Is this gun registry map the key to swaying votes of gun owners in key ridings?

Stephen Harper was in Thunder Bay, Ont. on Tuesday reinforcing his message that a Conservative majority would kill the controversial gun registry.

It’s a message that he and his Conservative candidates are working hard to promote in rural ridings where the controversial law pit MPs against many of their constituents in 2009.

The question on May 2 will be whether the issue still has enough traction to woo voters who cast their votes for members of the opposition in 2008.

A Globalnews.ca investigation has crunched the numbers and uncovered where Canada keeps its registered guns and most of them are in the ridings held by the opposition parties, at least for now.

It’s a reality the Conservatives are hoping to change in pursuit of their majority, using the long-gun registry as an issue to help them win seats.

All but one of Canada’s top-ten gun-totting areas is currently represented by Liberals, New Democrats or Bloc-Quebecois MPs. Lawrence Cannon in the riding of Pontiac is the only Conservative.

But six of these ridings are held by MPs who flip-flopped on their decision to scrap the gun registry. Eight Liberals and 12 New Democrats originally support a Conservative private member’s bill to scrap the registry. Fourteen of the MPs later changed their minds causing the Conservatives to lose by two votes.

The MPs include Anthony Rota (Nipissing-Timiskaming), Larry Bagnell (Yukon), Scott Simms (Bonavista-Gander-Grand Falls-Windsor), Todd Russell (Labrador), Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay) and Carol Hughes (Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing).

Harper and his candidates have been reminding voters in rural ridings that his party is the only one that promises to scrap the gun registry, which they say wastes money and criminalizes farmers and hunters.

Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, who introduced the failed private members bill on the gun registry, travelled from Manitoba to Timmins on Monday to remind voters that NDP incumbent Charlie Angus took back his promise to kill the registry. It’s part of a northern Ontario tour to promote the Conservative plan to scrap the registry.

“We’ve been talking about the fact that their Member of Parliament basically betrayed them,” she told Globalnews.ca. “If you don’t support the long gun registry, if you think it is a waste of money there’s only one party to support, and that is the Conservatives.”

Hoeppner said the issue is not just about guns, it’s about credibility.

“Can you trust your member of parliament to vote as they promised?,” she said.

In the Yukon, Conservative candidate Ryan Leef has been hammering Liberal incumbent Larry Bagnall on gun registry flip-flop. In Sudbury, Conservative candidate Fred Slade took aim at the NDP’s Glenn Thibeault for voting in the interest of “Toronto” instead of his constituents.

Harper has visited two of the ten ridings where MPs changed their minds, Welland and Malpeque, setting his sights on turning them Tory blue on the back of the long gun registry.

Michael Ignatieff responded by shoring up the registry, also supported by police officers, nurses and victims groups. The Liberals are pledging to keep the registry, but to decriminalize first-time infractions for failing to register firearms, to eliminate fees for new licenses and to simplify the registration process.

The results of the Harper strategy will only be clear on May 2, but according to seat projections from the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy, the opposition parties are set to keep their seats in the most gun-wealthy areas of Canada.

The only exceptions are Pontiac where Cannon continues to lead, and in Sault-Ste-Marie, where the race between the incumbent NDP and the Conservatives is currently too close to call.

The biggest impact of the gun registry message is most likely to be in the ridings of Welland and Malpeque, both of which are leaning Conservative after their MPs reneged on promises to scrap the registry.

The issue of the gun registry has been more contentious in rural ridings, a pattern mirrored by the distribution of the country’s registered long-guns.

The RCMP released firearms license totals by the first three characters of the holder’s postal code to Globalnews.ca under the Access to Information Act. In all, data from 1,580 of 1,600 postal code groupings were released.

Northern Newfoundland and Labrador is the most gun-heavy area in Canada with a quarter of the population of all ages having a gun licenses, or 257.7 guns per 1000 people. It’s followed closely behind by the Laurentides in Quebec, the Yukon, Quebec’s Upper Ottawa Valley, northern Ontario, the majority of Newfoundland and Quebec’s Gaspésie, all of which are home to more than 233 guns per 1000 people.

The ridings with the lowest concentration of registered guns are in Toronto and Montreal. Other areas with low concentrations are the B.C. coast, the rural areas of the Prairies, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.

Overall, firearm-related homicides are down 12 per cent in 2009, the latest crime data released by Statistics Canada. Shootings followed stabbing as the most common method used to commit homicide, with 179 deaths due to guns and 210 deaths due to stabbing. The highest rate of shooting was in Vancouver at 1.42 per 100,000, followed by Toronto and then Winnipeg.

– With files from Postmedia News

Firearms licences as a rate by 1,000 of population, March 2011

The RCMP released firearms licence totals by the first three characters of the holder’s postal code (forward sortation area, or FSA) to globalnews.ca under access-to-information legislation. Of about 1,600 FSAs in the country, data for about 120 was withheld. Some of these, like Toronto’s Pearson airport, have no residents.

Firearms licence rates follow a consistent pattern across the country. Wilderness areas have the highest rates – in a postal area taking in southern Labrador and Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, over a quarter of the population of all ages has a gun licence.

Remote areas across the country follow this pattern, with very high rates in Newfoundland outside St. John’s, western New Brunswick, northern Quebec and Ontario, northwestern Alberta, the northern B.C. Interior and the Yukon.

Broadly speaking, agricultural areas and the BC coast have fewer licenced firearms. This band takes in rural areas of the Prairies, southern Ontario and Quebec, eastern New Brunswick, PEI and much of Nova Scotia.

Urban and suburban areas have the lowest rates, with the bottom 25 list mostly made up of neighbourhoods in Toronto and Montreal.