Not a Canadian Hunting Season

CNN.com posted the headline "Like Hunting Season" in the wake of the the killings of James E. Holmes in Colorado.

Except this wasn't hunting, this was the bloody product of a dark rage of a gas-masked man dressed head-to-toe in protective tactical gear.

This was no quiet early morning walk in the woods pursuing wild game. Holmes is not hunter, he is hateful man who set off two smoke screen devices before spraying the movie theater with bullets from an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and at least one of two .40-caliber handguns police recovered at the scene.

The AR-15 is not a gun used by any duck, deer or moose hunter. The AR-15 is a lightweight, 5.56 mm, air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine-fed semi-automatic rifle, with a rotating-lock bolt, actuated by direct piston operation.

AR-15 is not a weapon of hunting; it is a weapon of war.

This is not the act of a hunter; this is an act of a madman at war.

And yet US law enforcement officials say the AR-15 war machine was purchased legally by Holmes at a sporting goods store in the Denver area over the past six months. Ammunition was purchased on-line.

The AR-15 is restricted and controlled gun in Canada, which increases our protection from the AR-15 unless we visit the US. And that is what gun control is about, increasing our protection from weapons of war.

Canadians may have conceded gun control for long rifles but we have never been against all restrictions on all guns. Our tolerance citizenry possession of weapons of war seems to be lower than in the US.

Or is it? Prime Minister Stephen Harper has never been clear about what his limits are in the gun control debate. Presumably he would support the continuation of restrictions on the AR-15 but what about any other semi-automatic guns? Weapons that have nothing do with hunting and everything to do with war.

Would US government restrictions over the AR-15 have stopped James E Holmes from killing? Maybe, maybe not. But that is a harm reduction strategy I will advocate for any day in any country.