The real issue hardly registers

Babble on.

Skippy's on a roll these days, and I can't find much I disagree with in this stand-out post on gun control and the Dawson College tragedy:

The real issue here is not whether a long gun registry is required, or whether a long gun registry is useless. The weapon in question, as it turns out, is not a long gun, a fact which snuck in the back door in the middle of this bunfight and made fools of the participants.

The weapon in question is a restricted firearm. As with a pistol, this weapon needed to be registered regardless of the long gun registry. And the information released so far suggests that it was, in fact, registered, which means -- if it was registered to the shooter -- that the shooter, a bona fide nutcase, passed all the background checks required to obtain it, and register it.

It's all too easy to use such an emotionally compelling incident to bludgeon a political or ideological opponent. I fall victim to that temptation from time to time myself.

But if we're to have any hope of effectively addressing this issue at all, we need to resist that temptation and ask the questions that will best help us prevent another senseless tragedy, and not just the questions that will make our opponents squirm the most.

As Skippy puts it, it's time for the grown-ups to talk.

Babble off.