Breitkreuz anxious to scrap registry

Breitkreuz anxious to scrap registry
Date: Jun 20, 2006 7:41 AM
PUBLICATION: The Leader-Post (Regina)
DATE: 2006.06.20
EDITION: Final
SECTION: City & Province
PAGE: B3
BYLINE: Erin Warner
SOURCE: The Leader-Post
WORD COUNT: 330

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Breitkreuz anxious to scrap registry

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For 12 years, Garry Breitkreuz has waited less than patiently for the
federal government to abandon the national firearms registry.

But on Monday, the Yorkton-Melville MP watched as his Conservative
government made good on its election promise by introducing legislation
to scrap mandatory registration of rifles and shotguns.

"I feel this is payday," Breitkreuz, an outspoken opponent of the
registry, said in an interview from his Ottawa office. "Now the job will
be to stickhandle this through Parliament one way or another."

The vote on the bill won't take place until the fall and, with a
minority government, the Conservatives need to gain support from other
parties for it to pass. Breitkreuz said he is optimistic that, given
this summer break, supporters from across Canada will have let their MPs
know they don't support the registry.

If the billion-dollar registry is abolished by the vote, Breitkreuz said
the only result will be an increase in funding to other areas.

"When you take your hand out of a pail of water, there's no hole," he
said. "You might remove the long-gun registry, but there's not going to
be many people noticing it's not there."

Like Breitkreuz, Greg Illerbrun has been opposing the long-gun registry
from the beginning.

"I've been in this battle for 11 years and when it first started I had
no idea it would be this long," said Illerbrun, the firearms chairman of
the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation. "But it was a fight that we viewed
had to be won because losing meant an end to our tradition and our
culture and our way of life."

Where the firearms registry has done its greatest damage, Illerbrun
said, is to grandparents who mentored family members on hunting and
firearms for years, but gave up the tradition out of intimidation when
the registry was created in 1995.

Illerbrun is "cautiously optimistic" that the bill will pass, but said
he worries it doesn't have enough support in eastern Canada. Even if it
doesn't, Illerbrun plans to continue to champion the rights of what he
refers to as the "firearms community."

"The fight has to go on as long as it takes," he said. "So if it's
11
years or 20 years, it doesn't matter from our perspective."

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GARRY BREITKREUZ'S 2006 ELECTION PROMISE: A WORK IN PROGRESS
http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/2006_new/57.htm