding. They are responsible. They are conscientious. They acquire their weapons legally, they store them securely, and they use them safely. They respect our laws and we respect them. I want to assure hunters and farmers and target shooters in this country that nothing that we are doing today or will do in the future is intended to interfere with this lawful, responsible, and legal activity.

“However, we are today ending the availability of weapons that were not designed for hunting, or for target shooting. They were rather designed for soldiers to kill other soldiers, and while I appreciate that some may feel that these weapons have some recreational value, the tragic reality is that these weapons were designed to kill people, and have been used to kill innocent Canadians ….”

First, any blanket statement that all rifles of general issue to the soldiers of a nation are “… designed to kill people …” and that they are “… intended in their purpose to kill people …” is historically and demonstrably false. I now beg your indulgence, Goode Reader, in a brief foray into Fact.

“The rifle, any rifle, is a precision machine designed to permit its operator to deliver a single projectile to a target with repeatable accuracy over a distance specific to the purpose for which it was created (the “effective range”).” ~ Musings on Musketry — Part the Second: The Real Meaning of “Military Grade”

Rifles designed for and issued to soldiers of militaries, old and new, must be accurate enough to deliver hits on a man-sized target on demand within the effective range of the weapon. They are provided by their governments for the purpose of shooting people, not necessarily to kill them, but if they die they die because, you know, war. So it’s the purpose for putting the rifle on the field that determines possible outcomes, and not the instrument itself. A World War II surplus Lee Enfield No.4 Mk.1 Rifle that was fired repeatedly in anger through the dark years of World War II and has since taken the lives of more White Tailed Deer than it ever did men on the battlefield is a not uncommon thing to meet in the forests of just Nova Scotia alone. In the hands of a good Hunter this would mean one shot, one kill. By comparison, the Commonwealth soldier who carried the same rifle in combat would have been using it in support of a Bren machine gunner, and most of his shots would have been covering, rather than specifically aimed, fire. So the soldier is permitted, indeed expected, to shoot at people in accordance with the prevailing doctrine and rules of engagement, but killing them is not the point. His rifle is selected to permit him, as circumstances allow, to hit what he’s aiming at, and possibly kill his target as fortune may dictate, but the real point is to take the target out of the fight, on a scale between long enough to get the job done and forever. This is the purpose and legacy of the True assault rifle which offers semi-automatic accuracy with the option of fully automatic volume fire to make a contested area in front of its firer very inhospitable indeed.

The C7 rifle and C8 carbines issued to Canadian forces have this selective fire capability, and are True assault rifles. As such, they have been prohibited for civilian ownership in Canada since the decision handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1993 R. v. Hasselwander case in which, “… the court upheld the constitutionality of the firearms regime which banned (fully) automatic firearms.”

Manufactured in a semi-automatic (one shot for every activation of the trigger) format, the same rifle would have been unaffected by the Hasselwander case, classified as a “restricted” firearm prior to the 1 May 2020 ban, and regulated no differently than a handgun. Where limiting it to semi-automatic operation would make it suicidally inadequate in the military role in which access to volume fire is a necessity on the modern battlefield, the inherent accuracy of the AR15 and most similar platforms, combined with low recoil, modularity, and customizing via component options rivaling a box full of LEGO, makes it attractive to shooters, including police forces, looking for a rifle that’s comfortable to shoot and, depending on level of Marksmanship, tack drivingly accurate throughout its effective range. In short, taking away the full-auto option doesn’t turn an assault rifle into an “assault style firearm”. It’s only a rifle, and while all assault rifles are rifles, not all rifles are assault rifles, and only actual assault rifles are assault rifles.

But politics and ideology aren’t interested in the historical accuracy of the subject matter. Something we know, ironically, from history.

Now back to the matter at hand.

The most disturbing aspect inherent in Mr. Blair’s statement, particularly coming as it does from one who arrived at the Public Safety file by way of a career in law enforcement that saw him into retirement from the position of Chief of the Toronto Police Service, is the fact that most police cars in Canada now carry at last one “patrol carbine”. Were you to inspect one, you’d quickly recognize it as being, by Canadian Government definition, an “assault style firearm”, apparently legitimized notwithstanding appearance on the 1 May 2020 list of the banned by virtue of who possesses it. For the police it’s a “patrol carbine”. For everyone else, it’s an “assault style firearm” based entirely on this government’s declaration of its design, purpose, and lineage.

“These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time …. There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada.” ~ Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

Let’s look at that.

