If it was, as I have read, a Winchester lever-action rifle, then the hammer would have had to be cocked for it to go off. Not much of a trigger squeeze is needed. But I suspect that this fool had his finger on the trigger all the time and I'm surprised that no one else was injured or killed -- any of each is too many.

I wondered how he would have gotten a firearm, Canadian laws being what they are. A "straw man" buy could account for that, as would theft at some time.

A lever action is not a preferred weapon these days -- not much magazine capacity and slow to reload, it's more of a hunting weapon. But then, anything can become a weapon....