The future isn’t looking too bright for the controversial Long Gun Registry, currently whiling away its final weeks on Bad Legislation Death Row, smoking rollies and using the ashes to scratch “LOVE/HATE” tattoos into its knuckles as it waits for a CPC government Termination Technician to put it to sleep:
The long gun registry is slated to be removed from legislation shortly, thus ending a contentious and hugely expensive program that has divided rural and urban voters since its inception in 1991. The registry currently consumes more than $66 million in tax each year.
So goes the spin, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
I suspect that right this very moment, in a boardroom in the secret Harpenbunker far below the manicured lawns of Parliament Hill, a team of sweaty CPC geeks is brainstorming furiously about how to make this issue go away without anyone noticing. Maybe start a war or something… invade Buffalo? North Tonawanda? (Home of Irv Weinstein’s “Eyewitness News”, as children of the 60s who grew up in Toronto will fondly recall… Eyewitness News! The Goriest News!!) But I’m off on another tangent. Beam me down, Scotty.
Call me cynical, but the idea that the Conservatives would ditch legislation that works as well for them as the Long Gun Registry is hard to imagine, even for someone whose imagination occasionally runs to things like breathing mountains and fur on the fridge. The Registry multi-tasks like nothing else, simultaneously acting as red meat for the base, fundraising tool, wedge issue and Orwellian stomper of civil liberties… the Veg-a-matic of Firearms legislation. It slices! It dices! It gives police the power of warrantless search & seizure! The Harpster has proven by his own drunken-sailor spending that he doesn’t really care about the money it sucks up, so other than the fact that it’s a Liberal Party initiative, what’s not for him to like about it? Deep down, it must really chap his ass to have to make good on his promise to scrap it.
But the irony doesn’t stop there.
On the other side of the political aisle, many complain bitterly (and rightly so) about CPCgovInc’s “Tough on Crime” bills, particularly the sleazy warrantless “internet spying” programs they’ve got in the hopper. But wait (there’s more): the same people who resent the state keeping a rheumy eye on their internet activities not only don’t mind but are quite enthusiastic about it kicking my door in and seizing my private property for no good reason. Huh? How does that work??
BOOM! BOOM! The Long Gun Registry, bringing the full-metal irony with both barrels.
