‘I banged my head on the table’: NDP won’t bring back long-gun registry, MP Angus says

OTTAWA – NDP MP Charlie Angus says his party won’t bring back the long-gun registry, despite his leader’s vow to create some “form” of registry to give police the ability to track every gun in Canada.

Angus, who says he “banged my head on the table” when he saw recent headlines saying Mulcair would bring back the long-gun registry, said he’s spoken with his leader and his party will not bring it back.

“We’re not talking about bringing back the long-gun registry, period,” Angus said in an interview Friday.

“It’s frustrating to always be talking about the dead registry when we need to be talking about dealing with prohibited arms, restricted weapons, how do we make sure that those kind of weapons are not on the street and the police know we have a good system place. But that does not equate to a long-gun registry.”

Angus – who represents the northern Ontario riding of Timmins-James Bay and owns a gun himself – said his leader made his comments in the context of the Conservatives’ Bill C-42, which reclassifies certain weapons and eases transportation restrictions around firearms, among other measures.

Meanwhile, another Ontario NDP MP, John Rafferty, told a Thunder Bay radio station he would always put his constituents first. Rafferty was one of two MPs who went against the NDP’s position in 2012 and voted to scrap the registry.

READ MORE: How will the RCMP enforce new long-gun ban with no long-gun registry?

On Wednesday, Mulcair told reporters he’s working with people “who are in the field” to “build the best system possible” to track guns. He said he hoped to see provinces follow the lead of Quebec, which is fighting to preserve the registry records.

“We will bring in something that allows the police to track every gun in Canada,” Mulcair said.

“That’s the result. We’re looking at the means. We know that the means that the Liberals put in place cost over $1 billion, was not very effective, and had some serious problems with it.”

Mulcair says he has no problem with seeing “honest, farmers and duck-hunters be able to have their weapons,” but they already have to register their cars, trailers and even pets.

“There are already a lot of things that have to be done (to acquire a weapon), so we have confidence in the ability of farmers and duck hunters to fill out a form.”

Angus said the long-gun registry was a “very, very divisive fight.” he said the Conservatives were wrong to “trash the records,” when they destroyed the registry two years ago.

But the NDP won’t bring it back.

“It costs too much, it’s too divisive and it pits people against each other,” he said.

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When asked how police would get information about guns aside from the registry, Angus said the party is finding ways to work with police on the issue of black-market guns and which weapons are placed on the restricted and non-restricted weapons list.

“We’re not talking about going back to getting every single gauge shotgun up in the attic put into some kind of registry. The costs would be so enormous and there would be no appetite among Canadians to go there,” he said.

“The system was working, but it’s gone now.”