Thank you, Mr. Bernardo and Ms. Austin, for your presentations. I must say I found them both a little on the extreme side looking at best-case and worst-case scenarios. I think I'm somewhere in between.
I can remember growing up as a young boy and getting a pellet gun from my father. It was a gift for his three sons, of whom I was the middle son, and he taught us the responsible use of it. He allowed us to go out and do some target shooting at tin cans and some gopher shooting—if it's okay to say that here. I can't imagine that by walking down a country road or even exiting the town where we lived while I was carrying this firearm that I could have been a criminal. I think it's incumbent on parents, if they're going to allow a youth to enjoy the use of a pellet gun, a BB gun, or an air gun, to also provide responsible safety training and to make sure the particular device is used safely.
I'm also looking at what the bill is actually talking about. To me the bill is talking about transportation and storage and not about how these guns should be classified. We already see in law that guns with a velocity of less than 500 feet per second are not considered firearms. You don't need to have a licence. You don't need to take the Canadian firearms safety course in order to purchase one. I think this legislation actually creates some consistencies in our existing laws so that some young boys who may be just out for a stroll in the country or in the hills with friends shooting at targets, aren't going to be found to be criminals. I think that's the intent of Mr. Sopuck's bill here.
Mr. Bernardo, could you comment on that a little further?