If long-tun registry is broken, just fix it
When I was a kid, I walked into our hometown hardware store and bought a Lee Enfield .303. The Lee Enfield was the main weapon of British and Canadian soldiers in two world wars; with alterations to the heavy wooden stock, it became an effective hunting rifle.
It had an eight- or 10-round detachable magazine, as I recall, and packed quite a wallop. It tended to be a bit finicky accuracy-wise, but, all in all, it was an efficient killing machine.
Though it might have killed some people in war, I don’t remember it hitting anything other than tin cans while in my possession, partly because neither I nor the rifle was very accurate, and because I soon gave up on the whole notion of killing things as a legitimate hobby.
When I think about it, though, the ease with which I became the owner of a high-powered killing weapon is a bit scary. No training was required, no permit for the gun, no rules on storage.
You walked into a store, laid down your money, and left with a rifle, tossing it in the back seat of your jalopy or carrying it home.
Some might call that the good old days. Things are different now. Now, you have to go through quite a rigmarole to own and keep a long gun. Rules, lots of them. Some would like to see a return to the good old days; at least the days before long-gun registration.
The return to work by our MPs started out with an exchange in the House yesterday on the long-gun registry, a preview of what’s to come tomorrow when they vote on whether to keep it or scrap it.
The Conservatives want to scrap it, though I haven’t yet figured out how that fits in with their avowed determination to get tough on crime. Opposition parties appear to have the numbers now to keep the registry, though changes to it are likely.
But the fight will only recess to another day, a month, a year or five years from now. Central to the argument against a registry is that “criminals don’t register their guns.”
Okay, but there’s a first time for every criminal. The objective of a long-gun registry is to do something about the first-timers who use legal rifles and shotguns to do something bad.
Restricting handguns isn’t enough. Most deaths involving firearms are caused by rifles and shotguns, not handguns.
Every cop knows that one of the most dangerous calls to answer is a domestic dispute. Knowing whether or not there are firearms in the house is important information, and a registry is the only way to get it.
Being able to make a home safer via a pre-emptive removal of firearms when a family is degenerating toward violence can also be a lifesaver.
Let’s not forget, either, that many suicides of “law-abiding citizens” are carried out with long guns. Most, by the way, occur in rural areas, the supposed stronghold of anti-gun-registry sentiment.
The fact guns are registered isn’t always going to be enough, and nobody’s saying otherwise. But the police chiefs of Canada, as well as doctors and victims’ groups, believe it’s an important tool against the use of firearms for criminal purposes.
And the poll that supposedly showed rank-and-file police oppose the registry has pretty much been discredited.
A few years ago, there was an incident in a rural area not far from Kamloops in which a young man holed up in a house threatening to shoot people.
More recently, a teen killed himself with a rifle.
In the first case, the situation was diffused without harm. I’m guessing one of the first things police did was to check the registry to see what guns were in the house.
In the second case, had authorities been aware this young person was at risk, they could have checked the registry. They weren’t, but without a registry there’s less chance of heading off a tragedy in such a situation.
If the registry is wasteful and inefficient, fix it through the politics of cooperation. Instead, the Tories are playing the politics of division, rolling the dice in hopes of scoring an advantage by painting supporters of the registry as urbanites out of touch with rural constituents.
I’d say it’s the Tories who are out of touch.
mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca
ArmchairMayor.ca 
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