Street level police (not including specialty units like SWAT or ERT which are a special case) must carry and have access to guns — traditionally handguns, shotguns, and occasionally rifles of one sort or another where jurisdictional demands dictate (for example, remote detachments where dangerous wildlife might be a factor) — and of necessity operate under far different carry and transport rules from those that govern the average person. They are specifically exempted from a variety of gun laws affecting such things as magazine capacity and barrel length.  They can possess and use chemical (pepper spray) and conducted energy (TASER) weapons forbidden to the rest of the public, all accepted as necessary tools in service to the law enforcement mission — to uphold the law and protect the life of the officer and any member of the public who may be in mortal danger by means up to and including the application of lethal force. Even then, “lethal force” refers to use of methods that may kill whoever it is directed against, but the intention in law enforcement is to stop the offender and negate the threat, at the risk, not the expectation or certainty, of ending his life.

None of this is open to question, and comes to us atop a wave of historical precedent. But none of the aforementioned weapons are pure instruments of mayhem that exist, or were designed, for no other reason than, “… for soldiers to kill other soldiers ….”

None of them were, “… designed to kill people ….” or, “… were intended in their purpose to kill people,” notwithstanding that the handgun was conceived as a defensive rather than offensive weapon, and as such is known to be woefully inadequate in delivering a one shot stop to a determined or even physically large attacker. Hence the current reality of large capacity magazines in civilian police service handguns, and current doctrine to keep firing until the suspect stops whatever actions invited the shooting to start in the first place. This is an outcome of the need for compact portability in the sidearm which limits the energy that can be delivered by the cartridge it fires as part of a compromise between efficacy and controllability in the hands of the average shooter. And make no mistake, most civilian police qualify as “the average shooter”.

In the military context, the purpose of the handgun (beyond once being carried more as a badge of rank than an implement of battle) is to render an attacking enemy hors de combat — out of action due to injury or damage — at close range. Happily (if you want to call it that), the same parameters of design apply to police use of handguns, the difference being one of application. Civilian police must discharge their handguns as a final choice in the force continuum, not as their “go to” place, and while it must be accepted that the suspect may die from being shot, they would rather he not, in favour of being rendered arrestable instead.

And so it begs the question as to how this present government, and Mr. Blair in particular, having come to the stated conclusions that resulted in these measures, can in good conscience permit the proliferation among street level civilian police services of what are, by their definition, “assault style firearms”?

“Guns that belong on a battlefield, and not on our streets.”

How can the same implement be simultaneously a “patrol carbine”, safe, noble, and above reproach in the hands of civilian police, and among a demonized group of “assault style firearms” that were… designed to kill people ….” and , “… intended in their purpose to kill people,” “… designed for soldiers to kill other soldiers, and not for recreational purposes,” on the other?

It can’t. That’s how.

Let me repeat Mr. Blair’s statement, “… to the law abiding Canadian gun owners. I know from the very many years of experience as a police officer that the overwhelming majority of gun owners in this country are law abiding. They are responsible. They are conscientious. They acquire their weapons legally, they store them securely, and they use them safely. They respect our laws and we respect them.”

I remind Mr. Blair that no firearm in the possession of that “… overwhelming majority of gun owners  in this country …” who are “law abiding”, “responsible”, “conscientious”, and “acquire their weapons legally … store them securely, and … use them safely ….”, who, “… respect our laws …”, even as they have earned the respect of their Federal government in return, can by any stretch of imagination be referred to as being, “… on our streets.”

But here are two groups possessing firearms within Canadian society for which this can be said — criminals and civilian police.

Criminals don’t let laws get in their way. They will do what they do, and so must take the consequences of their life choices. It behooves governments to direct resources to help them find those consequences.

Police are members of civilian law enforcement structured on a paramilitary model. However they may look and whatever weapons they may be carrying, they are civilians, not soldiers, nor do they operate under the command of any sort of military force. Their mandate does not include killing as a primary focus, and so by Mr. Blair’s standards, most decidedly must not be in possession, or trained in the use, of “assault style firearms” designed and intended for the exclusive purpose of killing people.

If Mr. Blair is sincere when he says such firearms were, “… designed to kill people ….” and, “… were intended in their purpose to kill people,” and truly marches in lockstep with the Prime Minister’s assertion that, “These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time …. There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada,” then his path of righteousness is clear — take immediate action, starting today, to collect and destroy the thousands of “assault style firearms” known to be, “… on our streets,” beginning with the most easily accessible and lowest hanging fruit — those in the hands of civilian law enforcement.

Their job is not to kill Canadians, so they have absolutely no need at the patrol level where most of these firearms now reside, for weapons exclusively built for that and no other possible reason.

That is, if Mr. Blair is sincere.