It is interesting that three unrelated news stories hit the front pages the same week – in a preliminary vote, MPs decided in favour of scrapping the part of the gun registry that applies to rifles and shotguns; an American army officer shot and killed several people at a base in Texas; and it was deer hunting season in this part of Ontario.

The requirement to register all “long guns” was brought in as a response to the Montreal massacre. Canada already had restrictions on handguns and automatic weapons. The decision to extend controls to include rifles and shotguns used for hunting and “varmint control” seemed the next logical step, at least to the government of the day. In all honesty, the thought that police would be able to press a button and find out if there were firearms at a certain address before going on a call, had, and still has, strong appeal.

But forcing Uncle Joe to pay to register his old gopher gun looks to him and his neighbours like government interference on an outrageous scale. The registration fee is probably more than the gun is worth. And besides, most farmers have some sort of rifle or shotgun, to deal with such realities as rabid skunks, animals that have to be put down, and the proverbial fox in the chicken coop. Why should law-abiding citizens be treated like criminals, while the criminals never register their guns anyway?

The controversy over the gun registry has continued to have an urban wimp vs rural gun-toting hillbilly aspect to it. But what really makes the registry unpopular is the cost. What was supposed to come with a $2 million price tag now looks more like $2 billion, depending on whose numbers you look at, and it still has too many gaps to be truly useful.

So why not scrap the registry, stop annoying the farmers and hunters, and maybe save the country a bit of money? Why not devote the money saved to getting a handle on the proliferation of unregistered handguns in this country, and the criminals who use them, be they bank robbers or terrorists?

Someone bent on killing a bunch of people and himself in the process – and that could well have been the case in Fort Hood – does not really care whether his weapon of choice is registered or not. This tragedy could have happened anywhere, even in England, with some of the strictest gun control laws in the world. The shooter was an army officer, after all, someone who would have had legal access to a handgun just about anywhere.

Handguns do tend to be the weapon of choice for criminals, because they are quite easy to carry and conceal. That is why possession of handguns has been strictly controlled in Canada for decades. Sadly, not all shootings are committed by people who live by crime. The Fort Hood shooter is a case in point – an army psychiatrist. And not all shootings are done with handguns. When a person, usually a woman, is shot and killed by her abusive partner in a domestic situation, the weapon tends to be whatever is close at hand, including that old gopher gun. Ditto for the kid who gets bullied one too many times and decides to do something serious and permanent about it.

Before the decision to scrap the long gun registry is put to the final vote, MPs would be advised to get accurate information on how much the registry really costs taxpayers and whether it is useful to police. This is not a case of deer hunters bumping heads with folks who refer to deer as Bambi instead of venison, east vs west, urban vs rural, or even individual freedom vs government control. It is a legal and economic issue that needs to be examined and voted on as such. Let cool heads and common sense prevail.