THUNDER BAY -- Even though both Thunder Bay MPs were punished for breaking rank with the NDP over abolishing the long gun registry back in 2011, Tom Mulcair says he won't re-introduce the registry if the NDP forms the next government.

THUNDER BAY -- Even though both Thunder Bay MPs were punished for breaking rank with the NDP over abolishing the long gun registry back in 2011, Tom Mulcair says he won't re-introduce the registry if the NDP forms the next government.

The NDP Leader made the comment to reporters in Thunder Bay on Sunday after speaking at a rally of around 300 people.

"We will not be bringing in a long gun registry. It was a failure," Mulcair said.

"We will make sure the police have the tools to do their job safely but there's no question for the NDP to bring in a long gun registry."

There are few ridings in Canada where the NDP's position on gun registration has had more of an impact than those in Thunder Bay.

In November 2011, then-interim-Leader Nycole Turmel whipped NDP MPs to vote against a Conservative bill to scrap the long gun registry.

That spring's election had brought the NDP enormous gains in Quebec. For urban voters there, the registry was perceived as a legacy response to the 1989 Montreal Massacre, in which a man shot and killed 14 female students and injured 15 others at Ecole Polytechnique.

Detractors argued the program cost taxpayers over $2 billion and many rural residents across Canada had opposed it since it was introduced in 1995.

Both Thunder Bay-Superior North MP Bruce Hyer and Thunder Bay-Rainy River MP John Rafferty argued their consitutents strongly wanted them to vote with the Conservatives to abolish the registry. Rafferty claimed 96 per cent of people he surveyed wanted it scrapped.

When the NDP whipped the vote, Hyer and Rafferty disobeyed their party on all three of the bill's readings.

In response, the NDP removed both MPs from committees and they were not allowed to ask questions during Question Period for five months.

Mulcair was elected to lead the NDP on March 24, 2012. Hyer was left out of Mulcair's shadow cabinet and left the NDP to sit as an independent within the month, claiming the new leader told him to vote with the party on all issues.

Two months before Hyer joined the Green Party in December of 2013, he introduced a Private Member's Bill that would oblige anyone selling or transferring a firearm to ensure the recipient had a valid possession and acquisition license.

It was read only once.