Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale’s office cited “law-abiding firearm owners” — a trademark term of the Harper Conservatives — as it acknowledged Friday that the government had missed a deadline to have new gun control legislation in the Commons by December.

Goodale made the commitment two days after the Oct. 1 gun massacre of 58 people at a Las Vegas country and western music festival, which prompted Canadian gun control advocates to attack the Liberals for failing to act on a suite of firearm measures promised in the 2015 election.

“I would expect to have a legislative package consistent with the commitments that we made during the election campaign, with respect to firearms, before the House of Commons before the end of the year,” Goodale told a crowd of journalists as he entered the Commons that day.

“We’ve been working on the legislative package that is required, that work is ongoing. The package will be consistent with the provisions that we described in our election platform — that’s the working blueprint.”

Though the government the very next day pushed forward one of the main promises in the House of Commons — legislation to bring Canada into the UN international Arms Trade Treaty — and later took other steps, major commitments to address firearm sales and record-keeping remain on the drawing board.

Those commitments include: enhanced background checks for anyone seeking to purchase a handgun or other restricted firearm; a requirement for gun licence production at point of sale for all long guns; a requirement for gun vendors to maintain records of all firearms inventory and sales to aid police investigating gun crimes; and an immediate implementation of UN gun-marking regulations that the Harper government had postponed for years.

The Liberal cabinet earlier this year also put off a cabinet decision on the UN marking system, which involves distinctive engravings on all imported firearms or firearms manufactured in Canada, so they can be traced back if they surface in illicit arms deals in other countries.

“The government believes in effective firearms measures that prioritize public safety while ensuring fair treatment for law-abiding firearms owners,” Scott Bardsley, Goodale’s press secretary, said in an email to iPolitics Friday.

Conservative MPs and firearm owners who vehemently opposed the 1995 Liberal long gun registry portrayed the registry as an attack on “law-abiding firearm owners” through the bitter decade-long registry debate. The first and only Harper majority government finally dismantled it in 2012.

Bardsley noted the Liberals also retracted a Conservative government policy allowing cabinet to override RCMP classification of semi-automatic rifle models as either restricted or prohibited, and struck down a Harper cabinet directive allowing gun manufacturers to determine whether the rifles they made were restricted or prohibited.

All handguns, either semi-automatic models or revolvers, are automatically restricted and must be registered in the National Firearm Registry. Most semi-automatic and all single-shot hunting rifles and shotguns are no longer registered.

Bardsley also pointed to the fact the Liberals quickly appointed a new Firearms Advisory Committee for the government — one that is not dominated by hunting and sport shooting advocates, as the Conservative advisory committee was.

Although it was not a campaign promise, Bardley also highlighted government legislation allowing the province of Quebec access to remaining long gun registry records on firearm owners in Quebec.

During the recent federal byelections, Goodale scheduled a high-profile announcement in Surrey, B.C., to implement a campaign promise of $100 million in annual funding to support guns-and-gangs task forces in major cities.

Goodale also announced an Ottawa-led summit on criminal guns and gangs in 2018.

“In the near future, we will be introducing a legislative package consistent with the measures laid out in our election platform,” Bardsley said in an email response, echoing Goodale’s promise after the Las Vegas shootings.

“To be clear, we have said all along that we will not recreate a federal long-gun registry, and we won’t.”