Harper sticks to plans to scrap gun registry
Date: Sep 16, 2006 9:59 AM
PUBLICATION: The Toronto Star
DATE: 2006.09.16
EDITION: MET
SECTION: News
PAGE: A08
BYLINE: Tonda MacCharles
SOURCE: Toronto Star
ILLUSTRATION: Ryan Remiorz CP A student is overcome with emotion at
amakeshift memorial in front of Montreal’s Dawson College yesterday. A
gunman killed one person and wounded about 20 before killing himself on
Wednesday.
WORD COUNT: 400

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Harper sticks to plans to scrap gun registry

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The government will press ahead with plans to scrap the gun registry as
promised, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has indicated in a radio
interview to be broadcast today. “The unfortunate reality” is the
federal gun registry failed to prevent the tragedy at Dawson College,
Harper told CBC Radio’s The House.

Harper first stressed it is important to have “all the facts” before
deciding any public policy response.

He said he was “as shocked as anyone else” at the chilling information
that emerged about the killer, Kimveer Gill, who entered the Montreal
college Wednesday brandishing a semi-automatic weapon and two other
guns.

“How could such an individual get such an arsenal of weapons – I think
it’s truly shocking. And one presumes there is something we can do about
that,” said the Prime Minister. “But let’s find out the facts and
make
sure that our actions fit the facts. A decade ago people ran out and
created a gun registry that, in fact, didn’t do anything to prevent
these kinds of tragedies and did so at an enormous cost. We want to make
sure that what we do is actually effective.”

Moments later, however, when asked about Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s
opposition to dismantling the gun registry, and the potential negative
reaction from Quebec voters to the plan, Harper said, “well, the reason
we were told we were going to have a registry was to prevent these very
types of tragedies, and Premier Charest, at the time, and myself and
many others concluded the registry wouldn’t work and the unfortunate
reality is that’s been shown to be correct.”

“I think what Quebecers want is the same thing as other Canadians. They
want public policies that are effective.”

His Quebec political lieutenant, Michael Fortier, went further, after
meeting with Dawson College staff yesterday.

“The gun registry that will be abolished is the long-gun registry,”
Fortier told reporters in Montreal. He described it as a registry that
targets hunters’ long guns, and failed to prevent criminals such as the
gunman from acting.

“So this has nothing to with the arms that I understand were used in
this situation which were registered, which is what I’m told, and were
held legally, again I’m told, by this individual, so we’re talking about
two very different issues.

“This situation, even if the long-gun registry had continued to apply,
wouldn’t have changed anything. The individual would have owned and
would have used these weapons regardless because he was using them under
a different registry.”

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !