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.

"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.

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.

Danny Gordon, an active harvester in Aklavik, said the decision to get rid of the long gun registry will make his life easier, especially since he already has several unregistered rifles.

"It'll make it easier for me. I'd have to avoid letting people see my rifles - I couldn't even lend it to them because it's not registered. So this will ease it for me a little bit," he said, adding the lack of a registry won't change the way he stores and looks after his guns.

"I still have respect for rifles. They're dangerous to some people and some people misuse them, sure we know that, but most people around here use them properly."

Joseph Kochon, Colville Lake band manager, said, "In general I think we were very happy they got rid of it. For us in the North, the long guns or any weapons, we use them to hunt and to survive ... it's our way of life ... it (the registry) made it difficult at times just to purchase bullets for some of our members. If they didn't have the licence then they couldn't purchase bullets unless they buy it through somebody."

Not everyone in the North is pleased by the vote.

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

- With files from Katie May