The Hysterics of the Far-Left Anti-Gun Lobby

It's useless to speak logic to those who will not reciprocate

Following news that NDP leader Jack Layton will not whip his MPs to oppose a private member's bill that would abolish the long gun registry, Canada's far-left anti-gun lobby is ratcheting up the pressure on Layton.

As usual, they don't bother to offer any logical arguments -- instead, they insist on appealing to the emotions of Canadians.

At a recent event, Dawson College shooting victim Hayder Khadim, among others, spoke out in frustration.

"It makes me feel like he is playing a political game," Khadim complained. "I mean, in front of us, he is a completely strong advocate of gun control — someone who you feel would be one of the strongest to impose a party line or anything like that, to make sure the gun registry would be saved."

Khadim naturally failed to mention that the weapon Kimveer Gil used to shoot him was a registered firearm. He declined to mention this for an important reason:

Regardless of what Khadim has to say about it, the gun registry didn't prevent Kimveer Gil from planning his assault on Dawson College. It didn't prevent him from clicking the safety off, or pulling the trigger. Nor did help police prevent the shooting, because the shooting was not prevented.

One certainly remembers that the left-wing anti-gun lobby insists that the long gun registry has saved lives. Yet neither they, nor the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, can name a single incident in which the long gun registry prevented a gun crime.

Not one single, solitary case.

Front-line police officers -- who actually respond to and investigate violent crimes -- know this.

The troubling thing is that it should be surprising to find that Hayder Khadim doesn't know this either. After all, the bullet that struck him in the neck -- fired from the barrel of a registered firearm -- should have been a massive reality check for him.

Somehow, it wasn't.

Nor do these facts seemt to sink far into the head of NDP MP Thomas Mulcair.

"I know, as does Mr Layton, that to destroy the gun registry is to destroy lives, so we don't need to be convinced on this," Mulcair announced.

But the tipping point for Mulcair's argument -- and sadly, it tips away from reality -- is that if the long gun registry has never saved a life (although some other measures introduced at the same time as the registry have clearly prevented some gun crimes), then the abolition of the registry cannot be found to destroy lives.

It's merely another emotion-based argument from someone who clearly has little interest in considering this issue logically.

Much like the L'Ecole Polytechnique victims and families, who insist that the long gun registry is a monument to them and their loved ones. Canadians who are interested in discussing gun control logically, however, will offer them a deal.

Build another real monument to the L'Ecole Polytechnique victims, as well as to the Dawson College victims. It will be a real gun control that actually controls guns.

Maybe then these people will finally shut up about their precious long gun registry.