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Long wait nearly over for Breitkreuz

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REGINA (SNN) -- For 12 years, Garry Breitkreuz has waited less than patiently for the federal government to abandon the national firearms registry.

But on Monday, the Yorkton-Melville MP watched as his Conservative government made good on its election promise by introducing legislation to scrap mandatory registration of rifles and shotguns. "I feel this is payday," Breitkreuz, an outspoken opponent of the registry, said in an interview from his Ottawa office. "Now the job will be to stickhandle this through Parliament one way or another."

The vote on the bill won't take place until the fall and, with a minority government, the Conservatives need to gain support from other parties for it to pass. Breitkreuz said he is optimistic that, given this summer break, supporters from across Canada will have let their MPs know they don't support the registry.

If the billion-dollar registry is abolished by the vote, Breitkreuz said the only result will be an increase in funding to other areas. "When you take your hand out of a pail of water, there's no hole," he said. "You might remove the long-gun registry, but there's not going to be many people noticing it's not there."

Like Breitkreuz, Greg Illerbrun has been opposing the long-gun registry from the beginning. "I've been in this battle for 11 years and when it first started I had no idea it would be this long," said Illerbrun, the firearms chair of the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation. "But it was a fight that we viewed had to be won because losing meant an end to our tradition and our culture and our way of life."

Where the firearms registry has done its greatest damage, Illerbrun said, is to grandparents who mentored family members on hunting and firearms for years, but gave up the tradition out of intimidation when the registry was created in 1995.

Illerbrun is "cautiously optimistic" that the bill will pass, but said he worries it doesn't have enough support in Eastern Canada. Even if it doesn't, Illerbrun plans to continue to champion the rights of what he refers to as the "firearms community."

"The fight has to go on as long as it takes," he said. "So if it's 11 years or 20 years, it doesn't matter from our perspective."

(REGINA LEADER-POST)