Comparing the Canadian Gun Laws to the Guns Used In the Las Vegas Shooting

On October 1, 2017 between 10:05 and 10:15, several hundred shots were fired by a gunman into a crowd where a concert is held leaving 58 people dead and 546 people injured, three of which are Canadian. The shooter is 64 year old Stephen Paddock. The was located on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel within his hotel room while shooting across the street into the crowd of 22,000 people located on the Las Vegas strip. This is the most deadly mass shooting by a single gunman in the US and triggered debates about gun laws in the U.S. However, can the same be done in Canada? Will it be as easy as this shooting? I will be comparing the guns the shooter used in this massacre to the current Canadian gun law at the date this article is published to see how easily these guns can be obtained here in canada legally.

Paddock used 23 firearms of the 32 firearms he has purchased in the last year for the massacre, 2 bump stocks, and thousands of rounds on ammunition. Out of these rifles, 12 of which were semi-automatic, but mimicked the fire rate of a full-automatically rifle using the bump stocks. Note that all of these were obtained legally. Some of the weapons used by the shooter are not disclosed by the police, so the weapons in this list only include the ones which are confirmed to be used.

These are the known guns and modifications he used in this shooting:

four DDM4 rifles

three FN-15 rifles

one AR-15 rifle

one .308-caliber AR-10 rifle

one AK-47

> one made-to-order LMT rifle

one handgun

Prohibited:

AK-47

Bump Stock

First of all, the bump stock is outright illegal in Canada. You cannot legally acquire a bump stock. It cannot be grandfathered either since it was not invented until the 2010s.

The Ak-47 is also illegal in canada since it's a fully automatic rifle. However,

unlike the bump stock, it can be grandfathered since it was invented before 1986. They cannot be easily bought either since you will need a Prohibited PAL license to purchase a prohibited weapon, and this license is very hard to obtain. Although you cannot easily pass the ownership of fully-automatic rifles, this still allows the AK-47 to be easily illegally acquired since so many are legally owned within canada. It can also be acquired through legally buying it in the United States and smuggled into canada.

Restricted:

DDM4

AR-15

AR-10

FN-15

These weapons are all classified as a restricted weapon in Canada since they're all semi-automatic firearms. It's also assuming that they are longer than 66 cm in length and has a barrel that is at least 457 mm in length. These weapons and their ammunition can be acquired if you have a restricted firearms license. A restricted license can be easily acquired compared to the prohibited firearm license. However, they cannot be easily transported around as you would need an authorization to transport a restricted firearm from one place to the next. Illegally transporting weapons is not something that can stop criminals since they're about to commit a crime anyways. The handgun he used also belongs in this category since it is a firearm that has a barrel which is less than 470mm in length.

Non-restricted:

The shooter did not use any Non-restricted weapons since all the weapons he used were classified as either prohibited or restricted.

As we can see form the data above, although it may seem as a similar crime cannot be committed in Canada easily, there are many ways to go around these restrictions like buying guns from the black market. If the criminal is planning to commit a crime that is of this scale, they will probably be willing to go through the trouble to acquire all these weapons. If Canada doesn't tighten its gun control laws even more, the violence that is displayed at the Las Vegas shooting might occur near our homes in Canada.