Canadia's Prime Minister Stephen Harper Vowing to Scrap Gun Registration

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper is accusing the previous Liberal government of not having done enough to prevent tragedies like the Dawson College shooting in Montreal.

"Today's laws did not protect us and we take no pleasure on this side of the House from having warned the previous government repeatedly over the past decade that the gun registry would not prevent this kind of occurrence," Harper said yesterday in the Commons.

The Prime Minister was speaking as Parliament revved up for the fall session against a backdrop of tragic, violent events — notably, more military deaths in Afghanistan and the Dawson College shootings last week that left one young woman and the gunman dead, and 19 injured.

The tragedies are now spilling over into federal politics and the charged, precarious atmosphere of the Commons, where the Prime Minister hopes to steer through some controversial moves on same-sex marriage, the environment and gun control.
Harper is saying that Liberal efforts at gun control have failed, so his government will proceed with its plans to wind down the firearms registry.

But the Prime Minister is also going one step further and charging the Liberals with failing to prevent the kind of tragedy that unfolded in Dawson College's corridors last Wednesday, when Kimveer Gill, 25, opened fire on students before killing himself amid a hail of police fire.

"I take no pleasure from the fact that, I hate to say, `I told you so,' but we all knew that the registry would not prevent the kind of crime we saw at Dawson College," Harper said in an interview with CTV.

Harper, without elaborating, said his government was looking at ways to strengthen the law so that guns would be kept out of the hands of people like Gill, who appeared to be a seriously troubled young man, fixated on violence and death. . . . .