C-68 was a shotgun bill inspired by a shotgun crime

Reasonable critics then and since questioned the sense of criminalizing ownership of non-registered shotguns from Cape Breton to Dawson City because of Toronto Star hysteria and a murder on Davenport Road. Fourteen years later the question lingers.

OTTAWA—Moments of passion are thrilling, but no substitute for sober thought.

It was passion that gave us C-68, An Act Respecting Firearms.

It is passion that defends the bill though it failed to achieve its stated aim. "Registration will reduce crime," then-justice minister Allan Rock said in 1995. In 14 years no proponent has produced evidence this actually happened.

And it must be passion that drives media to distort...