The purpose of the gun registry
August 25, 2010 · By Mark Peters
The cops have admitted publicly and jointly that the gun registry is not a crime fighting tool. Contra Alan Rock and the gun control lobby, it never has been nor could it ever be used for that purpose.
Its updated purpose, paraphrasing Toronto police chief Bill Blair — public safety, officer safety and seizure.
“It’s not a matter of ideology for us. It’s a matter of public safety. It’s just a matter of officer safety,” Chief Blair said.
Of the last 16 officers shot to death in Canada, 14 were killed with long guns, he said, adding long guns represent the majority of guns seized by officers nationwide.
Sorry, Bill, I’m not buying your safety claim. If police couldn’t use the tool to prevent the deaths of their own then it is highly doubtful it can be used to prevent the deaths of anyone else either. A tool that can’t be used to prevent or fight crime cannot be relied upon to enhance police and public safety. What is more, public safety does not necessarily follow from police safety.
The seizure of long guns, though? That definitely sounds like the primary purpose of the gun registry because it’s really the only area in which it is halfway effective, isn’t it? It tells police whose registrations have expired and then the badges can go and harass the otherwise law-abiding citizen to re-register or relinquish the firearm. Like Joe Fiorito.
The problem is, Bill, pouring all that effort into seizing long guns is to ignore the real threat to public and police safety. Stats Can reported in 2008 that, in 2006, gun-related crime “remained steady,” i.e. did not decrease, and handguns were used in two-thirds of all gun-related crime and were used three times as much as long guns in homicides. Yet year over year police are collecting more long guns than handguns.
What this means is police are spending way too much time harassing law-abiding long gun owners and not enough time and resources conquering the main threat to police and public safety — illicit handguns in the hands of gangs, drug lords, pimps and organized crime. The gun registry is a distraction to police, providing an easy way to enforce a point of law that has little to no effect on police or public safety while conveniently ignoring the more difficult elements of law enforcement that would result in increased safety for one and all. Elephant, room. Deck chairs, Titanic. That sort of stuff.
If safety and crime fighting and crime prevention are the goals, as they should be, police need to rid themselves of the distraction that is the gun registry. We are under no illusions that the gun registry is making anything safer. That’s why the people are demanding the government kill it.
Bill Blair and the rest of the Chief Constables are doing what any politician does when confronted by having endorsed a failed government policy. Blair and company endorsed the long gun registry established by the Chretien government in 1995, only to see it fail miserably. At the end of the day the Blair and company were left holding the deed to a bridge in Brooklyn. In a cynical effort to save face they are playing both sides of the issue.
In pleading for the retention of this useless long gun registry when it is put to a vote in parliament next month, while at the same time making a feeble attempt to assuage peaceful hunters and sport shooters, the registry is not aimed at them after all, Blair and company can claim victory if the registry is retained, and, should the registry be scrapped following the vote in parliament, they will chide parliament for not taking seriously the safety of frontline constables and the public they serve. Either way Blair and the rest of the Chief Constables save face in spite of having endorsed a government policy that fell flat on its face at the starting gate.
Well let me see …if the long gun registry costs $2 billion per year , and if the money was divided among the 10 provinces , Blair would have about $200 million to hunt down gang-bangers in Toronto who seem to use illegal handguns rather than long guns.
If the yearly cost of the gun registry is “only” $200 million , Blair could still get $20 million towards hunting down gang-bangers … either way scrapping the registry would be a win … but in lib-left-Miller Toronto , logic does not apply.
William in Ajax said…
The CACP says firearm-related deaths decreased by 43% between 1991 and 2005 because of the registry.
Liars…
The registry didn’t exist in 1991, it wasn’t even proposed until 1995 and didn’t become law until 2002.!
How in hell do LIARS become police chiefs.?
About that 2 billion or 200 million dollar per year figure…
http://www.truthsandmyths.ca/top-10-myths.html
The general figure describing the costs of the gun registry per year is a shade over 4 million per year.
Of course, you could turn around and call the Canadian police association a biased lying organization but I venture to guess your figures were less accurate than theirs.
If we were to talk about the exorbitant initial costs of the programs and if THAT money (which is already spent) could have been better spent fighting crime…it would be an interesting discussion .
I’d be interested to know where those figures came from because that type of thing is a pet peeve of mine.
i wonder if police leave their guns in the car and simply waltz up to a drug house they have been called to because the registry says there’s no guns there. and do they barge into a farmhouse guns drawn because a registered long gun lives there?
any cop who relies on the registry to know how to approach a person or house is bound to get shot. if it were me i would treat any call to a disturbance the same, hence the registry would mean absolutely squat.
