Conservatives talking out of both sides of their mouths on gun control

While the Conservatives insist they’re totally serious about killing the gun registry, despite introducing the bill to do so in the undemocratic, unelected, illegitimate Senate, they’re also insisting killing the registry won’t mean a single job loss for the central processing facility for the registry in Miramichi, New Brunswick:

(Conservative MP Tilly) O'Neill-Gordon said that as the frontline processing site for the Canadian Firearms Program, she's been told that there's much more that goes on behind the tinted windows of the heavily-secured building than simple long-gun registration.

"I have been assured by our prime minister that there will be no loss of jobs, and I have also spoken to the CEO at the gun registry, and he felt there was enough work to keep everybody there," she said.

Despite wanting to kill the registry (although not really trying that hard to do so since getting elected), the Conservatives are very keen on protecting those 200 gun registry jobs in Miramichi, and it’s all about politics. O'Neill-Gordon unseated long-time Liberal MP Charles Hubbard in the last election by just 1450 votes. It was a rare Conservative pick-up in the region, and recent polling shows the Conservatives in deep trouble in Atlantic Canada. The loss of those jobs would likely seal O'Neill-Gordon’s fate in the next election.

Unfortunately though, it would appear her rationale for keeping a gun registry processing centre open after killing the gun registry holds little water:

Statistics from the Canadian Firearms Program's most recent report, however, shows that the long-gun registry makes up the vast majority of guns registered across the country and, therefore, the bulk of the work for Miramichi employees.

The figures show that of the 7,313,247 firearms registered across Canada as of December 2008, 6,652,208 are of the non-restricted or, long-gun variety, which includes hunting rifles and unmodified shotguns.

With restricted and prohibited firearms, meanwhile -- including handguns, semi-automatic and automatic weapons -- only about 660,000 are registered nationally.

What else do they do at the processing centre, anyways? Bizarrely, it seems to be a secret…

…she's been told that there's much more that goes on behind the tinted windows of the heavily-secured building than simple long-gun registration…

The rookie MP was one of only a select few who have been given a tour of the centre, and she said it's an impressive operation.

Odd.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers