Gun spat puts Trudeau’s front-running Liberal campaign to the test

Justin Trudeau has scrambled to explain his stance on gun control with the politically polarizing issue providing an early test in his Liberal leadership campaign.

The fallout from his sudden disavowal of the long-gun registry has required the front-running candidate to deal with a controversial policy debate just days after the flareup over unflattering remarks he once made about Alberta.

Trudeau handled it Monday by trying to appeal to both sides.

He spent a news scrum with reporters juggling questions on an issue that resurfaced over the weekend with his description of the Liberals’ registry as a failed policy.

Trudeau explained that he hadn’t actually flip-flopped on the gun registry. In fact, he said, he always supported it, and still does support it in principle. But he said that now that it’s gone it’s too divisive to try bringing back.

In the next breath, however, Trudeau added that he supports Quebec’s effort to bring it back in that province because he said the measure is not controversial there.

Finally, he offered his explanation of how the long-gun registry fits into his definition of a “failed” public policy.

“I voted to keep the firearms registry a few months ago and if we had a vote tomorrow I would vote once again to keep the long-gun registry,” Trudeau told reporters.

“However, the definition of a failed public policy is the fact that the long-gun registry is no more... The fact is, because it was so deeply divisive for far too many people, it no longer exists.” He repeated that definition of public policy, in both English and French.