Montreal School Shooting

[ReFLeX]

The lever action Winchester Model 94 trapper is 34” long, weighs 6 lbs, and is chambered in 30-30 Win., 44 Mag., 357 Mag, or 45 Colt.

The M107 Long Range Sniper Rifle is 57” long, weighs 32.5 lbs., and only fires the 50 BMG round.

Both are deadly weapons under different conditions.



Correct. I can’t seem to find an official statement as to what model weapons Gill misused, but there is this:



My point is that the size of the rifle is meaningless. Different rifle configurations exist for rifles designed for different uses.

All can be misused efficiently to commit evil acts.

Sniper rifles excluded, it seems to me that the bigger the gun, the more powerful as measured in mass killing efficiency. A weapon doesn't exactly need to be "smuggled" onto a campus. They're public places.

 

[Huntster]

Sniper rifles excluded, it seems to me that the bigger the gun, the more powerful as measured in mass killing efficiency. A weapon doesn't exactly need to be "smuggled" onto a campus. They're public places.

One can carry firearms openly in public places like a university campus in Canada?

One of the silly positions of the gun control lobby is their "sporting use" mantra. It's a false argument. The most powerful, devastating, and tactically sound firearm available to the average citizen is a common deer hunting rifle. Available in calibers designed to kill large animals, and designed to be utilized at sniper ranges, a single round to the torso of a human is almost certainly fatal. The same can't be said of handguns and 5.56 caliber military small arms "assault rifles."

Here's an example of what someone did at a university long before the term "assault rifle" was coined.

Notable in that link:

Once Whitman began facing return gunfire from the authorities, he used the waterspouts on each side of the tower as turrets, which allowed him to continue shooting while largely protected from the gunfire below, which had grown to include civilians who had brought out their personal firearms to assist police.

Police officers Conner and Shoquist remained inside the University to cover the windows on the southeast and northeast sides of the reception area. Meanwhile three other officers, Ramiro Martinez, Houston McCoy, and Jerry Day took hastily deputized citizen Allen Crum up towards the observation deck.

Unlike Gill, Whitman wasn't openly a kook. He may have been medically ill:

It was revealed during the autopsy that Whitman had a cancerous glioblastoma tumor in the hypothalamus region of his brain. Some theorised that it may have been pressed against the nearby amygdala, which can affect emotive passion. This has led some neurologists to speculate that his medical condition was in some way responsible for the attacks. [11].

After the attacks, a study of Whitman's journal showed him lamenting that he had acted violently towards Kathy, and that he was resolved not to follow his father's abusive example, but to be a good husband. John and Fran Morgan, close friends of Whitman, later told the DPS that he had confided in them that he had struck Kathleen on three occasions.

Whitman's diary entries are quite different than Gill's blog.

 

[Morrigan]

The majority of people don't write such things publically. This is good.

That means the number of people to scrutinized is limited to the fools who do so.

Why should they be "scrutinized" anymore than anyone else? What ever happened to freedom of speech? The guy made no threats.

Gill did.

Eric Harris did:

What's your point?
Most people who wear black trench coats, listen to loud music, play violent video games, etc. don't murder people. Gill and Eric Harris did. Let's scrutinize black trench coat-wearing, loud-music listening, violent game playing people?

So, because "most times it's just empty angst coming from a whiny teenager," the smart thing to do is restrict firearms freedoms to the rest of Canada's 30 million citizens?

Excuse me... but where did I say ANYTHING about firearm restriction? Worse than a strawman, that's a fabrication.

Too much freedom is a problem.

O RLY?

There are plenty of firearms restrictions, registrations, and controls on firearms in Canada.

It's time for some idiot restrictions, registrations, and controls.

What, exactly, do you have in mind?

Well, I just learned a bit about Canadian gun law. This dude had to wait like a year to get his restricted weapons, and had to take a safety course. There was a background check, which includes more than just criminal record.

As far as I can tell, the system did the best it could. Some people just go "a little funny in the head" and kill people. It's one of the risks associated with living. The fact is, in certain cases, you can't stop someone from committing a crime. All you can do is clean up the mess afterward.

Exactly. No system is perfect. In this case, fewer restrictions would have changed nothing. More restrictions probably wouldn't either, but if they had indeed prevented this crime, they could have also impeded honest citizens who want guns. Personally, I don't think gun control has anything to do with this story.