Parliament resumes Monday, bringing with it the return of Question Period and its usual crop of sanctimonious posturing. Of course, all this will be preceded by a call by the whips for a solid show of support for an all-parties motion condemning the Dawson College rampage and the tragic death of Anastasia De Sousa, but that will quickly morph into a partisan attempt to embarrass the Harper government into renoucing plans to slash the national gun registry. I would expect all three opposition parties to try to outdo one another in manufactured outrage over the cold-bloodedness of those horrid Tories in even thinking of changing the gun laws in the wake of this week's slaughter. Likewise, we can expect Harper's bunch to be equally contemptuous of the gun registry for its failure to pick up on the fact that Kimveer Gill, the guy registering a semi-automatic assault rifle, 9-mm pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun was giving voice to his muderous intent on a website.
The Tories are right on one thing — the firearms registry was a massive waste of money, a sinkhole that makes the sponsorship scandal look like chump change.
They're also right in pointing out that there's no proof the gun registry saves lives, especially when it registers guns to head cases like Gill. As more than one commentator has correctly pointed out, the registry would have allowed Ecole Polytechnique killer Marc Lepine to own the Ruger Mini-14 he used to murder 14 women in 1989.
What would the gun registry need to make it work? Begin with a psychological examination, signed by at least one licenced mental-health professional and 10 close acquaintances, including the mayor, a doctor, banker, educator, cleric and spouse or mother (to weed out the misogyist murderers).
Add to that a complete websearch backtracing every e-mail address used by the applicant, including full access to his or her on-ramp provider, credit card and cellphone records. I daresay some would support state-sanctioned hacking of the applicant's computer.
You can see where all this is headed. The Dawson shooter was convinced he was under surveillance. He was already drifting into a state of psychotic paranoia. You're going to further fuel that under the pretense that you're considering allowing him to have a gun?
Someone that crazy is apt to forego the process, load his Sunfire with propane canisters armed with a detonator system so easily found almost anywhere on the Web, and drive into a public garage or tunnel.
Homicide bombers don't need guns to carry out their plans. Psychopathic killers can easily obtain firearms from dozens of illegal sources. The fact that the gun registry didn't catch this guy in their net is proof that no society can guarantee invulnerability unless it installs the systems we associate with totalitarianism. My bet is the Tories are going to call the opposition bluff.
