H&K

You can't even buy that model in the US.Thats's a LEO issued gun.

That weapon has a thirty shot mag, and would have deadly accuracy. That may help explain how one man could take out 4 trained officers.

I understand that it's fully automatic. Highly deadly. Highly illegal. If only we'd put more money into the gun registry then I'm sure he would've registered it and the RCMP would be alive now.
/Sarc.

Hey... I need one of those...lots of gophers around here.

I think if ya it them just right, you could just pick up the tail after.

No need to register, it probably has a 14+ rating and doesn't come under gov control.

Warning disgusting political statement below:
They don't care anyway, and it gives them a chance for more photo opps at funerals.

Unless it is military-issue, it is almost certainly NOT fully-auto. Virtually no fully-auto weapons are sold to civilians--most due to expense and the extra mounds of paperwork and legal hoops to be jumped through. Maybe this guy had an in with a collector or military background himself--I admit I haven't read much about him until just now. But guns I know. My money's on it being semi-auto. If it turns out he actually had a fully-auto, it's possible he modified a semi.

Whether this is the weapon or not, there is no doubt this guy had a gun that was at least semi-automatic and highly accurate. How would general Joe Civilian take out four trained police officers with semi-automatic pistols using a single shot rifle?

The only reason I suspected it of being full auto was because it was reported as such in a news article I read. Having said that, the media are so clueless about firearms, who knows if they even understood what they were reporting.
It was also reported that he had an assault style shotgun. Knowing what we do now about his previous criminal history I don't find it unlikely that he would have a full-auto weapon (although they are very hard to come by). Assault style .308 is pretty rare anyway - usually they're in .223. I'd also point out that if the gun really did have a 30 shot magazine like Geoffrey suggests in comment #2, it's still illegal! I know I shouldn't play politics with 4 policemen dead, but my sarcastic comments about the gun registry still stand. It didn't prevent him from owning the gun, using the gun, or killing 4 supposedly body-armoured, side-armed, trained police.

Someone tried to defend the need for a gun registry to me, once.

I pointed out that it was already illegal to shoot people.

It didn't really go any further than that.

"Assault shotgun"? C'mon, any time the press wants to sensationalize they put "assault" in front of it.

When AR-15's were first being sold they were sold as "varmint rifles". Sure, it was based on a weapon that was used to shoot people, but all handguns (generally anyway) fit that category, even tho most are used for target shooting and plinking. When was the last time somebody was shot with an "assault pistol"? ("Man Killed by Assault Baseball Bat")

It's completely unnecessary and implies the thing is significantly more lethal than any hunting rifle or shotgun. Anything used to kill anybody they feel free to add the word assault to. Why not "the killer was executed with an assault noose/bullet/electric chair/needle"?

Let's keep it going, and do something about kerry/rather/moore's "assault lies".

If we calculate the plusses and minuses of the individual officers who attended at the scene, we find that there may be as many as two who have a most grievious harm to overcome: the inescapable thought of "what if" when entering the fray would have provided more dead bodies. Yet, waiting for the "backup" must have been the most painful experience of their life. God be with them in their pain.

Shame on the mounties for not bringing their pain forward. I thank them: their actions left nothing amiss, despite whatever some others might try to second-guess.

Apart from it's sinister appearance, this firearm is functionally no different in capability than many, less evil looking, common hunting rifles. Browning BAR, Remington 742 etc. ALL Guns are deadly. A Gun, is a Gun, is a Gun. Our aim must be to keep them away from men like Roszco. The tools to do this were there. We failed to use them. The firearms registry failed. Mandatory licencing works provided we have zero tolerence for any infractions with violence or threats. Most gun owners agree with this and have told the Government as much for years.

The photo appears to be the HK91A2, which differs from the G3 selective fire weapon (adopted by West Germany in 1959; later by Iran and El Salvador) basically only in the sear and selector markings on the grip. A person with even minimal machining skills wouldn't have much trouble converting it to "rock and roll." Conversion kits for the AR-15 used to be commonly available, with the caveat that actually installing them might constitute a serious violation of applicable laws. They're probably also available for the HK91.

Standard reference sources on this firearm give a muzzle velocity of 2624 f.p.s. using 150 gr. NATO Standard rounds. The Mounties were completely outgunned.

