The car registry metaphor is often invoked by people who style themselves gun control advocates, but it is never adhered to. The provincial motor vehicle acts are civil, regulatory statutes. If I disobey, if I do not register or have insurance, I am committing an offence, but at no point will I be subject to criminal level proceedings or acquire a criminal record with all the implcations that has for employment and international travel. It’s this odour of criminality for non-compliance with what, to many average slobs both rural and urban, are bureaucratic paper-work demands, that turns this issue into a symbolic one.

Perhaps it’s for this reason that Liberal MP Wayne Easter, a former Sol-Gen in charge of the registry for a time, has talked about “de-criminalizing” it, borrowing language from another debate. However, a non-criminal statute, even if it met with greater compliance by gun-owners, would not have the support of the gun control advocacy groups. A regulatory statute would not meet their political and personal needs.

I would suggest that the federal justice department wanted to make all parts of the long-gun registry a criminal matter for several reasons, some good, some weak. They wanted to create a class of open-and-shut cases to use against career criminals caught with an arsenal of unregistered weapons, probably not a bad idea. But they also wanted to make it easy on themselves in terms of resisting any constitutional challenge from the provinces (Alberta principally) by invoking criminal law jurisdiction.

But the real motivation for making it a criminal law came at the political level, among Liberal party eletion strategists, as outlined in a Jan 2003 Globe and Mail article by John Dixon, a former aide to the DM of Justice during Kim Campbell’s tenure as Minister. Liberal Red Book authors wanted to pass a statute that rural people would dislike and rail against, because that would create the political theatrics the Liberals needed to cement their support in urban/metropolitan ridings. For many years it has worked wonders for them and to some degree still does.

I wish there were free access to Dixon’s article on the Globe and Mail site, but there isn’t. So I will just have to refer people to a copy of this column on a site run by some admittedly extremist type. Unfortunate, but that’s what’s out there.

http://www.lowe.ca/Rick/FirearmsLegislation/AGangThatCouldn’tShootStraight.html

Anyone who is naive enough to think that the search for symbolic “wedge” issues in this area of public policy is a one-sided preserve of the Conservatives and the far-right is being used quite ruthlessly by some very clever and self-interested people.

Personally, I think it’s a bit disturbing to watch these Liberal hacks wrapping themselves not only in the flag, pretending to be in a battle to the death with the NRA and the Republicans, but also in the bloodied garments of actual murder victims. Apparently when there’s an election to be won and votes to be rallied in the Liberal’s critical GTA donut-belt, the standards of conduct are simple: If it works, use it!

Dennis replies: Thanks for your comments Rod. My posting on the gun registry has elicited more response, much of it in private emails to me rather than comments on the blog, than I have received on any other piece in two years. I have read Mr. Dixon’s article, using the URL that you provide. I notice that he provides no documentation, other than his own opinion, that the Liberals used the gun registry as a wedge issue against Kim Campbell. I notice, too, that Wendy Cukier of the Coalition for Gun Control, who Mr. Dixon says supported Ms. Campbell’s attempts at gun legislation, is a supporter of the current long gun registry and she opposes the Private Members Bill that would do away with it. In any event, it is good to be talking to each other, rather than past one another, on this imporrtant question.

Facts of recent study known, but purposely held back until after the vote took place: the registry is now used by police over 10.000 times a day, and is now 1/3 under budget. Perhaps it may have been far more cost effective at first (and may have been more so in the hands of other programmers), but to destroy all the information compiled and to get rid of the registry now that police tell us it is under budget and working would be far more wasteful.

Fact: long guns are used in majority of gun related suicide & spousal related homicides. Women are over 80% more likely to be the victim of these kinds of homicides, just as they were the targets in the massacre. It is not an unfair comparison. That “fringe group” called women now have one more in a long list of reasons to feel threatened by this administration.

People are 7 times less likely to be killed by gun shot in Canada than in the US. Please help keep it that way. The long gun registry was in part in inspired by the Montreal Massacres. Families of victims have called it a monument to their daughters. Please don’t let misinformation win.

Well I can turn that around and say,how do you know our “communities”(I use quotes because most people do not even know their neighbors) are safer,or can be made safer,by having people register their long-guns ? Statistics can be read in many different ways,indeed are.
Also using the Montreal massacre as a cudgel to be used against those that argue against long-gun registration is just plain wrong,it reeks of holier than thou type thinking.
All said, personally I do not believe gun registration makes us safer,what ever safer means.
Life can be a risk…that said there is nothing wrong with trying to lower risks associated with certain activities,behaviors etc etc.But education & information campaigns are the way to go, not more regulations,threats,laws,fines etc,etc…
After all we are all adults,the vast majority of people have not hurt anyone, nor do they have any desire to hurt anyone.

Once again, they have brought up the gun registry. You correctly point out that there is nothing stopping people from owning guns - they just have register them.

We register cars, houses and our salaries - why not a lethal weapon.

The gun-stuff is a nice distraction from the economy, H1N1, not to mention the Conservative logo appearing on government-issued cheques.

They haven’t brought up a woman’s right to choose or homosexuality in the last little while, so keep your ears tuned for it - just as soon as the gunplay settles down a bit!

They’re cynical bastards and we should call them out on it - except we keep falling for it and walk awaythinking how morally superior we all are.

Dennis replies: Thanks for your comment Richard. Actually, I can’t, and don’t, claim to be a colleague of NDP MPs because it is now nine years since I sat in the House of Commons. Without letting anyone off of the hook, I think we should remember who introduced this Bill to get rid of the firearms registry. It was the Conservatives. It is they who must bear the major responsbility for threatening to dismantle a registry that, after a shaky and expensive launch in the 1990s, has been been working well. It is an important tool to protect the safety of people in our communities and the safety of police officers called to the scene of crimes and domestic disputes. The Conservatives, it seems, are opposed to safe communities. I hope constituents, particularly in urban areas, give their Conservative MPs an earful.