[Mekanik]

Honestly folks, this conversation is a great one. So far no one's calling each other a gun-grabber, a leftie, or any other derogatory epitaph that just cheapens the talk. As a newbie whose had some opinions challenged and changed, these are my views.

These firearms are out there. I do not call them guns, assault weapons, rifles; they are firearms. The people who would prefer not to have any firearms in the hands of private citizens for whatever reason do not know or care about what distinguishes a .22 cricket or a kalishnikov. They want to tighten down regulations and laws and choke out the right to own firearms one little bit at a time.

This particular branch of firearms is getting a bad reputation. Misuse based on a few instances and their resemblance to military firearms has people questioning why we "need" them. That to me is a good question: why do we need these firearms? Most are useless for hunting. They resemble the firearms used in combat. There are quite a few questions that people ask.

Why don't we ask some of our long(er) range shooters why they need a larger caliber or a rifle capable of accurately hitting a target beyond what's normal in general hunting? Frankly speaking, if you're hunting only, you don't need a huge rifle to take the vast majority of game on this continent. How about why we need any caliber after a .308? It's pretty effective.

After a while, we're down to three firearms: a .22, a .308, and a 12 gauge. You can now pretty much hunt every animal in Alberta with these three firearms. Now that we've limited our choices to these, why stop there? There's too much unnecessary variety: all will be made by one company and you'll just have to make due until someone decides otherwise.

This is, I believe the slippery slope that we will be on and the people who want us to all hold hands, enjoy nature like it's a Disney movie, and have no firearms whatsoever will use our own arguments against us. They will, as in the case of the discussion of Booth baiting bear, use our own division and say, "see! Even in the firearms community there are those saying these guns are bad!"

These various firearms, more specifically the branch that are more "military" serve another shooting discipline, other then trap and skeet, other then black powder guys, other then target, silhouette, pistol, etc. there isn't a thing that I would hold back from these guys who want to target shoot with a "black gun" or practice and participate in a three gun event. These are valid uses of these firearms as is the guy who wants to add something different to his shelf and shooting time.

If you wish to add more restrictions, that's something we can debate. However going along and banning a firearm because some segments within our community are using them improperly is punishing a legitimate portion of your fellow enthusiasts who've done nothing wrong and is faulty logic. Quite a few similar comparisons exist but I won't throw them out there because they're so overused it's insulting to all our intelligences.

Punish the guilty, not the responsible ones.