MPs will vote Wednesday in the House of Commons on a bill that would abolish the federal long-gun registry.
If passed, Bill C-391 would scrap the decade-old registry and destroy existing data within the system on about seven million shotguns and rifles.
Manitoba Tory MP Candice Hoeppner proposed the private member's bill. With commitments to vote in favour of the legislation from eight Liberal and New Democrat MPs, Hoeppner said she's close to having enough opposition support to kill the long-gun registry.
She needs 12 opposition votes to put the minority Conservatives over the top and send the legislation to a third reading, Hoeppner said.
Since it is a private member's bill, it'll be a free vote in the House. That means MPs are freed from the usual requirement of voting along party lines.
The Conservatives have long opposed the gun registry, brought in by the former Liberal government in response to the killing of 14 women at Montreal's L'École Polytéchnique in 1989.
However, there is also unwavering support for the gun registry including from the Coalition for Gun Control, the Canadian Chiefs of Police as well as the Canadian Police Association.
Wendy Cukier of the Coalition for Gun Control says firearm deaths such as suicides and murders of women have declined during the time the registry has been in place. The mother of one of the slain Montreal students made a public appeal this week imploring MPs to preserve the gun registry.
Conservatives argue the registry has been a billion-dollar boondoggle, although a 2006 study by the auditor general found eliminating the long-gun portion of the registry would only save taxpayers about $3 million a year.
-from CBC.ca
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