Gun registry an insult to their memory

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/12/2011 (5409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THIS week was the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. It passed without much notice, in the Canadian media at least, even though 2,400 people were killed and America was propelled into the Second World War — ensuring an Allied victory over Germany and Japan. The rest is history and, like most history, is quickly forgotten — even though we live with its consequences and its benefits or blights every day.

This week was also the 22nd anniversary of the Montreal massacre, Dec. 6, 1989, when Marc Lepine went through that city’s Ecole Polytechnique with a Ruger Mini-14 rifle, killing 14 women. We commemorate that day every year.

In fact, it is pretty well impossible to forget, not just because of the horror of what happened 22 years ago, but because we still live with one of its consequences: hundreds of thousands of Canadians are endlessly reminded of it by the long-gun registry.

The long-gun registry, requiring gun owners to register their weapons and supplicant gun buyers to pass personal inspection before receiving permits to purchase, was passed by the federal Liberal government of the day as a political response to the genuine shock and grief and anger that was felt by Canadians at the time. It was politically popular in the urban centres of Ontario and Quebec, where few people own guns, and avidly advocated by feminists, few of whom hunt or collect guns.

In the rest of the country, it was not so eagerly received, but instead was widely regarded as an unwarranted intrusion into the lives of law-abiding citizens and an extraordinary waste of time and money.

It has also become a bit of a political football, with the Liberals supporting the registry, the NDP split over it and the Conservatives adamantly opposed to it. Sadly, the main reason we commemorate the massacre today is because every year there are demonstrations demanding this useless piece of legislation be retained.

That was the case this week, although it was perhaps more stridently expressed than usual because the Conservatives, now with a majority, are about to abolish the gun registry; to consign it to the ashcan of acts that never should have been passed by Parliament.

The registry never did any good. Marc Lepine legally purchased the Ruger Mini-14 he used in the massacre. Ironically, he could have bought another Ruger Mini-14 today, since it is still a legal long gun.

So what is the point of all this? Let’s get rid of the registry and then, perhaps, we can remember Dec. 6, 1989, just for what it truly was — a sad moment of horror in the history of Canada.