Kill the long gun registry
By: Chris Selley
National Post
April 10, 2009
http://network.nationalpost.
Here’s a very illuminating paragraph from the Toronto Star’s editorial board this week:
It’s hard to make the argument for the gun registry any better than Steven Chabot, president of the association of chiefs of police,
who wrote in a letter to Harper last month: "All guns are potentially dangerous, all gun owners need to be licensed,
all guns need to be registered, and gun owners need to be accountable for their firearms."
It’s hard to make the argument for the gun registry any better, in other words, than by imperiously claiming it’s absolutely essential without citing any supporting evidence at all. Sadly, that’s pretty much the state of play at One Yonge, on this and several other issues.
There are few op-ed phenomena sadder or more predictable than gun registry fans trotting out the opinions of police organizations to support their case. If the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police defended the use of Tasers, I bet the Star’s editorialists wouldn’t take their word for it. Well, no need to speculate—here they are in February, most emphatically not buying the CACP’s defence of the use of Tasers. The fact is, if the CACP told them it was raining outside, they’d verify it with three independent sources before reporting it. But on gun control, that rare point of intersection between the opinions of the two entities, they give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s less an honest argument than it is a classic debate tactic for dealing with people one assumes are hidebound ideologues. When perfervid pro-gun control types mention they’re onside with the police, they’re really saying, “look here, you pistol-stroking troglodytes, your best friends the cops like the gun registry. You wouldn’t want to disagree with your best friends the cops, would you?”
The CACP indulges in a little of that too, actually, in the letter the Star quoted:
It is our assessment that Bill C-301—by softening controls on machine guns, by allowing the transport of fully automatic and semi-automatic assault weapons to civilian shooting ranges, by ending the registration of long guns such as rifles and shotguns (the weapons most often used in domestic homicides and suicides), and by relaxing the current restrictions on handguns, semi-automatic assault and tactical weapons—would seriously compromise a system that is working to the betterment of personal, community and police officer safety.
“Oh crap, domestic violence,” politicians are meant to say in response. “Everyone back away slowly. Van Loan! Quick! Cut a cheque!” But hang on: how many domestic homicides and suicides are we talking about? Does the gun registry stop them from happening? Does it help police solve the crimes? The letter doesn’t say. Over to the Coalition for Gun Control, whose research the CACP often cites on this issue. The coalition does indeed support gun control (as one would expect) as a “small but important part of addressing the problem of violence against women.” They make a logical and, I think, rather compelling argument that registration goes hand-in-hand with tough, common-sense licencing rules—for example, denying or revoking licences to those convicted of domestic violence offences—in that it’s pointless rescinding a licence if you don’t know how many guns its bearer owns. Of course there will be people who acquire and wreak havoc with unregistered long guns, but for the very little money and palaver a properly run gun registry should involve—it is, after all, nothing more than a dead-simple database—this shouldn’t necessarily be cause for outrage.
Our long gun registry, however, is cause for very justifiable outrage. It will always carry with it the shame of being a dead-simple database the government managed to cock up to the tune of billions of dollars. It will always carry the stigma of having been shamelessly, unforgivably marketed and defended as an urban anti-crime measure, when it most emphatically is not, and of having quite rightly offended great swaths of rural Canada. It’s a disaster. Kill it, I say. If an honest debate concludes a replacement is necessary, we’d be better off starting over from scratch.
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May 3rd, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Another relevant article:
The Firearms Registry: The Great Canadian Snow Job
The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) has come out swinging in support of keeping the costly and ineffective long-gun registry despite absolutely no evidence it has prevented or solved a single crime. As justification, they have regurgitated the same, tired rhetoric from the Coalition for Gun Control. Here’s the real ABC’s of the Long Gun Registry.
A) Consider the following: The Gun Registry is accessed by police 9,400 times per day:
The “9,400 hits” figure for the Canadian Firearms Registry On-Line (CFRO) is deliberately misleading. Whenever police officers access the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) for any reason, such as for a simple address check, an automatic hit is generated with CFRO whether the information is desired or not. This is the case, for example, with the Toronto Police Service (5,000 officers), the Vancouver Police (1,400 officers), Ottawa Police Service (1,050 officers) and the BC RCMP (5,000 officers). Additionally, every legal purchase of a firearm generates three administrative hits to the registry; for the buyer, for the seller and for the firearm. Clearly, a hit on the Registry does not denote legitimate investigative use.
B) The registry provides police officers information on the presence of firearms when they respond to emergency calls:
The Firearms Registry only provides a list of the legal guns, the very guns an officer is least likely to be harmed by. The truth is, very few legally owned guns are used in the commission of crimes. The latest report shows some 7% of firearm homicides were committed with registered firearms in the last 8 years. The elimination of the registry will only eliminate the useless lists of lawful guns.
The fact an individual has a firearms licence will still be known to the police. They will know whether a legal firearm is at a particular location by virtue of the fact that an individual has a licence. The abolition of the long-gun registry doesn’t affect that. No police officer would rely on the inaccurate registry data to dictate how they approach a domestic or emergency call. They would approach all calls with an appropriate measure of safety.
C) Police investigations are aided by the registry:
Information contained in the registry is incomplete and unreliable. Due to the inaccuracy of the information, it cannot be used as evidence in court and the government has yet to prove that it has been a contributing factor in any investigation. Another factor is the dismal compliance rate (estimated at only 50%) for licensing and registration which further renders the registry useless.
Some senior police officers have stated as such: “The law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them. None of the guns we know to have been used were registered . . . the money could be more effectively used for security against terrorism as well as a host of other public safety initiatives.” – Former Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino, January 2003.
A few facts are needed to clear up any misconceptions about the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
1. They are a private, not-for-profit, corporation, not a government advisory body.
2. They are not subject to “freedom of information” legislation and are therefore exempt from public scrutiny, unlike other police forces.
3. Their lavish annual conference costs $800,000 and $1 million dollars
4. They received very substantial sponsorship from a Gun Registry contractor (CGI.)
Recently their Ethics Advisor, the highly respected Dr. Jones, resigned over the issue of
tainted corporate sponsorships. He stated: “[Such sponsorship] doesn’t pass the smell test.” and “Generally, commercial enterprises do not operate altruistically. When they donate money, they expect there is something in return.”
The CACP seems to be completely out of touch with the rank and file police officers. Consider the following quotes:
LEN GRINNELL, RETIRED RCMP STAFF-SERGEANT: -
“As a retired member of the RCMP, who supervised police officers in Canada’s largest Detachments, I have grave concerns about the reliance on the registry for data which could result in death or injury of a police officer. . . . . Relying on a flawed system for officer safety will eventually lead to a tragedy. It is unfortunate that the CACP did not take the time to consider the consequences of their position and the safety of the men and women they represent.”
S ERGEANT BOB COTTINGHAM (RE T ‘D), LETHBRIDGE, ALTA. –
“Not once, however, during my career do I recall using the gun registry to solve a major crime. Simply put, the vast majority of criminals use firearms which don’t come close to being included in this bureaucratic
jumble of information. Letter-writer Wendy Cukier may also be disappointed to know that I observed that most front-line officers have little faith in the gun registry, and see it as another bloated and failed attempt by the former government to appease its constituents.”
For more information about the Gun Registry and comments from front line police officers, go to: http://www.cdnshootingsports.org.
Did you know: Of the 9,400 hits per day, only 19 involve a registration certificate of any type
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BCWF ALERT
John B. Holdstock
BC Wildlife Federation
Kelowna, B.C.