Quebec Superior Court orders federal govt to release gun data

Montreal - Justice Marc-Andre Blanchard has ordered Canada's federal government to give its long gun registry data back to the Quebec taxpayers.

The landmark decision is the latest salvo in a terse legal standoff between the Harper government and the province., and it's a sunset showdown that is very likely to end up in Canada's Supreme Court. Yesterday's decision was concluded after Quebec had secured a series of injunctions which had prohibited the Harper government from destroying the data contained in the long gun registry. Long guns will be continued to be registered in La Belle Province a practice that has been discontinued in the rest of Canada. Quebec maintains that the federal government's data on the long gun registry is the province's right as the taxpayers paid for the accumulation of the information. The decision was reached exactly a week following lone gunman Richard Henry Bain's botched assassination attempt on newly elected PQ Premier Pauline Marois at Montreal's Metropolis nightclub on election eve with a handgun and semi automatic machine gun (long gun).