A new Conservative bill, put forth to parliament on Nov. 4 for its second reading, has the chance to abolish the controversial long gun registry.

“The reason I introduced this bill is first of all we do have a problem with gun crime in Canada but that crime is linked to hand guns... and also linked to drug and gang related crime,” Conservative member of parliament Candice Hoeppner said. “The registry has done nothing to stop gun crime because it’s focussing on the wrong people.”

The private member’s bill C-391 would put an end to the “wasteful and ineffective” long gun registry, Hoeppner said, however she stresses that it would not change any licensing requirements or transportation requirements and also not change the requirements for restricted and prohibited firearms to be registered.

“That’s where people who shouldn’t own a firearm are weeded out,” Hoeppner said. “The registry is just registering long guns, as opposed to targeting and looking at the individuals who own the firearms.”

In order to pass the bill, Hoeppner is calling upon the opposition, including Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen, to support the bill. Hoeppner also urges his constituents to contact Cullen’s office to let their MP know their thoughts on the long gun registry.

“We’re calling on Mr. Cullen to stand up on Nov. 4 and to support ending the long gun registry, and hopefully his constituents will let him know their thoughts on this,” Hoeppner said.

Cullen said he’s been planning on supporting this bill since approached a few months ago, however he questions their use of a private member’s bill as opposed to a government bill, which would speed up the process.

“”We’ve told them, if they want something is to bring it forward as a government bill,” Cullen said. “But maybe they don’t want the issue to go away, maybe they want to continue playing politics with it.”

A government bill could be moved forward in a number of weeks, Cullen said, whereas a private members would take a number of months. Cullen also questions how the bill would work when the Conservative government has said there would be no job losses from the registry. If the bill passes through government, there would be some points that his party would want to go over, however in terms of the day to day for long gun owners, they probably won’t be seeing a huge difference, he said.

“I think this has become much more of a principal thing, that they [long gun owners] are long fed up with this registry.”