Public Safety Committee on Dec. 8th, 2022

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

You said something very interesting. You said many interesting things, but you said something that I'm a little bit curious about. You talked about the quality of the bullet in the scenario where we talked about the nature of the bullet that was used in shooting. Are there rules about the kinds of bullets that can be used?

[Murray Smith]

Yes, there are, and those rules come in two forms. There are actual statute regulations, both federal and provincial, that will stipulate limitations on the kinds of projectiles that can be used. Then there are informal restrictions based on good practices in hunting that would drive the selection of one bullet over another for hunting a particular game animal.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Okay. Now let's get back to clarifying some terms that we've used.

What does “chambering” mean?

[Murray Smith]

The chambering, or the chambering of a firearm, is referring to the design of the chamber, which is located inside the barrel of the firearm typically, certainly for rifles and shotguns. It refers to the physical dimensions of that chamber and the amount of pressure it is designed to withstand during discharge. It determines the kind of ammunition that can be used in the firearm.

For example, the .308 Winchester calibre rifle that we spoke of earlier would have a chamber that is designed and manufactured for discharging .308 Winchester calibre ammunition. The barrel has a chamber, but the calibre of the ammunition that it uses is referred to as the “chambering”, or “chambered for” or “chambered in”. There are a variety of variations on how the language is used.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Just talking about a .308 Winchester cartridge for a second, how many joules would you need to fire that?

[Murray Smith]

The exact number of joules depends on factors other than just the ammunition. It's affected by barrel length, for instance. A .308 Winchester rifle, an ordinary hunting rifle, would generate somewhere around 3,000 joules, depending on the exact kind of ammunition being discharged and the barrel length of the firearm.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

How big is this .308 Winchester cartridge?

[Murray Smith]

You could infer, in most cases, the size of the projectile in very general terms from the numerical portion of the calibre name. If a .308 Winchester fires a bullet, that projectile is .308 inches in diameter.

That's a third of an inch, so that would be something in the order of eight millimetres.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Got it.

For the purpose of this discussion and anyone watching at home, can you just clarify the difference between a cartridge and a bullet?

[Murray Smith]

Okay. A cartridge is a complete unit of ammunition, so it consists, in general, of four components. You have a cartridge case, which is the overall container. You have the propellant powder, which is inside the cartridge case. You have a primer, generally at the rear of the cartridge case, which is what the firing pin strikes and what is used to initiate the discharge of the cartridge. Lastly, you have the bullet, which is at the front of the cartridge. It's seated in the mouth of the cartridge.

When a typical hunting rifle is fired, the propellant powder will be consumed. The bullet will be launched from the muzzle of the firearm and travel down-range to strike the game animal. The cartridge case and primer will remain inside the firearm and be ejected by the firearm operator.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

That makes sense. I think we all now have a good understanding of that.

Let's talk a little bit about cartridges in the context of military-style weapons. We had talked about it previously. How big are those cartridges? What do those look like?

[Murray Smith]

They can vary enormously in size. The military has all manner of firearms that require cartridges of different sizes.

To give a few examples, the Canadian Armed Forces standard service rifle uses a cartridge called, in civilian terms, .223 Remington. The military name for that cartridge is 5.56 by 45 millimetre NATO. It's essentially the same cartridge, but the military gives it a different name.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

It's materially larger than your Winchester.

[Murray Smith]

That's quite a small cartridge.

A larger cartridge would be a .50 calibre BMG. BMG stands for Browning machine gun. That's a very large cartridge that exceeds 10,000 joules. That is used in military sniper rifles and machine guns.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

If we were to use these larger cartridges that we just talked about to go deer hunting—going back to our deer scenario of 200 metres away—what would happen in that scenario to the deer?

[Murray Smith]

The answer is the same as before. It depends on the bullet that is loaded.

If an individual were using military ammunition, then that ammunition generally is made very solidly and is not designed to deform or expand on impact. It would go through a deer, largely unchanged. It would just make a hole in the deer the size of the projectile.

Some energy would be transferred from the bullet to the deer, which would cause tissue damage. In the case of a .50 BMG projectile striking a deer, it would almost certainly be fatal to the deer. The amount of damage to the deer would again depend on exactly where it hits and whether it hits a bone or goes through soft tissue, and so on. It's highly variable.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Motz noted that no self-respecting hunter would use military-style cartridges. Is that a fair statement?

[Murray Smith]

It's common to use military calibres, such as .223 Remington, .308 Winchester and .30-06 Springfield. These are calibres that have been mentioned many times in our conversation here. Those were all originally military cartridges that have been adapted for use in hunting.

What differentiates a military cartridge from a hunting cartridge is the kind of projectile that's installed. A hunting bullet is designed to expand on impact and cause a humane kill of the animal, whereas a military cartridge, in general, is designed to penetrate and go through defensive armour. It also has to conform with the Hague conventions on the use of military ammunition.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Let's talk a little bit about magazine capacity. Can you tell us a little bit about the magazines that firearms hold generally and some of the variations?

[Murray Smith]

First of all, many firearms do not have magazines. There are all kinds of firearms used for hunting and sporting activities that are a single shot, or in the case of shotguns, a single or double barrel. There's no magazine, per se, on a wide variety of firearms.

For those firearms that are equipped with magazines, the magazine size historically for hunting firearms, of the type that are widely used in Canada, would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of three or four cartridges, although larger mags are available.

For military firearms, the sky's the limit for magazine size. They can make them as big as they want and as big as is practical. The military also makes use of belted ammunition, which essentially has an infinite length.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

The average hunting firearm would hold how many cartridges?

[Murray Smith]

Again, there's no definition for a hunting rifle, so I can't give a categorical answer there. There aren't any hunting applications that I'm aware of that require a magazine size of 20 or 30 cartridges. The magazine size is self-limiting in the sense of what is useful for hunting.

That said, in Canada right now at the present time, the traditional hunting rifles will have magazine sizes of around three or four shots, but there are exceptions. That is where former military firearms have been reused for hunting purposes. I'll use the classic example of the Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle from World War II. Many tens of thousands of those firearms were recycled after World War II for use as hunting rifles. They have a 10-shot magazine.

It's possible to have a bigger magazine on a hunting rifle, but a hunter typically would not use that many cartridges.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Chair, I have a point of clarification.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

There really is no such thing as a point of clarification, but as long as Mr. Noormohamed doesn't mind, go ahead.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

I just wanted to make this clear to the committee, and I think Mr. Smith can confirm this as we did ask this a couple of weeks ago.

In general, with some rare exceptions, since 1992 it has been against the law to have a magazine bigger than five rounds for a long gun.