So does Gillet's error in judgement show that gun licenses - even for such an assault rifle - are given out indiscriminately?
He got his in early 2023 from Commissioner Chester Williams - today the press asked him If handguns can be used for protection, why is the department issuing licenses for rifles? He says that people use different types of weapons for different purposes.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"I will say what I said on Channel 7 yesterday morning. I don't know what is your definition of assault rifles but from a military standpoint, an assault rifle is a fully automatic rifle. The rifles that are granted license are not assault rifles, those are semi automatic rifles. We have the.223, the.3030, we have the.22 rifles and the.9mm rifles. While commissioners before me had given licenses for.300,.302,.304,.306,.308 which are very high powered rifles, I have not issued any license for those because as far as I'm concerned, those are prohibited. So people have weapons for different reasons, some people are hunters, to hunt you might need a.22 rifles or a.223, some people do shooting for sports and they would shoot different types of guns, the rifles or the handguns. Some people are farmers, they need the 12 gauge pump action with the bb bullets or they need the 16 or 12 gauge shotgun. So again it's for different reasons, I personally don't see an issue with the rifles as long as they are used for the reason which they were obtained."
