Jack Layton has a plan for the gun registry. It’s a great plan, says he. A compromise for all Canadians that all can live with. He’s going to drop the criminal prohibition for first-time non-compliers, drop registration fees and respect native treaties and the privacy rights of all gun owners. He’s really proud of the plan. And in an alternate universe where it might have actually been possible to enact it, maybe it even would have worked.
Sadly for Mr. Layton, in this universe, his plan is a fiction, a farce. His proposal to save the gun registry requires him to introduce a compromise bill, which will then need to be debated, read three times, approved by the Senate and then given Royal Assent … all in the two days before the registry’s fate will be decided when the Conservative-backed “private member’s bill” comes up for third reading on Sept. 22. Of course, Mr. Layton — an intelligent, seasoned politician — knows his plan doesn’t have a snowball’s chance. But that’s OK. Because he doesn’t intend for it to succeed. It’s just a political ploy.
Ploys are nothing new in politics, but this is a somewhat novel one. It’s aimed not at the government or even the other opposition parties, but at a third of his own caucus — the 12 NDP MP’s who voted against keeping the registry last time and who are expected to do the same this month. Layton knows that these 12 NDP members, representing rural ridings where the registry is loathed with fiery passion, cannot support the registry as-is and hope to be re-elected. So, by dreaming up this compromise, he’s trying to give them something — anything — that they can take back to their constituents and say, “Yes, I voted for keeping the registry today, but only so that I can reform it later in a way that will address your concerns! Please re-elect me.”
It’s a neat idea, but it won’t work. Layton, like Michael Ignatieff, fundamentally misunderstands why the registry is so hated by millions of Canadians. It’s not about a fee here or there, or having to fill out a few forms. It’s because the registry, from its very inception, has symbolized the distrust of the so-called “liberal elites” for anyone so retrograde as to own a gun.
The arguments for and against the registry have been rehashed ad infinitum and will be so again in the run up to the vote, so we’ll skip that here. All that needs saying is that by its very rationale — making the public and police safer by collecting information on individuals and their property — the registry could only ever serve to alienate those that it targets. Any law-abiding citizen, if told they must fill out paperwork and submit private information to the government for the safety of society cannot help but feel that society has passed judgment upon them and deemed them somehow dangerous.
Consider, as well, the historical background to the creation of the registry. It was, and remains, a political monument to the victims of the Montreal massacre, a tangible demonstration that the Liberal party is against mass shootings. Never mind the fact that the registry likely wouldn’t have prevented Marc Lepine’s rampage, or that the rifle he used, even under the registry, is subject to the lowest level of scrutiny and restriction. The Liberals, under Jean Chretien, saw a chance to capitalize on the public’s shock and outrage surrounding the brutal murder of those 14 women and created the registry to show voters how seriously they took the issue of gun violence. Once again, a political ploy.
But this political ploy was aimed at millions of Canadians, those who own firearms, and were as equally horrified by Lepine’s actions as any. And suddenly, government bureaucrats — backed by the power of criminal sanction — were nosing around their business, insisting that they register their property so as to prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again. How could they not conclude that they were being grouped with Lepine, lumped together in an association of murderous psychopaths-in-waiting because they happen to own a rifle. It’s collective punishment aimed at gun owners, and they are — understandably — furious.
Lawful gun owners don’t want the registry scrapped to save themselves a few minutes of paperwork now and then. They want this symbol of unfairness, of the suspicion their government regards them with, destroyed, so that they don’t have to feel like pariahs anymore. Everything that has happened since — the massive cost overruns, the bureaucratic nightmares, the lost documentation and constant data-entry errors, not to mention the Liberal flip-flop on their promise to never use the registry to try and ban guns (Paul Martin’s 2005 proposed handgun ban) — has merely added to the sense of outrage felt by millions of law-abiding Canadians.
Jack Layton and Michael Ignatieff are politicians, and have to balance many competing interests within their own parties while still trying to appeal to the broadest possible segment of the electorate. But on the gun registry, their political instincts are simply wrong. In the eyes of the gun-owning Canadians these compromise measures are aimed at, the registry has and always will be an insult aimed at their very moral character and mental balance, one made all the worse by coming to symbolize government waste and crass politics. Tweaking it here or there in an attempt to make it palatable to these voters is a lost cause.
It’s too late to redeem the registry. Either it gets scrapped or the political parties that support it must pay the consequences. Michael Ignatieff has come to accept this after his own earlier hopes to make the registry work for rural Canadians, which is why he’s simply whipping his caucus to vote for its preservation. He’ll pay the consequences in the rural ridings and accept as a trade-off the opportunity have a little culture war and tell urban Canadians that Harper is soft on guns. Jack Layton should be honest with himself and his caucus and do the same. In or out, sir. The registry is far too hated with way too much justification to permit anything else.
National Post
mgurney@nationalpost.com
CKA Moderator 
CKA Moderator 
CKA Uber 
