UNDER THE GUN

FIREARMS ARE KILLING MACHINES THAT TAKE INNOCENT LIVES — BUT ARE ALSO USED PEACEFULLY BY THOUSANDS OF LOCAL SHOOTING ENTHUSIASTS. THE TWO SOLITUDES IN THE GUN CONTROL DEBATE HAVE NEVER SEEMED MORE STARKLY DEFINED, AMID CALLS TO BAN HANDGUNS AND NEW RESTRI

“You want to try the AR?”

DAVID BOT,

president of the Burlington Rifle and Revolver Club, invites you to shoot an AR-15 at their indoor range.

The firearm — members don’t call guns “weapons” because that’s not how they’re used at a range — is a symbol of polarized perception in the gun control debate.

To the uninitiated, up close, the combat stylings of the black AR-15 rifle seem menacing.

It is a killing machine, variants of which have slaughtered people in mass shootings in the United States.

It is an intricately engineered instrument, fired far more commonly for recreation and sport.

Its initials do not stand for assault rifle, rather the initials of the company (ArmaLite) that developed it in the 1950s. And it is not by definition an assault rife in its capabilities, because it is semiautomatic, not fully-automatic.

Bot’s was manufactured in Kitchener by Colt Canada and he paid $1,800 for it.

Sensing your trepidation to fire, Bot adds, “It is pretty soft shooting.”

There are more than a dozen shooting ranges in the Hamilton area, the only places where you can legally discharge handguns.

Two of them that permit firing of handguns and rifles — Burlington’s club, and one called Silverdale, near Smithville— are growing rapidly.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BARRY GRAY, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR Silverdale Gun Club range officer Frank Mulrooney watches Lillian Lanzalone, 11, shoot at a target.

BARRY GRAY THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR Mulrooney loads bullets into the magazine before shooting an AR-15.