In the aftermath of the 2006 shooting at Montreal's Dawson College, which claimed the life of 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa and left 16 others wounded, gun control dominated public policy debates.

As it did following the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, there was a fleeting moment after the Dawson shooting when support for stricter gun control enjoyed consensus across the political spectrum.

​When members of Quebec's National Assembly gathered in November 2007 to vote on a bill that further restricted the presence of firearms in public places — a bill dubbed Anastasia's law — it received unanimous support.

But in the years since then, the federal long-gun registry has been dismantled and Quebec's gun lobby has become more vocal and more organized.

So what has happened to gun control in the 10 years since the shooting?

Nelson and Louise De Sousa, parents of Anastasia De Sousa, who died in the shooting, attend a ceremony to inaugurate a peace garden at Dawson in 2011. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

Calls remain for increased gun control

Just as survivors of the Polytechnique massacre went on to become prominent gun control advocates, so too have survivors of the Dawson shooting.

​Hayder Khadim, who was shot in the head and neck by Dawson gunman Kimveer Gill, devoted much of the past decade to pushing for laws that would ban civilians from possessing military-grade assault rifles.

​The weapon Gill used was a Beretta Storm CX4, a semi-automatic rifle similar to versions popular with militaries and police forces around the world. Gill bought the weapon with his restricted firearms permit.

The Beretta can fire multiple shots without being manually reloaded. It remains available for purchase.

"It's a war weapon. I don't understand why it should be accessible to a normal civilian," Khadim told CBC Montreal in 2011.

Khadim, who remains an advocate for gun control, said Monday he continues to hope for strengthened gun control.

​Hayder Khadim speaks about Dawson shooting 1:13

Registry undone

Under Stephen Harper, the Conservative government opted to scrap the long-gun registry, much to the dismay of many Dawson victims and their families.

Long criticized by Harper as wasteful and unnecessary, the registry was dismantled in 2012.

"We have registration of all handguns, already. We have registration of all restricted weapons, already," Harper said in 2015, in defence of the move.

"Our view — and I think it's been borne out by the facts — is that we simply don't need another very expensive and not effective registry."

Louise De Sousa, mother of Anastasia, Suzanne Laplante-Edward and Jim Edward, parents of Polytechnique victim Anne-Marie Edward, advocated for stricter gun controls in Ottawa. (Graham Hughes/Canadian Press)

Quebec gets its own

This summer, members of the National Assembly voted 99-8 in favour of replacing the long-gun registry with a provincial version.

The new registry, set to be in place in 2018, will require all firearms in the province to have a serial number, which will be recorded in a database. Gun sales will also have to be signalled to authorities.

Supporters, including Louise de Sousa, Anastasia's mother, celebrated its passing.

"I screamed. I was ecstatic. I was so happy," de Sousa said at the time. "It won't stop every single shooting there might be. But if it stops one … that makes a difference."

Former prime minister Stephen Harper was a frequent critic of the long-gun registry. (Dylan Martinez/Associated Press)

Plus ça change …

But while the gun registry bill passed easily when it finally came to a vote, all parties were lobbied intensely by pro-gun groups in the province.

Pro-gun protests targeted riding offices of several rural members of the National Assembly, and a petition calling for the bill to be scrapped garnered more than 36,000 signatures.

"It's useless and ineffective," said Gino Marra, a member of the pro-gun lobby group Tous contre un registre Québécois des armes à feu.

"It creates a false sense of security. It won't change anything and it's going to cost a bundle."

But the impending Quebec registry aside, Marra doesn't believe much has changed for gun owners in the province since the Dawson shooting.

Legislation brought in by the Conservatives in 2015 has made it easier to move restricted firearms, he said. But overall, gun laws are no more lenient, or stricter, than they were before the Dawson shooting.

"Over the last decade it didn't change much, other than the registry that was abolished," Marra said.

"I still think that Canadian laws are among the strictest gun laws in the world," he added. "I think the laws are more than enough."