Victims’ families still fighting for gun control

MONTREAL – The imminent abolition of the long-gun registry will cast a shadow over commemoration of the École Polytechnique massacre on Tuesday.

“There are going to be less controls on guns than on borrowing a library book,” warned Heidi Rathjen, a gun-control advocate and survivor of the massacre at the engineering school where gunman Marc Lépine murdered 14 women on Dec. 6, 1989.

Rathjen will mark the 22nd anniversary of the killings by holding a press conference at the Quebec National Assembly to ask the provincial government to launch a legal challenge to Bill C-19. Quebec opposes the federal bill to abolish the long-gun registry, which has passed second reading in the House of Commons.

“It’s a very, very difficult time,” Rathjen said.

She pointed out that under the proposed legislation, the Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic weapon used by Lépine will be an unrestricted weapon.

Known as a “poor man’s assault rife,” the Mini-14 was also the weapon used by Norway shooter Anders Behring Breivik to massacre 69 people in July.

“That gun will become invisible,” Rathjen said.

She will be joined by Nathalie Provost, a graduate of the École Polytechnique who was injured in the shooting, and Jean-François Larrivée, also a Polytechnique graduate whose wife, Maryse Laganière, was killed.

“Twenty-two years after the massacre at the École Polytechnique, it is inconceivable that its victims and witnesses still have to defend gun control,” Larrivée said.

Opponents of the gun bill, including family members of massacre victims, will also converge on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

In Montreal, groups opposing violence against women will demonstrate at noon in front of the Montreal courthouse.

The events are among dozens across the country organized by churches, schools and community groups across the country to mark the sombre anniversary.

Members of the Anglican Church Women will take part in an anniversary service at noon at Christ Church Cathedral on Ste. Catherine St. W. at Union Ave. and l’Écho des femmes de la Petite Patrie, a local women’s group, will distribute white ribbons and candles at Beaubien métro station at rush hour in solidarity with women who are victims of violence.

Louise De Sousa, the mother of Anastasia De Sousa, the 18-year-old student killed in a shooting at Dawson College five years ago, will attend a memorial at Chambly Academy in St. Lambert.