Vote to kill gun registry exposes rural-urban split

OTTAWA — From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Nov. 05, 2009 12:00AM EST Last updated on Thursday, Nov. 05, 2009 2:25AM EST

The House of Commons dealt a major blow to the federal long gun registry last night as 20 Liberal and NDP MPs broke ranks with their leaders to endorse a Conservative bill that would bring the program to an end.

The vote exposed clear splits among Liberals and New Democrats along rural and urban lines, as the 12 NDP and eight Liberal MPs who voted with the Conservatives were primarily from rural ridings.

Many of them had been the target of an aggressive Conservative lobbying campaign that flooded their ridings with anti-registry pamphlets from Tory MPs, as well as Conservative Party radio ads.

"I was just blown away by the support we got," said Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz, who led the battle against the registry while in opposition. He helped write the private member's bill that won approval last night to be studied by a committee. "I'm relieved after 15 years, finally we get some action on one of the biggest boondoggles in Canadian history."

Both Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and NDP Leader Jack Layton gave their MPs a free vote, even though both party heads officially support the registry.

After the vote, the two parties were sharply criticized by Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, who was in the House of Commons.

"It's appalling," she told reporters yesterday evening. "It wasn't even close. You had urban MPs not stand up for gun control. ... Many Canadians are going to wake up [today], I predict, and will be absolutely horrified."

Conservatives expected the vote to be close. They were clearly surprised by the size of the 164 to 137 win.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Ignatieff said he supported decriminalizing the federal long-gun registry.

In the highly polarized debate that has raged in Ottawa for years, Mr. Ignatieff said his party is working on a proposal that would find a middle ground.

One of the main criticisms of the registry is that law-abiding hunters could, in theory, become criminals for failing to properly fill out the registry paperwork.

Neither Mr. Ignatieff nor his staff would offer further details, but past advocates of decriminalizing the registry have suggested the criminal provisions could be replaced with non-criminal fines.

"It's not the end of the registry tonight," Mr. Ignatieff said yesterday, dismissing the vote as "mischief" on the part of the Conservatives. "The fundamental issue is to make sure that we get a system of gun control which works both for rural Canada and for urban Canada."

Yesterday's close vote was triggered by a private member's bill from Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, who took up measures proposed earlier by Mr. Breitkreuz. The bill is essentially the same as a Conservative bill introduced in the Senate but not moved for debate.

If further debate on Ms. Hoeppner's bill moves quickly, the Conservatives' efforts to scrap the long-gun registry could succeed before Parliament's summer recess in June. The bill's future will also depend on whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper fills upcoming vacancies in the Senate so that the Conservatives outnumber the opposition in 2010.

The bill, if passed, would eliminate the requirement to register hunting rifles but would maintain the registry for prohibited or restricted weapons such as handguns.

Many rural opposition MPs bristled in recent weeks at the attacks from Conservatives in their ridings, but still voted for the Tory bill.

One Tory flyer mailed into the Timmins-James Bay riding, held by NDP MP Charlie Angus, pictured Mr. Ignatieff, Mr. Layton and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe above a heading stating: Attacking Farmers and Hunters.

Mr. Angus was among the 12 New Democrats who sided with the Conservatives yesterday.

"Every day, people bring [the flyers] into my office and say, 'Tell these guys to stop using our taxpayers' dollars to lie to us,' " Mr. Angus said.

By: Bill Curry, The Globe & Mail Canada

NRA: Don't let adoption agencies ask about guns in homes

The Nation Rifle Association is pushing legislation to ban adoption agencies from asking potential parents if they have guns and ammunition in the home.

NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer said adoption agencies are violating gun owners' rights by asking about firearms in an adoption form. She said any request about gun ownership from an agency connected with government is tantamount to establishing a gun registry.

"Gun registration is illegal in Florida," Hammer said. "An adoption agency has no right to subvert the privacy rights of gun owners."

The issue flared up in Brevard County where a gun-owning couple took umbrage at a request from the Children's Home Society that they disclose if they had firearms before adopting a child.

The couple complained to a lawyer, who called Hammer. She said it would be easier to change the law than to sue.

A spokeswoman for the Children's Home Society, Liz Bruner, said the agency asks about guns because it was required to by the state Department of Children and Families.

"If they don't want us to ask about it, we won't," Bruner said. "We're trying to get an updated form to use, but there's a gray area over what (form) we can use."

Bruner said that because the state child-welfare system is privatized, Children's Home Society is a subcontractor for a subcontractor and, therefore, communication with the state agency can be challenging.

DCF officials say they're not sure about what form the society is using and plan to make sure that all subcontractors are using the same forms. Some of the newer adoption forms don't ask prospective parents if they own guns.

Sen. Thad Altman, R-Melbourne, said his bill will make it clear that asking about guns isn't allowed.

If the gun bill is as successful as others pushed by the NRA in the Legislature, it'll likely pass.

Some longtime NRA opponents, like Democratic Sen. Nan Rich, said she didn't like the idea of banning an agency from simply asking about gun ownership.

"Parents frequently ask if other parents have guns in the home before their kids play there, so why can't an adoption agency just ask?" Rich said.

By: Marc Caputo, The St. Petersburg Times

Gun owners cheer at Corzine ouster, overlook Bloomberg?s 3rd term

The final scene in Patton, in which the general is walking his dog across a German landscape as George C. Scott does a voice-over immediately came to mind after an election night that cost New Jersey’s insanely anti-gun Gov. Jon Corzine his job after one term.
“For over a thousand years,” Patton said, “Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”

Left in office for a third term sure to be filled with anti-gun shenanigans was New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
So the glory of seeing Corzine booted from office didn’t last long on a national scale. However, it lasted long enough for embattled New Jersey gun owners to savor the fact that they are rid of a man who not only jacked up their property taxes to the highest in the nation, but also interfered with a much-needed black bear hunting season, signed one-gun-a-month legislation and imposed other sanctions on law-abiding gun owners that would be considered nothing short of tyranny on this side of the Mississippi River.

That Corzine will be gone from Trenton soon is a good thing for the Garden State gun owner. His single term in office was a disaster for the state’s economy and its taxpayers, and even several campaign appearances with Barack Obama couldn’t save him from well-deserved voter wrath. The acid test of the new Christie administration will be whether the Republican governor will be able to cajole state lawmakers into repealing some of the onerous laws that Corzine signed, for that is what is necessary.

Bloomberg is another matter. Whether he will invent a job for outgoing Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels at the Mayors Against Illegal Guns is still a matter of conjecture. That he will continue his relentless campaign to push the entire country into adopting Draconian New York-style gun laws appears to be a sure thing.

Nickels – who is leaving his office at the end of this year with a lawsuit pending against the city over his illegal gun ban – has yet to disclose his future plans. Perhaps he will land a job with Dow Constantine, who was apparently the winner in the King County executive’s race.

By: Dave Workman, Seattle Gun Rights Examiner