Does scrapping long-gun registry mean more danger for women?
Posted February 15, 2012 12:15 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Some women’s safety experts are outraged that the bill to end the long-gun registry will go to the Senate today, saying ending the program will put more women in danger. But one local group feels it wasn’t protecting women anyway.
Angela Marie MacDougall is the executive director of Battered Women’s Support Services and feels violence happens with or without guns because the roots are much deeper.
“There is a bigger concern,” she argues. “We’d appreciate [if those looking at the registry] would think more at the roots of violence and not use this particular issue as a way to talk about violence against women.”
She explains the registry doesn’t allow society to look at the bigger issue. “The way that the gun registry was administered was flawed. There were so many problems that ended up costing a lot of money and there are no results to look at. There are no results!”
But she agrees guns in the home could elevate the potential threat against a woman.
Jean Fong with the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter feels scrapping the registry could increase the risk for women in rural areas. “Rifles and shotguns are more common than in urban areas.”
“In Canada, an average of one in three women killed by her husband is shot,” she tells us.
Fong believes the importance of a gun control became clear following the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique Massacre.
