I'm not sure where this whole talk about immigrants came into play but the shooter was a white kid from USA suburban paradise. This kid was midly autistic and a social outcast who had access to a SAW; a weapon designed for annihilation. He also had practice at the shooting range. Stick a lowly paid police officer in the school if you want but a person with a SAW who knows how to use it and is intent on killing is not the same foe as someone with a handgun. If you don't like Canada's laws and living with the "scum bags", go move to the good ole' US of A. We don't need their customs and problems here. Canada decided its loyalty long ago.
He didn't have a saw or a hammer.. He had a semi-automatic rifle of intermediate caliber. Using incorrect terminology does the opposite of making you "sound" knowledgeable. I'll clear up a very important misconception about mean-looking black rifles.
Some of you may think "Why does he need an assault weapon of mass destruction? It doesn't have any sporting uses, it's designed to kill
humans :shock" and it's understandable why a person unfamiliar with firearms might think so. However, many military developments get transplanted to civilian life, these rifles
do differ from their military counterparts. Also, they possess features that would make them more desirable to hunters and sport shooters than some older designs.
The main difference between military use rifles and their civilian use counterparts is selective fire capability. That means that they are incapable of automatic fire which is realistically only used to keep enemies' heads down. Those movie scenes where a burst of fire kills 50 people are Hollywood inventions. Civilian rifles do not have that capability because we're not expected to get into gunfights spraying hundreds of rounds while our squad mates maneuver into better position. That's unnecessary for peacetime hunting or sporting purposes, so we, as a society, decided to eliminate the feature, thus having MAJOR mechanical differences between a military rifle and a civilian use. What you're referring to isn't even an "assault rifle" (marketing and propaganda term), you're referring to what is commonly referred to as "machine gun".
Military technology often has peaceful uses and gets peacetime uses all the time. The RADAR was initially a military-only tool, used to detect enemy ships and planes. Now it's used for air traffic control, highway robbery by the police and even to predict weather. Many alloys developed by the military found it on the plane that took you to visit Aunt Jane in Florida. Have you used a GPS receiver recently? Guess what.. Those satellites are military. Even the Internet is a military-funded development.
Automatic fire rifles sold to various armed forces are built to hit what they're pointed at, be light, reliable and easy to handle. I hope you see why a hunter or a sports shooter would want those very same features in his civilian hunting or sporting rifle.
-Hitting what you're pointing at makes sure you put food on the table, eliminate the pest or achieve higher scores, all while minimizing any safety hazards. Who wouldn't want that?
-Who wants to lug a big heavy hunk of wood or metal, especially in the bush? Have you even worked or hunted in the real bush? It's not a hard, flat sidewalk, that's easy to move around in. You have mud, sand, swamps, steep slopes, deep snow, crumbling surface, rocks. It's a lot harder to move around in all that and that is why a hunter would appreciate the weight savings.
-A hunter or a sports shooter would also appreciate a firearm that's less likely to get snagged in the bush or bump up against a tree as he's attempting to get in position for a shot.
-That ugly black plastic furniture isn't just for show. It's less likely to pick up moisture and swell, which will affect the accuracy (which brings us back to effectiveness and safety factors) or literally get eaten by bugs in jungles and rainforests.
By the way your "if you don't like something about our country, leave" argument is more American than Canadian. In Canada, we accept immigrants, we accept multiple points of view and we accept changing laws through democratic means. Remember that our firearm laws used to be a lot more lax than they are now. What if someone said "if you don't like our laws, leave" at that point? Would you have accepted that?
