Long-gun registry issue still bothers rural voters

HIGH RIVER, Alta. - The sticker on the rear window of the blue Ford half-ton pickup sums up the views of its owner: "If They Take My Gun It Will Be HOT & EMPTY."

Don Wayne, 49, is a proud gun owner, a proud Conservative and a proud antagonist of the law that says he must register his impressive collection of rifles and shotguns.

"The only ones that are for it are people who don't have guns and don't like guns," Wayne says as he handles a 12-gauge pump shotgun. "It has nothing to do with the gun owner and it has nothing to do with crime."

Public debate over the federal long-gun registry may have faded in recent years, but out West -- and especially in rural areas like High River south of Calgary -- it's still a hot topic of discussion during the election campaign.

Despite a series of amnesties the minority Conservative government has put in place that protect gun owners from prosecution, many who oppose the registry are upset that registration laws for rifles and shotguns remain on the books.

Some, like Wayne, doubt Stephen Harper and his Conservative party -- hungry to build a better base of support in urban Ontario and Quebec -- will follow through with scrapping the registry should they win a majority on Oct. 14.

"It's a shame that our government has been so God damn spineless over the years that they can't do what they say. They all brag about what they're going to do and they get in and they do nothing. They use these excuses that the opposition is holding them back," he said.

"That should be front and centre on his political agenda this time. He hasn't even mentioned it so it's been put on the back burner and he doesn't care."

The dispute over the gun registry dates back to the Liberal government of Jean Chretien and a decision to include long guns in the registration system that had long applied to handguns and assault-like weapons.

The most fervent critics were in the West -- hunters and farmers who saw their guns as tools more then weapons.

The long-gun component of the registry was supposed to be largely self-financing beyond the $2 million in start-up fees.

But in 2006, the auditor general found the actual cost of the registry was nearly $1 billion for the first decade of operation.

In government, the minority Conservatives introduced legislation that would abolish the requirement to register long guns, but it was never brought to a vote because there was no support from the opposition parties.

Instead, the government instituted a series of amnesties and fee wavers that essentially protected long-gun owners from criminal liability for failing to register their firearms.

Conservatives acknowledge the discontent from some that the registry is still around.

"My constituents phone me on a regular basis and ask me why we haven't gotten it done," Alberta MP Ted Menzies confirmed in an interview prior to the election call.

And it doesn't appear the party has backed down from its position.

The Conservatives have quietly sent out brochures to specific rural ridings across the country promising that the gun registry will be dumped.

"We're scrapping it" says a brochure sent by Gord Brown, Conservative MP for Leeds-Grenville, a largely rural Ontario riding between Kingston and Ottawa.

"This Conservative government is scrapping the useless Liberal long-gun registry. We are taking real action to crack down on gun crime. We will not harass law-abiding hunters and farmers," it reads

It all boils down to politics, says Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto and long-time proponent of the registry.

"They're using a very targeted strategy to communicate this position to selected voters and arguably not to draw attention to it in other parts of the country," Cukier says.

"There's a lot of effort to obscure what's going on with respect to firearms. I think Harper knows that while gun control may not be popular among his core voters -- in order to get a majority, he needs to attract women voters, he needs to attract Quebecers and he needs to get more votes in big cities."

Despite the amnesties, the registry is still very much being used by police forces who access it 8,000 times a day, Cukier says.

Many detachments access the registry on a daily basis, confirmed an RCMP spokesman in Calgary.

"It is extremely useful, especially in domestic situations and an essential part of the checks before you arrive on the scene is to check for possible weapons," says Sgt. Patrick Webb.

"If it was abolished it would impact on the safety of attending a lot of these violent calls."

George Duffy, founder of Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta, says gun owners have been finding ways around the registry.

"A lot of firearms owners went out and said, `I own one gun or two guns' and they have 15. I would almost venture to say that about half of the firearms owners got licences just so they could buy ammunition," says Duffy who estimates only 20 per cent of the guns in Canada are registered.

Ted Feller, owner and operator of Marksman Guns and Sports Ltd. in Lethbridge, Alta., says his customers have "jumped through hoops" trying to obey the law, but doubts the benefit.

"There's no need for the long guns to be registered at all. They're just trying to track down where you or me are taking or storing our rifle or shotgun for hunting. There's no need for that at all," says Feller.

Wayne did register a new rifle that he bought recently, but what about his others?

"No. I've owned them for a lot of years and some were my dad's guns handed down, as well as my grandfather's shotgun," he says. "They say, `well, you can't keep that stuff' -- well, it's been in my family for a lot of years and it ain't going nowhere."