Well, except that that's not how the separation works in practice, at all. For example, Saiga is a hunting weapon by design, but it's on the prohibited list as "AK variant" (while Valmet, another AK hunting variant, is explicitly excluded for some mysterious reason). On the other hand, Vz 58 is not a hunting weapon in any way, shape or form, but it has been on the unrestricted list for ages and is likely to remain there. And, again, why AK is prohibited? Note that we're talking strictly about semi-autos here, so there's no principal difference between Vz, AK and AR at all. Or, for another example, between Saiga 308 (prohibited - AK variant), and M14 (unrestricted) - both are military rifles, chambered in the same caliber, with the same type of furniture etc.

Beside which, the whole division into "hunting" and "non-hunting" weapons is rather moot with a semi-auto. Consider Saiga again. It is a hunting weapon in a sense that it is promoted as one. But, in truth, it's just an AK with different furniture and magazines, not in any way less deadly. Or take Mini-14 - is it a hunting weapon? Most of its users would probably agree, yet its full auto variant, AC-556, has seen military use. And why not? In the end, there is no fundamental difference between a hunting weapon and a military one. A semi-auto rifle is a semi-auto rifle, that's all there is to it. If you already have limits on barrel length and magazine capacity, I fail to see what any further distinctions - particularly ones as arbitrary as specific models of firearms - are adding to the picture.

Well, there's that whole separation into unrestricted / restricted / prohibited which has no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever. Why is any AK variant (including hunting Saigas, but not Valmets) prohibited, but Vz 58, in pretty much its original configuration sans full auto, unrestricted? Why is AR restricted regardless of barrel length, while e.g. SU-16 or XCR are not? What's the point of restricting magazine sizes differently from handguns and rifles, if you can take a 10-round AR "handgun" magazine and stick it into a rifle?

The restriction is 5 rounds for rifles, 10 rounds for pistols. And to be specific, the restriction is on the magazine, not on the firearm. If a magazine is "designed" for a handgun, it's perfectly legal to fill it up with 10 rounds and attach it to a rifle that it happens to fit.

My only conclusion from looking at Canadian gun laws is that they're written by clueless idiots. Then again, it's also my takeaway from US gun laws. It's like they're trying to regulate something, but don't know what it is.

The reason why police carry handguns is because it's inconvenient to carry a long gun all the time in a manner that makes it readily accessible on short notice (a regular sling means it's behind your back and takes some time and effort to get into the proper position, and 1-point sling keeps it accessible but not very convenient to carry, esp. if you're running around). A handgun, OTOH, can be holstered, after which it doesn't get in the way.

But as far as actually shooting it goes, a rifle is virtually always better than a pistol - it's faster and easier to aim (because you have two hands at two different points on it), sights are further apart permitting fast-acquisition yet accurate ones like ghost rings, and recoil is much easier to control. Then there's the whole aspect of having a much powerful round compared to a handgun, all other things being equal.

Oh, and regarding it being "too long". This is a lever action, and those exist in versions with barrels as short as 16" - which is what you get on a typical military rifle - except here the rifle will be even shorter with the same barrel because of how the action works. Winchester 1894, specifically, has a 20" barrel as standard, and an overall length of 38 inches, which actually makes it an inch shorter than M16A2 (or Diemaco C7, the standard assault rifle of Canadian armed forces).

Bayonets.

What's funny is that you've just demonstrated how clueless you are about gun laws in your own country.

There are many "human killing weapons" (by which I assume you mean magazine-fed semi-auto rifles) that are perfectly legal for civilian ownership in Canada, and are just as easy to obtain as this shotgun. For example, Vz 58, M14, SVT, SKS, XCR, SU-16, RFB...

The reason for that is that your law is written by idiots, and basically consists of a blacklist of "bad" firearms. Because said blacklist is updated very rarely, and because it enumerates things by name, it does not include many modern rifles that are just as efficient, and in many cases more efficient, than many firearms not on the list. For example, Vz 58 is basically an AK competitor, and can do everything that an AK does, in some cases better. Similarly, XCR can do anything an AR-15 can do.

So the reason why this guy had a shotgun is likely because that's what he had at the time he decided it's time to become a shahid, not because he couldn't obtain anything better,

Much like the US, aside from the actual text, there's also the standing judicial interpretation of it, which is where Oakes test comes in.

OP is confusing "assault rifle" and "assault weapon". The former is the term that has been around since WW2. The latter is the term that has been invented by politicians.

Of course, given that assault rifles are, in fact, regulated heavily on federal level, and banned outright in many states (by virtue of having burst fire capability), your original point is similarly moot.

