SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Pressure from the ruling Conservative Party resulted in a vote to end the long gun registry Nov. 4.

The private member's bill passed its second reading in the House of Commons, 164 to 137, with Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington voting in support of the bill.

Before the vote the Conservative Party targeted rural MPs in website and radio ads, urging them to support the bill.

The Conservative website included Bevington's contact number and stated, "MP Dennis Bevington: vote to scrap the long-gun registry."

Rural opposition MPs are seen as vulnerable because some, like Bevington, won their seats by small margins and are typically home to more gun owners than in urban ridings.

"My views on the long-gun registry have been pretty consistent over the last four years," said Bevington. "We waited for the government to address this for nearly four years."

Bevington added he is "encouraged that this vote has passed and will now go to committee."

Though the bill has yet to become law, he is confident "once this issue is off the table, it may be possible to deal with other gun issues, including handguns, which are basically used for dealing with people – those should only be in the hands of law enforcement and the military," he said. Bevington's 2004 election campaign included a pledge to abolish the long-gun registry as one of his key points. NDP leader Jack Layton, as did many NDP MPs, voted against the bill.

Proposed by Manitoba Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, the bill was open to a free vote within each party. Eighteen NDP and 18 Liberal MPs voted in favour of the bill.

Bill C-391 will now go to committee where the process to eliminate the 14-year-old registry that required all Canadians to legally register their shotguns and rifles will begin.

When the registry was created, said Hoeppner, "it was estimated to cost $1 million.

"Currently the auditor general has estimated that it costs upwards of $2 billion a year," she said, citing the 2002 Auditor General's Report. "The current long-gun registry has done nothing to curb the gun violence we experience in this country," she said, adding the registry wrongly targets law-abiding gun owners, like farmers and sports hunters.

The Nov. 4 vote is of concern to some Yellowknife residents.

"I'm certainly disheartened by it," said Lyda Fuller, executive director of YWCA Yellowknife.

"Eighty-eight per cent of women killed are killed by long guns," she added, referring to national figures from the YWCA. Fuller urged those in power to "fix the system, don't do away with it. I think women's safety is not foremost on anyone's mind, given this vote."

"I don't think it is gonna make much difference," said Yellowknife gun owner Barry Taylor. "Those who register are the law-abiding."

The registry was not a big help for police, he added – it simply allowed them to know which houses had registered guns, not who had access to those guns.

"Up here we don't even have a chief fire arms officer. He passed away a year ago and we haven't replaced him," said Taylor.

The bill will be in committee for up to 90 days, where it is to be reviewed by the Standing Committee on National Safety and Public Security. After this process, the bill will go back to the House of Commons for its third and final reading.