Support for gun registry is missing the target
* pointofview
Posted By DAVE BREAKENRIDGE
Posted 2 months ago
Canada is nearing a sad milestone, one that is sure to stoke long-simmering anger, especially considering recent parliamentary goings-on.
It is a raw nerve left exposed for 20 years, and understandably so.
Dec. 6 will mark the 20th anniversary of a truly dark day. Before Columbine, before Virginia Tech, we had L'Ecole Polytechnique.
Marc Lepine went on a murderous rampage at the college, killing 14 women and wounding many other students and staff.
In the wake of the massacre, families of the victims channelled their grief and anger into efforts to prevent similar losses of life in the future.
The result of that was the ill-fated long-gun registry.
However well-intentioned the efforts were, the gun registry was rightly labelled a boondoggle, and the Conservative government vowed for years to eliminate it, finally taking a large step in that direction this fall.
But there are calls from women's groups in Quebec, using the sad milestone as reasoning, that the long gun registry be saved from what is a long-deserved death.
Alexa Conradi, president of the Federation des femmes du Quebec, said Monday the Liberals and NDP were exercising a surprising lack of political leadership to allow the killing of the gun registry to happen.
Nowhere in her plea does she offer a case of a similar tragedy -- and it still ranks among our greatest tragedies -- being prevented because of the gun registry.
The Dawson College tragedy happened. Four Mounties still died at Mayerthorpe.
And an Edmonton man was still able to walk into a government building, armed with a rifle, and take several hostages.
The debate around the gun registry and its place in the sad legacy of Lepine's hatred comes as today marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
One-third of women murdered in 2008 were killed by a spouse or ex-spouse, and countless other women are brutalized by their partners.
There's no argument the problem of domestic violence is a long way from being solved.
But the gun registry won't make any of that go away.
