Yellowknife, N.W.T. - The federal government has cleared the first hurdle in eliminating the national long gun registry and all of its data, but that's no surprise to Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington.

The final vote was 159 to 130 in favour of passing Bill C-19 and it even had the support of two members of the NDP caucus in the end.

Bevington says the result was almost a foregone conclusion, but his current position hasn't changed.

“We put forward amendments so the data would be held for a period of three years so that provinces and territories could make up their own minds about how they wanted to proceed in the future,” he said.

Bevington wasn't in the House of Commons last night for the vote to scrap the federal long gun registry because he was travelling home from Sweden after attending a conference and didn't touch ground in Ottawa until midnight, after the vote had already occurred.

With the bill being passed, Bevington says it doesn't mean it's open season for gun owners who think they can do whatever they want.

“The fact that the safe storage of firearms is still under the Criminal Code, I think people still have to understand that,” he said. “They have to understand that they still need a firearms licence to buy ammunition. That hasn’t changed.”

He adds there is no recourse to try and reverse things now because the bill is on its way to the Senate.

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