Scrapped gun bill targeted the wrong people

Why does this matter?

Because that horrible event, commonly known as the “Montreal Massacre,” continues to be shamelessly exploited by the two aforementioned groups. Every time the subject of either violence against women or gun control makes the national agenda, the spectre of Lepine is thrown around as if this singular mad man a)-is representative of all Canadian men and b)-as if gun control laws would have stopped him.

Last week’s House of Commons vote to scrap the billion-dollar boondoggle called the long-gun registry has once again energized those who long ago decided that Lepine was a convenient poster boy for the sort of left-wing agenda they would impose upon us all.

They refuse to accept the fact that the long gun registry has been a costly failure - a way of penalizing lawabiding gun owners while doing nothing to stop criminals who own guns, and - duh! - obviously don’t register them.

It has also been used as a convenient way to demonize men - not just Lepine - but all men, as if we just can’t wait for the opportunity to beat up those women who are closest to us.

A typical reaction came in a letter to the Globe and Mail from Julie Mason of Ottawa, a veteran NDP activist, who wrote that she was “deeply ashamed” of her party for allowing 12 NDP MPs to vote with the Tories (along with eight Liberal MPs) to scrap the long-gun registry, adding, “My thoughts are with 14 young women in Montreal, shot by a long gun, whose memory was desecrated by the vote.”

What has one to do with the other? The only thing that desecrates the memory of those 14 murdered women is to suggest that the long-gun registry could have changed the course of history and to exploit that horrible tragedy for partisan ideological goals.

Keep in mind that when James Roszko killed four Mounties at Mayerthorpe, Alta. In 2005 - while the gun registry was in full force - three of the four guns he carried were unregistered and the fourth was registered to another person. Roszko has been banned from owning guns but - surprise, surprise -people intent on the criminal use of firearms aren’t concerned about the bureaucratic details of registration.

How many people on their way to rob a bank, say, will suddenly realize, “oh no, I can’t rob the bank. My gun isn’t registered?.”

Scrapping the registry does not mean the end of all controls over guns. For one thing, the handgun registry remains - although it too has had little, if any, impact on crime - and all gun owners will still require a licence and have to pass safety and background checks and follow the stringent rules of gun storage.

Yet even people who know this aren’t above distorting the truth to make their case in favour of the useless longgun registry.

Take Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, for example, who recently made a big production of the seizure of a private gun collection, inferring it is a key part of his “Project Safe City,” when it had nothing to do with crime, and everything to do with the simple expiration of a firearms permit.

Blair used the occasion to lobby the Commons to vote against the bill to scrap the registry, which he claims - with precious little evidence to back it up - is a valuable police tool in the fight against crime.

But Blair knows that the vote was simply to scrap the long-gun registry, not to end the licensing provisions.

He also knows more than 90 percent of firearms crimes involve illegal handguns, demonstrating how ineffective registries really are.

Another thing. Much media reportage focussed on the alleged rural-versus-urban scenario to explain why the majority of MPs voted against the registry. While most (but not all) of the 20 NDP and Liberals who voted with the government represent rural ridings, most of the 144 Tories come from such non-rural settings as Vancouver, Calgary and Quebec City.

What their critics are really saying is that because MPs from Toronto and Montreal support the registry, anybody who doesn’t is a “rural,” i.e. a country rube. (Not to mention anti-woman and pro-violence.)

For the record, no, I do not own a gun. But I know many people who do, both hunters and target shooters, and they’re not the people the police and society in general need to worry about.

It’s the bad guys, stupid. The ones who wouldn’t be caught dead registering their weapons.