Who wants to bet that the next call for gun restrictions will come soon......and they'll want to ban semi-automatic weapons next?

I'll give it 3 months....and Wendy Cukier will be doing the latest tour. Funded of course...by the government.

Nice investigation of the gun itself. What I'd like to know now is how it is that Anne McClellan, who is accountable, you know, ACCOUNTABLE, can get away without calling a press conference to discuss the failure of the gun registry to prevent this tragedy, or without at least making a statement about it. Maybe our system of government has evolved to the point where Cabinet ministers aren't accountable, and we're all ok with that. The Gomerey commission certainly seems to be making that point. If they're not accountable, what are they doing there (besides being well paid and accumulating cushy pensions)? Hey, the Emperors have no clothes!

Quite right, skelly. Given his criminal record, there must have been an order prohibiting him from possessing firearms. Yet he not only possessed them, he allegedly used them against anyone coming onto his property. Either way, the gun registry and criminal justice system didn't do much to deter him from further violence and criminal activity.

Couple of comments.

Skelly, with all due respect, and I do mean that, where in the world have you been for the past couple of decades. Ministerial responsibility? In Canada?

Automatic or semi-automatic rifle. One would think that if the details of the shooting were made public, as they would be in a democracy, that one could tell very quickly if an automatic weapon had been used. It seems reaonable to think that if the weapon were semi-automatic, fewer rounds would have been fired and fewer wounds would have been inflicted. I know, the cops are dead either way and it's a scandal. But it is, I think, important to establish just what happened, because someone may responsible for what Cosh referred to as a real cluster f**k that cost 4 young men their lives and several women and young children their spouses and fathers. Why in the world are we not being informed of precisely what happened? If that info is out there in the press and it is only I that has not found it, then my apologies.

My apologies for the grammar too.

That bugs me too, the press likes to use "automatic" knowing the to the public means machine gun. They should use either the specific "semi-automatic" or "fully automatic". Or better, just say "rifle" or "machine gun".

My memory cant remember the name of the gun but the british had a version of the automatic assault rifle. Similiar to the Russian AK-47 and the american AR15. This gun was illegal to sell.
My ex brother in law was a sniper in the American army rangers and was taught alot about guns which he still uses as a hobby now.
There were two british guns that were legally sold in the United States as hunting rifles. One was semi automatic and the other was a standard either pump action or bolt action rifle, 308 calibre. My ex-brother in law being very gun wise started studying these rifles and to his surprise if you used a hack saw and cut each rifle in a certain place and welded the seperate parts together and a little mechanical working presto you would have the highly illegal fully automatic assault rifle. Im sure if he knew how to do this many other people did to.
Im not a gun officiando but it sure looked like the one pictured above. when he did this he sold them but before selling them he would make sure they couldnt be made automatic after he sold them.
Avro
P.S. The major difference between an ordinary rifle and an assault rifle is the color. Ordinary is brown and assault is black.

Full Automatic, semi-automatic, selectic fire, folks, bullets come out of the end of the barrel and if they hit a person in the right place they kill.

It is extremely difficult to fire and control a .308 on full automatic and the only time a person might want to us full auto is if they are being over run at close range.

Chances are the the unfortunate killing was done with aimed fire, which means that after recoil at new killing target was aquired and each shot was taken with a high degree of care.

I would chance that the shooter was what we call a stone cold killer and that means he was a real bad guy. Aimed shots can be taken with about 2 to 3 second intervals so it still happens fast with a semi-automatic and in the end, maybe a total of 12 seconds aimed fire, four good men were killed by one bad criminal.

Thus, the old tierd phrase, guns don't kill people, killers kill people. The gun details are almost meaningless except in aiding prosecution. In Texas we give dangerous criminals a fair trial and then we put them down, this can be a good thing.

Please remember the good men who died. Cst. Peter Christopher Schiemann, 25 from Petrolia, Ontario;
Cst. Lionide Nicholas Johnston, 32 from Regina, Saskatchewan;
Cst. Anthony Fitzgerald Orion Gordon, 28, from Edmonton, Alberta;
Cst. Brock Warren Myrol, 29, from Outlook, Saskatchewan.