Actually, between minimum wage and unemployment insurance, we already have basic income for most people, it's just it's a very baroque scheme that attempts to conceal that fact, and which is not particularly good at properly distributing the load (minimum wage, in particular, disproportionately puts the burden on the poor to subsidize even more poor, because they tend to be the ones shopping in places that pay minimum wage in the first place).

That's why I'm in favor of introducing basic income and ditching minimum wage at the same time.

Would you do so, personally? I know that I won't, for one.

And with sufficient automation, we don't need everyone to work. Heck, as it progresses further, we won't need most people to work - we won't have jobs for most people, in fact. At some point having a meaningful job may well become a privilege.

And there's nothing wrong with it. It's exactly what "post-scarcity society" is supposed to mean.

Sure, because we have not made the necessary arrangement for those people (like, say, universal basic income). The more people are being driven out of jobs by automation, the faster we will do so, though the jury is still out on whether torches and pitchforks will be involved in that process.

I don't think this was ever a concern, actually. The position of most major powers (in particular, both US and USSR back in the day) was that it restricts intentionally designing projectiles that expand or flatten (or, well, fragment), but if that happens to be an artifact of the bullet design that is otherwise dictated by other reasons, then that's perfectly okay. For example, it's why US presently authorizes the use of 77gr OTM bullets (Mk262), even though an open tip is basically a hollow point by another name, and the extreme length of the bullet causes it to fragment even better than the original M193 - it's because the bullet is ostensibly designed for accuracy, which necessitates open tip construction, and length is there to maximize the ballistic coefficient; and any increased wounding effects are, well, entirely coincidental. Soviets used the same argument for their hollow tip 5.45 bullets.

Yes, as far as Lee-Enfield goes, there's nothing particularly magical about it. In particular, the claim that "rifleman with a Lee-Enfield can achieve higher firing rates than the operator of a machine gun" is pure BS - I would dare anyone do even 500 RPM with a bolt action, and that is where machine gun fire rates usually start (since we're looking at this in WW2 context, Bren was 500 RPM, DP-28 was 550 RPM, MG 34 was 800 RPM, and MG 42 was 1200+ RPM). Sure, out of all bolt rifles of that war, it was probably the best one from the perspective of its wielder, thanks to larger mag and slightly faster firing rate, but in overall context that still doesn't matter all that much.

For this use case, though, Enfield is plenty good. These guys don't really need a military weapon so much so as a brush gun (and I use "brush" liberally here, because the landscape is often quite widely open), mostly to hunt and defend themselves from predators. Should they ever find themselves in a military role, again, they are not really operating as units, but each ranger for himself, in a remote territory with basically no supply chain. So as far as firearms go, they need something really simple to maintain, something that handles lack of cleaning (say, because of lack of supplies for said cleaning) for a long time, can survive rough weather including extreme cold, and has a round that, while being "military legal" (i.e. not soft or hollow point), can still take care of large dangerous animals as well as humans, and that doesn't consume ammo fast. I'd say that a bolt action rifle in a full sized rifle round fits the bill pretty well. The only semi-auto that I can think of that would fit the bill would be some semi-auto AK variant chambered in .308 or 7.62x54r (probably Finnish Valmet hunting rifles, since those are also designed for similar conditions from the get go).

Also, their role is not taking the enemy heads on, but serving as an early detection system in those remote regions, and then possibly reporting on enemy movements. Basically, they're pure scouts, not infantry. So they don't really need a soldier's weapon.

Tech doesn't need to overcome it, that is the territory of the law. At some point, once self-driving cars are good enough and ubiquitous, they will simply be mandatory on public roads, and taking over to control it in an area where it can drive itself would be a crime.

Yawing/fragmentation is basically a factor of impact energy (which it itself an impact of velocity), and the structural strength of the bullet, and the latter in particular is affected by its length and the presence of cannelure. It's quite possible to deliberately construct fragmenting rounds in pretty much any caliber, by deliberately weakening the jacket with cuts (you can even make steel-jacketed bullets fragment that way). The nice thing about 5.56, at least in its original incarnation, is that it was capable of that without any special construction, just by virtue of being that fast and having a cannelure.

With rifles, sure. I don't see any particularly good reason to openly carry one anywhere but range or hunting grounds. And I cringe every time I see one of those videos where some idiot straps an AR to himself and goes walking around the block just so that he can be stopped by a police officer (after they get half a dozen calls) and then argue with him on camera, and upload it to YouTube to bitch about his 2A rights being infringed.

With handguns, though, concealing them is ridiculously easy. Even a full size service pistol can be carried IWB with a baggy t-shirt with no-one around being aware of it at all. Not to mention pocket carry etc. So I don't think that prohibiting carrying those is going to be easily enforceable in a manner that you describe.