Liberals, Tories lay groundwork for turning gun control into wedge issue

Gun control could wind up being a defining issue in next year’s federal election.

Eighteen months ahead of the vote, both the governing party and the official Opposition are laying the groundwork for making guns a wedge issue, to carve away a share of each other’s softer support.

The Liberals are aiming at cities and suburbs while the Conservatives focus on rural and remote ridings.

Justin Trudeau fired the first shot with Bill C-71, his Liberal government’s recently tabled effort to tighten Canada’s firearms law, including enhanced background checks for obtaining a firearms licence and mandatory record-keeping for vendors.

To Conservatives and gun advocates, it all smacks too much of the long-reviled long-gun registry — a creation of Jean Chretien’s Liberal government that is credited with taking away the seats of a number of Liberal MPs, particularly in rural areas. It was abolished by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.

But the Liberals are hoping to turn the tables with a vigorous counter-offensive. They’re accusing the Conservatives of being shills for the gun lobby and they’re zeroing in on Andrew Scheer’s not-quite-forgotten leadership campaign platform, which was deleted from his website as soon as he took the helm of the Conservative party last May.

In a fundraising email last month, the Liberal party blasted the Conservatives for opposing the government’s “common sense” measures while pointing out that Scheer’s platform included pledges to “increase gun magazine capacity and cut red tape for gun purchases.”