The Death of the Gun Registry Was a Slap in the Face to the Victims of Gun Violence

I can't believe how many people are suggesting that the gun registry is based solely on ideology. Is it ideological to have to obtain a driver's license, to register your car or your pet?

Now 20 years later, the victims of the Montreal Massacre have been violated again, in part because of the horrendous comments that are being posted at the end of accounts, that commemorate this horrible day in our history. But mainly because the 'old boys club' Reform Party has won.

William D. Gairdner, one of the early Reform Party mentors and co-founder of the Northern Foundation, along with Stephen Harper and several other, what were then referred to as 'right-wing extremists'; set the tone for the party's views on women.

In 2007, Donna L. Lillian, Assistant Professor of Discourse and Linguistics in the Department of English at East Carolina University, wrote a paper entitled: A thorn by any other name: sexist discourse as hate speech, which centered around Gairdner, "...analyzing Canadian neoconservative discourse as racist, sexist, and homophobic." According to author and journalist Murray Dobbin, Mr. Gairdner's The Trouble with Canada functioned as ‘the de facto manifesto for Preston Manning’s Reform Party’ (Dobbin, 1992: 134).

So I thought I'd be brave and see if he weighed in the topic. And of course he did.

On his blog he refers to it as gender bashing. "Feminists argue it was "patriarchy" that made him do it. But it was male-hating feminists that upset Mr. Lepine so much. So in his mind he was retaliating. Feminism made him do it." and "And "violence against women" is a myth because human violence - of which there is not a great deal in Canadian society - is a matter of wicked people of either gender who are strong, taking advantage of the weak."

I see not much has changed. And remember when this man refers to feminists, it can mean something as simple as women with jobs. And in the same way that Stephen Harper is hiding behind our soldiers to avoid being associated with war crimes, he is hiding behind two women, Candice Hoeppner and Helena Guergis, and they are too naive to realize that they are being used.

'A slap in the face' for victims
The Globe and Mail
Ingrid Peritz
December 05, 2009

To the sisters and mothers and survivors marked by loss, it remains the single most tangible legacy of the bloodshed at the École Polytechnique. It's also the most tenuous. Twenty years after a gunman took the lives of 14 women - after the trauma, the mourning, the anger and the soul-searching - families seeking to create some good out of tragedy thought they had found it with gun control.

Yet as those families gather at a Montreal ceremony tomorrow to remember their lost daughters and siblings, they are girding for another fight - after the House of Commons voted last month to abolish the registry on long guns ....