On the day OPP Constable Vu Pham was shot by a rifle-toting gunman, Conservative MPs were deflecting questions from the opposition about their bill to kill the long-gun registry.
On the day Pham’s wife and children lost a devoted husband and father, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told the House of Commons that the rifle registry is “waste of Canadian taxpayer money.”
On the day Pham was killed while responding to a “domestic” call, Helena Guergis, Minister of State for the Status of Women, rose up in Parliament to boast of the government’s “leadership on domestic violence.”
Two days later, the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre, executive vice-president of the powerful gun lobby, would tell his members in an online piece titled “Standing Guard,” that Canada’s abolishing the gun registry is “proof that freedom will ultimately win out.”
On that same day, Candice Hoeppner, the Manitoba Conservative MP who last May introduced the bill to kill the registry, would write, in an opinion piece published by the London Free Press, “The long-gun registry is a massive Liberal policy failure and it needs to end. It makes no sense to force law-abiding individuals with firearms licences to register their long-guns. It makes no sense to believe the registry will prevent a gun crime from taking place.”
The Coalition for Gun Control/Pour le Controle des Armes 