Government House Leader John Baird said Monday the Tories want to scrap the long gun registry rather than "make criminals out of duck hunters and sportsmen," but it appears the opposition has enough votes to save the registry in a vote later this week.

MPs will vote Wednesday on Tory MP Candice Hoeppner's private-member's bill to scrap the controversial registry. When asked why the Tories, who have made getting tough on crime a key part of their legislative agenda, would want to kill a firearm registry, Baird argued that because criminals don't register their guns, it unfairly targets responsible, law-abiding gun owners.

"We just think we're better off to go after the people who use guns in the commission of offences, than to make criminals out of duck hunters and sportsmen and women and farmers," Baird told CTV's Power Play Monday evening.

Earlier Monday, it appeared less likely the Tories will secure a victory, as yet another NDP MP announced his decision to vote to keep the registry, even though he still believes the registry is flawed.

Nova Scotia MP Peter Stoffer has been a long-time critic of the registry, but he changed his position after consulting constituents in his Sackville-Eastern Shore riding, saying that he was unable to convince them that the registry should be scrapped.

He was also "quite dismayed," he said, that the debate about whether to keep the registry has been couched in terms of a contest between urban and rural communities.

No one in the NDP "cajoled, coerced, twisted my arm" to change his position on the matter, he said.

NDP Leader Jack Layton says that enough of his caucus has come out in support of the registry that it will be saved.

Layton said Monday he was disappointed that given the likelihood the vote will not go the government's way, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not responded to his suggestions to amend the bill to make it more palatable to rural voters.

"I said to the prime minister today as well as in a conversation last week, ‘Why don't we work together here? You haven't got the numbers now to simply eliminate it. So let's work to try to fix it and address some of those legitimate issues that are being raised by people who are law-abiding gun owners and hunters and farmers,'" Layton told Power Play.

The NDP's proposed changes to the registry include decriminalizing honest mistakes on a registration form, something the Liberals also propose.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has told his caucus to vote against the private bill from going any further.

Ignatieff said Monday he is whipping the vote "because the cops tell us they need a gun registry, because the victims of crime tell us they need a gun registry."

"So we've got the government on one side, we've got the cops on the other. How do you choose? I'd go with the cops."

The Bloc Quebecois says it will also vote against the bill in a Commons vote. That puts the bill's fate in the hands of the NDP.

A dozen New Democrats and eight Liberals voted with the Conservatives earlier this year when the bill was presented to Parliament.

In Stoffer's case, he has said that he opposed the registry because it doesn't address gun control, citing the gun shooting attack at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989 that killed 14 women.

A number of New Democrats who had previously voted to scrap the registry have recently announced they will vote to keep it.

The Conservatives, in an effort to sway votes, launched a publicity campaign last week aimed at the ridings of the New Democrats and the Liberals who originally supported the bill. The campaign includes radio and billboard ads that urge constituents to pressure their MP to vote to scrap the registry.

During a speech last Tuesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed that his government "is not going to rest until that long gun registry is abolished."

With files from The Canadian Press