All firearm owners must unite to oppose registry

Now on the eve of the deadline for gun registration, Allan Rock’s promised price tag of $85 million for public safety approaches a billion dollars without a significant reduction in gun-related crimes.

Canada has been registering handguns for over 60 years and it hasn’t kept handguns out of the hands of criminals. Yet the Liberals ignore the evidence, continue work on the registry, all the while threatening to turn lawful firearm owners into criminals if they don’t register their long guns.

The last few months have been very stressful for lawful firearm owners in Canada. They cannot understand why their trusted government would treat them with such contempt. Despite more than a decade of attacks on the lawful firearm owner, too many are still afraid of a government supposedly elected to serve them.

The responsible firearm community lost the long gun registration battle because it preached to the converted, promoted the wrong message to the wrong audience and lobbied the wrong people. The only way to combat what we believe is wrong is to stand up, unite and fight back using everything at our disposal.

If the responsible firearm community wants to get the job done, it needs to unite through the creation of a new national organization comprised of all the firearm groups. We need to get our best minds together, stop the bickering and fighting over individual turf, and put the interests of lawful firearm owners first. Then we need to lobby hard.

Professor Al Dorans of the Recreational Firearm Community in Ottawa has been promoting this idea over the last many months. I’ve been in this fight for over a decade, and it’s been all downhill. We can’t give up.

We must be prepared to make a huge mental shift. Don’t hold your breath for the Liberals to reverse their position on long gun firearm registration. It will take a change in government before any positive changes occur.

The wisest path for the firearm community to follow now is to unite in preparation to take on all future governments.

Inky Mark
Ottawa
inkymark@mb.sympatico.ca

Editor’s note: Inky Mark is the Progessive Conservative member of Parliament for Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette in Manitoba.