Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here today.
We have heard a lot of statements repeatedly about assault-style firearms and about large-capacity magazines. We know that magazines that are pinned higher than five rounds are already prohibited in this country and have been for a while. We had a witness at our committee this past Tuesday who mentioned automatic assault-style rifles. We've heard it again today: We have assault-style rifles being mentioned. I'm really concerned about the use of that terminology consistently, leaving Canadians to believe that we have automatic rifles legal in this country, and there's no clear definition. What is an assault-style rifle?
What's even more troubling is that this same nonsensical undefined terminology has been repeated by this government when it refers to the military-style assault weapons they want to prohibit in the May 2020 order in council.
Now G-4, which included semi-automatic hunting rifles and shotguns, was in my opinion a failed attempt to redefine what makes a firearm prohibited. As my colleague Mr. Lloyd has said, a gun should be classified by what it does, what it's capable of, not by what it looks like.
Dr. Bryant, with your expertise in this area, can you set the record straight for us? For Canadians who don't know, what is an automatic firearm? Are they legal in Canada? When were they prohibited? What is a “military-style assault weapon”? Do you think it's ludicrous that a government would invent a term, and then try to find a definition for it, including firearms that might fit into that definition?