Trustee triggers political waves

Another Vancouver blogger is fired up over a School Board trustee’s guns.

Walter Schultz correctly observes that the story about COPE Trustee Sharon Gregson and her advocacy for concealed weapons has been spun into a more benign “right to bear arms” issue in only a few days.

CBC’s Early Edition actually broke this story (Realaudio link) last Monday morning. When I heard it I thought it was a soft lob to their listenership, which mostly skews to the left, to say in effect, “Look, Everyone, we don’t all wear Birkenstocks, some of us are packing heat!”

Fine, I thought at the time, do all the target practice you want. I bet you are a responsible gun owner, and I wouldn’t want to be the twit that breaks into your house. But concealed weapons? A school trustee?

That evening other Vancouver media had picked up on the story, and by Tuesday morning Gregson’s cover photo from the Canadian Firearms Journal was front page news for the Vancouver Sun.

Talk show listeners chimed in, and Wednesday the Solicitor General and even an NDP MLA questioned Gregson’s judgment on the matter.

Thursday the spin doctors were out in force with this view on the story, and then more spin but this time from the party. “It’s just a sport,” shrugged off fellow COPE trustee Allan Wong.

It didn’t prevent Gregson’s party putting out this this terse release late Thursday evening, distancing themselves from their caucus member’s actions.

By the weekend depending on your point of view, the issue of a left wing Vancouver school trustee writing Prime Minister Harper to advocate for the right to carry concealed weapons in Canada, and posing for the cover of a gun magazine had either wounded someone’s political career, or faded into the background like Christmas Muzak at Zeller’s.

From the mean streets of East Van, where drive-bys are a little too common, it’s hard to feel reassured by someone’s assertion that being able to hide a piece under your jacket legally is an ingredient for improving public safety.

But there you have another day in Vancouver politics.