Canadian Gun Registry
Majority (54%) Feel Current Gun Registry Should Be Scrapped And Most (56%) Blame Liberal Politicians, Not Bureaucrats (37%), For Bungling
But:
But Majority Of Canadians (67%) Also Support Idea Of Having Some Type Of Gun Registry Put In Place By Harper Government
Alrighty then.
May 16th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Welcome to the world of the duplicitous Canadians. They’re this way on every important issue, such as health care. Their system sucks, they know it, but they won’t do anything about it.
I lived there half my life, and I’ll never go back, I’ve had enough. Blech.
May 16th, 2006 at 11:28 am
Actually, duplicitous means “deceitful,” I just realized (thank goodness for dictionary.com). What I meant to say about Canucks is that they, well, the cake thing, dang it.
May 16th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
The deal with the gun registry is that its been a multi-billion dollar boondoggle. Originally, it was supposed to cost $2 million. The cost has skyrocketed to around $2 billion (from m to b). Thats why you are seeing a somewhat conflicting viewpoint in the poll..Canadians think the implementation of the current one went poorly (duh), but clearly many still see value in having one…though personally I doubt that it will help much since many guns used in crimes are smuggled from the US.
May 16th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Ermmm …. the Conservative PArty promised to kill the damned thing once elected.
Polls should be irrelevent here.
May 16th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Ben
I lived in Canada for a while, and I’m familiar with the attitude you’re talking about. I’ve always said the primary assumption of Canadians is that no matter how bad things are up North, it’s always worse in the States.
Personally, I’ll be astounded if the Harper Gov’t is able to institute even symbolic changes in the law. Too many Canadians think of gun ownership as symbolic of those uncouth drooling Yanks and is thus too “American” for their tastes.
May 17th, 2006 at 11:33 am
Man, how I hate being right (via NRA website):
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/05/17/gun-registry-changes.html
Money quotes:
The Tories have long opposed the registry, and promised during the election campaign to scrap it. But the minority government has apparently put those ambitions aside for now.
All three opposition parties support the registry and would probably defeat any legislation that would dismantle it.
Many Tories believe they have public support for their plans to dismantle the registry, but it has strong support in Quebec and the country’s biggest cities, areas where the Conservatives want to build support.
This last one makes me think they’ve been taking lessons from the Republicans: Piss off your base in order to get your opponents to like you.