Members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada are hoping a vigil in Fall River, N.S., over the weekend will help keep Canada's long-gun registry alive.

About 25 women demonstrated in front of the office of Peter Stoffer, NDP MP for Sackville-Eastern Shore, on Saturday night. They chanted "We will not be silent," and took turns shoving their protest placards through Stoffer's mail slot.

Stoffer, who was not present, is one of 18 Liberal and NDP MPs who recently voted to abolish the gun registry.

"We're hoping that we're going to be able to overturn those individuals to reconsider and hopefully, if we're able to overturn their position, we'll be able to keep the gun registry," said Jeannie Baldwin, regional vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

The union, which represents employees who administer the registry and organized the demonstration, contends the registry has helped reduce domestic gun violence against women by 50 per cent and should not be scrapped.

"Dangerous people are refused their guns, which is what we should be doing. So yes, she does tell me a lot about the good that's coming out of it," said Anne Fagan-Wood, whose sister works on the registry.

Lori Walton, organizer of an upcoming candlelight vigil in Halifax for the victims of the Montreal Massacre, agrees.

"To think that a woman's life might be worth less than being able to bag a deer easily is unreal and it's a sad state of affairs that we're in this year marking the 20th anniversary of the Montreal massacre by abolishing the long-gun registry."

On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lepine gunned down 14 female engineering students at École Polytechnique.

Bill C-391 recently passed second reading in Parliament and is expected to reach third and final reading early next year. It would destroy the decade-old registry and any data within the system on about seven million shotguns and rifles.

The union is planning more protests at other MPs' offices across Atlantic Canada in the next few weeks, said Baldwin.