Gun debate always complicated

Both Liberals and Conservatives run risks if debate heats up

If we are entering a new national debate over guns in this country, history teaches us three dispiriting certainties.

Misinformation will rule much of that debate. Alarmist and apocalyptic rhetoric will fill much of the remaining space.

And it will enrich the coffers of both the Liberals and the Conservatives who will seek to raise funds by stoking fears of the bogeymen on either side of the debate.

But a national debate is far from a given.

The Danforth is a long way from Saskatchewan or Alberta and a federal election is creeping closer.

There are potential downsides for all three parties should they re-engage in an ongoing wedge issue, one that has damaged Liberals and New Democrats in the past and threatens to do the same to Conservatives in 2019.

So when Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says he will consider a handgun ban, he quickly reminds us how complex such a move would be.

It was essentially the same asterisk Goodale placed on his interest in an assault weapon ban following the Quebec mosque murders of 2017. He was open to suggestions then but quickly added that defining assault weapons was complicated.

“It may not necessarily be legally complicated, but it is politically complicated,’’ says Kent Roach, a criminal law expert at the University of Toronto.

Goodale is one of Justin Trudeau’s biggest assets in cabinet, experienced, well informed on his files and a communicator capable of offering hope to either side of a proposition with a single sentence.

But he has represented a Saskatchewan riding for 25 years and has always been attuned to those in rural and remote areas who look at any gun initiative by a Liberal government as a first step to taking their rifles away.

Gun control advocates believe that Trudeau was ensuring rural sensibilities would hold sway over bold action by placing gun legislation in the hands of Goodale.

A handgun ban would have to apply nationally, not just to Toronto, and that could get very complicated for a Liberal government that would have to grapple with exemptions, a transition period, likely an amnesty period for guns to be returned — and the inevitable call from the pro-gun lobby that a handgun ban is merely a precursor to a total gun ban.

But there is also a sense in some Liberal circles that the well-honed tale that the national gun registry banished the party to the electoral wilderness is a bit of revisionist mythmaking.

It did win two majorities under Jean Chrétien with the registry in place and it hit the shoals over the cost of the registry — an issue stoked partly by internecine rivalries complete with an artificially inflated price tag.

If there is fear in the Liberal caucus, it is due to a pro-gun lobby in this country that is stronger and more polished than in recent history.

Already, in the wake of the Danforth shootings, Nicolas Johnson, who runs the influential TheGunBlog.ca has warned his followers that the handgun ban vote at Toronto city council “serves as the clearest and loudest wake-up call to hunters, plinkers (target shooters), collectors and competitors across the country that elected officials want to take away their firearms.’’

But instead of worrying about rural sensibilities, the Liberals might be better advised to look at the concerns of two of their core constituencies, women and younger voters, who support a handgun ban.

The Liberals’ gun control bill awaiting final approval was really a tepid piece of legislation, meant to fulfil a 2015 campaign promise, not to radically tighten up regulations in this country.

But Conservatives would go into a campaign with nothing to offer urban voters on gun control. Leader Andrew Scheer has pledged a Criminal Code scrub of regulations that do not respect the rights of “honest firearm owners,” do not respect that hunting and sports shooting are an important piece of Canadian culture and fail to empower police to concentrate on “real criminals.’’

In the days following the Danforth shootings many have talked about the silence on the street, the eerie silence during the shootings and the sombre silence at the vigil Wednesday evening.

Listen hard. We cannot afford to hear silence from our federal politicians in the coming weeks and months.