r/canadaguns • u/Standard_Custard2338 • Aug 06 '26

News / Politics / Activism Another example of how well criminals follow firearms law

https://globalnews.ca/news/12008352/calgary-man-charged-ctrain-station-shooting/

He had a prohibition order and we made the transfer of handguns prohibited. There's no way this can be true... this must be fake news.

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u/International_Mud367 Aug 06 '26

I think what's interesting is the aggravated assault charges rather than attempted murder. 

Seems they're trying to downplay quite a bit of his actions since the same actions in other countries would be a far longer list of charges.

Perhaps I'm ignorant to the laws but where's the charge for pointing a firearm at a person that we get told about during rpal courses? What about the charge for having ammo on them without heading to a range? 

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u/artificialsnow Aug 06 '26

They didn't charge attempted murder because it is almost impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person had an intention to kill when the parties aren't known to one another prior to the incident (in which case you'll usually have outside evidence of motive and often pre-assault threats) and there's no gratuitous continuation of the assault beyond the point where the one person is obviously wounded/disabled. "Discharge with intent" (s. 244.1) is the big brother of the pointing charge (s. 87). If the prohibited weapon charge is under s. 95, which I expect it is, then charging the unsafe handling/storage of ammo (s. 86) would be duplicative and the Crown would be required to stay the charge, even if they proved it at trial, under the principles from the SCC's decision in Kienapple - and either they succeed on the gun or they wouldn't have succeeded on the ammo anyway. Completely appropriate set of charges IMO.

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u/International_Mud367 Aug 07 '26

Thanks for explaining!