Scrap the Long-Gun Registry
As the warm days of summer give way to cooler temperatures and the sounds of harvest, the rhetoric surrounding the fate of the Long-Gun Registry continues to heat up.
In a few short weeks elected Members of Parliament will vote to either keep or scrap the Long-Gun Registry. In advance of that vote, NDP Leader Jack Layton and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff continue to trade barbs and insults in their quest to ‘save’ the wasteful and ineffective Long-Gun Registry.
Mr. Layton has again demonstrated his lack of understanding on this issue by proposing a compromise that would create a ‘non-criminal, ticket-able’ offence for first-time offenders who fail to register their long-guns. The problems with this approach are many, but most importantly this proposal would require a complete overhaul of the Criminal Code, something that is neither practical nor desirable. Mr Layton seems to have missed that point entirely. The idea of issuing a ticket, payable with a fine, would not allow offenders to avoid the inevitable criminal record that accompanies pleading guilty to a Criminal Code offence. If you don’t believe you should have to register your rifle in the first place, making it easier to plead guilty and be fined for that position is hardly a promising alternative. If the opposition parties are proposing to decriminalize registration altogether, that raises the spectre of re-opening the Constitution to get the job done, also a non-starter.
To complicate matters, the Liberals are now taking shots at Mr. Layton for refusing to whip his party to vote against the private member’s bill introduced by Conservative M.P. Candice Hoeppner. After all, why should NDP members be allowed vote their conscience and take seriously the concerns of their constituents when Liberal MPs are not afforded that option?
This debate has once again been muddied by opposition attempts to confuse the Long-Gun Registry with gun licensing. They are not the same and cannot be discussed like they are a package deal. The RCMP Evaluation Report discussed in the media lately is a report on the effectiveness of the overall firearms program and NOT a report that specifically looks at the Long- Gun Registry alone. Our Conservative government has always been clear: we support the licensing of people who own firearms and the registration of prohibited and restricted weapons.
The suggestion that this is a rural issue with farmers and ranchers on one side and city folk on the other is also wrong and misleading. While the Long-Gun Registry has an obvious impact on rural farmers and ranchers, a large segment of sport shooting enthusiasts reside within city limits and are also watching this debate with great interest.
Regardless of where long-gun owners reside across this great country, they remain predominantly opposed to a registry that targets law abiding gun owners and lumps them in the same category as criminals who have never, and will never, take out a licence or register their weapons.
The Long-Gun Registry has already cost the country billions of dollars with no appreciable value as a law enforcement tool. The Long-Gun Registry does nothing to prevent crime and instead, continues to unfairly criminalize law-abiding farmers, hunters and shooting enthusiasts.
