Dylan Rhymer's State of the Week

My Fellow Weeklings,

This week appears to have been a particularly awful week to be a woman. Aside from the usual round of molestation and rape and domestic abuse and public stonings and honor-killings and genital mutilations and the State of Virginia wanting to look up your vagina and men not ever understanding what the hell is supposed to go in the dryer no matter how many times we’re told, the Conservatives gathered round to celebrate the massacre of 14 women in Montreal (in a roundabout way).

At first, the abolition of the Long Gun Registry doesn’t seem particularly anti-woman. Except when you take into account that the Long Gun registry was brought about as a result of the 1995 Polytechnique massacre of 14 women (specifically) by a madman brandishing a perfectly legal semi-automatic Ruger Mini 15.

Just to be clear, this is the Long Gun in question. What’s the worst that could happen?

I have never heard an argument against the long gun registry that held any water other than the oft-regurgitated  “the long-gun registry treats every law-abiding gun owner as a criminal”. Bullshit.

Call me crazy, but I think guns are dangerous, and in the wrong hands terrible things can happen. Like the slaughter of 14 innocent women by a crazed misogynist who happens to have a very handy tool for killing large numbers of people. What’s wrong with having, at the very least, a list of people who possess the most dangerous inventions ever?

And it works. Since the implementation of the Long Gun Registry, gun-related spousal homicide has decreased significantly. Fact. But that’s no reason not use it as a wedge issue to lure stupid people into voting for Harper. Who just thoughtlessly did away with a very logical and practical measure to help the Police investigate gun-related crimes. Which, I repeat, was brought in as a measure after the bloodiest school massacre in our country’s history. 

And then they all had champagne like a bunch of assholes. 

 And that’s what I find to repugnant. I can handle the stupidity of the Long Gun Registry being scrapped, loads of sensible programs get scrapped in the name of right-wing electioneering. But to celebrate it like a bunch of goons smacks a complete lack of tact that I don’t believe they would have felt entitled to if 14 men had been slaughtered. And I will assume they guzzled the bubbly without even a toast to the memories of those14 women.

But we wouldn’t want to ruin their buzz-on with a dose of reality. Down the hatch, fellas. And up yours.