Do You Think Defeating the Bill Will Shut Them Up

Well the bill to scrap the gun registry is almost dead. Finally.

It has been a long infuriating summer's debate. E-mails, call-in shows, newspaper ads, commentary, chest thumping election style speeches - we had it all.  Perhaps the NRA wasn't involved but their spirit was ever present. Again and again the gun owners claimed, "The next thing is the police will take my guns away." Farmers talked about "The right to brae arms." What bull.

Those Conservative MP's claim the Liberals and the NDP are out to get hunters and farmers. What a crock.

Very few Canadians have any problem with hunters bagging the add deer or farmers shooting gophers but I must tell you that some of the pro-gun bumper stickers out here in Western Canada make me nervous. Who are my neighbours anyway?

We have to ask ourselves, who benefited from all this rhetoric.  No one really except perhaps the spin doctors, the big advertising firms, the pollsters and newspaper industry.  The ad on the right is a prime example. It ran, full page in Ottawa's Hill Times. Two days before the vote that, it has already been determined, will fail.

The ad says that ordinary citizens were not consulted and implies that if they were listened to, the gun registry would be on its was out.

I agree that many, many Canadian citizens were not listened to. I agree, but not in the same way the ad implies. My MP, Ton "A Team' Lukewski didn't listen to my support for the gun registry nor did any of the other Conservative MP's I wrote to.

What the ad really does is threaten. "WE WILL REMEMBER" it says. And, it implies, "If you don't vote to support the bill, we'll take you out next election.

Conservative style wedge politics at it's best.

Lets not go half way here. Let's just get it over with and call an election.