Keith,

I try not to be cynical. If Anne McLellan is going to call herself Minister of Public Safety, then she ought to do the job. On the Public Safety website, it says "The Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Portfolio is responsible for protecting Canadians and helping to maintain a peaceful and safe society. The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety is the Honourable Anne McLellan." Two of the five agencies under this portfolio are the RCMP and the Canadian Firearms Center. The Honourable AM is Responsible. She's responsible for the RCMP, for "gun control" and she's responsible for accounting for four dead young men who put their lives on the line so the rest of us can sleep at night. I'm not saying that shit can't happen, but when shit does happen, we, Annie's employer, are owed an explanation. Or she can take her "Honorable" to the nearest dictionary and look it up, and while she's there, she can also look up "responsible." And maybe "character" while she's at it.

My 2 cents...
To make a semi full auto, it's just a matter of filing down a sear.
A full auto with that caliber is only good as an area weapon at a far distance. At close range it would be highly uncontrollable and inaccurate. Semi would be the way to go.
Any weapon is effective from an ambush. He probably could have killed one or two with a knife or a pitchfork. I don't think there was much they could have done.
All cops and soldiers have alot of guts to do their job. If some psycho or terrorist is waiting in ambush, they are pretty much done for, they know that and still do the job.

Nice rifle, the G3 and variants, accurate enough, and extremely reliable under adverse circumstance, "AK-47 reliable". You wouldn't want to use it automatic though, that's what the very fine MG3/MG42 is for. My (german) former panzer-grenadier pal swears by them and says it's pretty good with a bayonet too.

A little rough on the brass though.

Makes an adequate hunting rifle, if you like that style. HK makes (made?) a semi auto hunting rifle with almost exactly the same mechanical workings, nice wood, same calibre, and blued metal. Pricey though.

The HK91/G3 series are not Assault Rifles, per se. They are Battle Rifles. An assault rifle is a selective fire weapon that fires a reduced power cartridge (such as the 7.62 x 39 Russian round, or the 5.56 x 45 American M-16 round) from a large capacity magazine. A battle rifle is a semi automatic or selective fire weapon usually firing a full power rifle cartridge. Such as the 7.62 x 51 NATO standard round or the old 7.92 Mauser round. The HK91/G3 is one such weapon, as is the FN-FAL and the US M-14 rifle.
Under Canadian law, the HK91 (semi automatic versions too) is a 12(5) Prohibited weapon. Which means that to own it you had to have owned it or some other 12 (5) Prohibited weapon before 1994 and have gotten a Possession and Acquisition licence with a 12 (5) note on it. Someone with Mr. Roszko's chequered past would be unlikely to get any sort of PAL, never mind one with a Prohibited 12(5) notation.
Assuming its the semi automatic version of the HK91, its really not all that fearsome a weapon..any decent .308 semi auto could have done as well. But of course, being a military weapon makes it very 'scary'.

I'm a duck and deer hunter who helped reintroduce wild turkeys back into Ontario.
I had a cop phone my ex girlfriend who is a sweetheart, and ask if she thought it was ok if I possessed a gun.
Another called my mother to ask if there was any history of mental illness in the family.
Her response was classic,... "Only on his fathers side".
They sent another cop to physically inspect my gun locker and seperatly enclosed and locked amunition case.
All to get a firearms possession certificate from the federalies.

I live in Chinatown in Toronto where I have to leave my car totally empty and the glove compartment open and empty or they break my car windows.
My best friend around the corner had his double locked apartment door kicked open while he was home in the middle of the day.
They smoke crack and discard stolen luggage, computer bags and purses in my backyard.
I return them to the police station 4 blocks away.
I've helped my neighbour who owns a Chinese restaraunt next door look for his cash register in the alleys when they pulled his heavily reinforced steel door off the hinges with a chain.

Who gives a fuck what kind of gun it is.

I don't suppose that any right wing crazies would be very enthusiastic about banning guns outright? Seems to me that unless you can show cause for having a rifle, a handgun or an assault rifle, that you should not be able to legally possess it. Something like trying to legally possess an atomic bomb. Or trying to legally possess a hundred pounds of cocaine.

We mercifully do not have insane constitutional provisions in Canada that give lunatics guns. Which is why the percapita death rate from guns is 23 times lower than in the US.

I say ban the guns outright. If you are caught illegally with a gun, you should get six months in jail for the first offence.

Save everyone a lot of trouble. And certainly make things a lot safer for the police and the public.

Make it a simple criminal possession charge.