Parliament readies for gun-control shoot-out

Dismissal of the RCMP’s firearms chief paves the way for a showdown on the controversial long-gun registry

This September, when Parliament reconvenes to vote on the future of the national long-gun registry, MPs on both sides of the aisle are bound to come out shooting. The recent dismissal of Marty Cheliak, the pro-registry head of the RCMP’s national firearms program, has critics accusing the Conservatives of silencing dissent in their quest to abolish the registry.

There’s no concrete evidence of political interference in Cheliak’s removal, but in The Mark today Liberal MP Mark Holland says the Tories “have shoved Chief Supt. Cheliak out of a job he excelled at” because they didn’t like his ideas, and that he’s only the “latest in a long line of victims of the Harper Conservatives’ dangerous ideology.”

The Edmonton Journal also isn’t buying the official excuse for Cheliak’s dismissal – that he isn’t fluently bilingual. What’s “more important than the chief superintendent’s French,” the editors write, “is why the prime minister rejects the advice of senior RCMP officers to keep the gun registry.” Indeed, all the major national police organizations support the registry, which puts the Conservatives, usually good friends of law enforcement, in an uncomfortable position.

Luckily for them, the idea that cops support the registry was recently challenged by an informal survey conducted independently by an Edmonton police officer. Ian Robinson cites the poll in a Calgary Sun column, writing that 91 per cent of police who responded said the registry is useless, and suggesting that the study “demolishes a number of myths” about the program.

Aaron Wherry, writing on macleans.ca, is hardly convinced however, pointing out that the officer who conducted the survey said explicitly that its findings were not scientific – a fact that didn’t stop Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner from using it to claim “a vast majority” of officers are against the registry.

And for those of us who may not understand the high emotions among those who want to scrap the registry, the Edmonton Sun explains: forcing everyone to register their guns means lumping “duck hunters and varmint-shooting farmers with the criminal element,” which is “unfair.” The registry is a costly waste because criminals “never register their guns. They never have and they never will.”