Tuesday, April 04, 2006

On target selection

After seemingly planning from the moment they took office to eliminate the gun registry by regulation, the Cons now seem prepared to set themselves up for defeat on the issue in Parliament instead:
The federal gun registry has been “a dismal failure” that has done nothing to reduce gun violence, Justice Minister Vic Toews said Monday, and the Conservatives will move to bring in legislation to abolish it.

His comments come after months of speculation the Conservatives were planning to avoid a vote in the Commons by dismantling the registry through regulations rather than amend the law.
At best, one might see the attempt as a test case: while the gun registry presumably wouldn't be a confidence issue, it could allow the Cons to determine how serious the Libs in particular are about opposing the government. But then the lack of any incentive for the opposition parties to cooperate makes it awfully likely that the result will be nothing more than a parliamentary embarrassment for Harper.

About the only other explanation available might be as an attempt to blame the other parties for refusing to play along, particularly in rural areas where the initial creation of the registry drove many votes into the hands of the Cons and their predecessors. But there's already been plenty of talk about the readily-available regulatory structure which the Cons gave every signal of applying...meaning that if the Cons are indeed thinking along those lines, then they're essentially hoping for their own supporters to be utterly ignorant about the parliamentary system. And it seems far more likely that the gun owners who have parked their votes with the Cons would rather see results than games.

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