Thanks, RD. In a draft of this post I mentioned the approximately $4 million per year but inadvertently dropped it in the final cut.
Still, I would rather the $4 million be spent on something like cross-border handgun smuggling.
Why does the left want the gun registry? I’ll tell you why. When the day comes and the revolution has succeeded, one of the last jobs to do before complete takeover is to round up all dissidents and seize all weapons that could be used against the socialist state in a popular uprising. The left gives not a damn about public safety as they allow immigrants that are criminals, and thugs to roam the streets, and lightly sentence and imprison known thugs that are a threat to society. This is done also for a reason, to create fear in the public such that they scream for tougher and tougher laws against crime and primarily for gun control. Being lax on crime means the socialist endgame is achieved in the end. An armed society is a free and civil and crime free society and those that are armed suffer much lower crime rates (parts of US, Israel, Switzerland etc.).
4 million a year? Given that the National Firearms Centre has approximately 200 employees, that means that each of them is paid about 20,000 per year. When is the last time you’ve met a government employee paid 20,000 a year? And that does not even take into account the operations costs of the firearms centre.
Cops are very good at lying. Don’t be fooled.
Again…figures flying left and right.
Exactly how many people work at the national firearms center? Is the sole purpose of the national firearms center the long gun registry?
The world is full of liars. Some are in Law Enforcement, some fabricate chain emails and attribute them to George Carlin…
Thanks for the acknowledgment Mark. I agree that money should be spent on cross border handgun smuggling. It’s a huge problem right now. However, if we are indeed talking about moving only 4 million, it would probably not have much of an impact on that situation. To compound that issue, moving the 4 mil off the gun registry guarantees we give up any value we may have salvaged from the registry program.
I’m sure this is where you’d say “and what’s wrong with that???”
Anyways, I’m of the opinion that if the system is now in place, don’t rip it down if the operating costs are indeed that low. The users of the system say they benefit greatly from it. From another angle, all it would take is another horrific gun related tragedy to prompt the creation of another registry? How much money do you think the 2016 Liberals would spend on such a registry? :)
I’m not a gun owner. I’m not aware of how it feels exactly to have to have my guns registered so I don’t exactly understand the pain.
Real Conservative, may I summarize your post?
-The left is plotting a revolution
-The left will round up dissidents and seize their weapons
-The left allows immigrant criminals and thugs to roam the streets
-The left deliberately gives light sentences to such thugs
The goal of the left is to spread what? Fear? Did anyone else’s irony meter just explode? What do you call someone who accuses someone else of doing something that they themselves are incredibly guilty of? Hypocr—nevermind.
Personally, I think fear can also drive a person to purchase a weapon. You for instance, are terrified of the left wing boogey man.
Finally, since you had so many interesting things in your post…
The US has a higher crime rate than we do…don’t go an pick certain states…we can argue that PEI has a great crime rate.
Israel has been a war-zone for years and Switzerland …Switzerland….
They actually do have low crime and widespread distribution of firearms. Do you know why so many people have firearms in Switzerland? Conscription! That’s right, forget about your right to bear arms, the state can come and press you into their military! Sucks to your rights…it’s off the army for you! To boot, these conscripts are issued weapons and ammunition by the government. Guess what that means? They have a gun registry!
RD,
Thanks for your continued input.
I agree $4 million per year isn’t a staggering amount of money, in relative terms, but 4M/y towards curbing illicit handguns is a more worthwhile expenditure than maintaining a registry for enforcement of registration, which is clearly the main use of the system.
The other compelling reason is that effort follows money. I believe police are distracted by the long gun registry. They are focusing too much energy and time ensuring Joe Smith has his two shotguns registered. If the money focused on illegal handguns, effort would move in that direction. And I contend that’s where efforts should be concentrated.
I have another post coming out today….
I’ll definitely agree with you that illegal handguns are the real problem in our society and that we should be pouring money into fighting this problem.
Lets say we were to aggressively fight illegal gun ownership. How would we differentiate legal gun owners from illegal ones? Would it be preferable to focus mainly on the smuggling of weapons over the border? What about the hundreds of thousands of weapons already here?
RD
We had the means to track registration of firearms, both long gun and handguns, decades before the long gun registry. If I have my history correct, citizens first started registering weapons in the 30s. Qualified Canadians have been obtaining acquisition licenses from government for decades. And the procedures and rules for obtaining and owning a handgun have always been incredibly stringent.
We don’t need the LGR for registration or differentiation. This was one of the main arguments against the LGR from the beginning.
As for preference: I say we worry about those who acquire firearms for nefarious purposes and not worry about the citizen who has an acquisition license and hasn’t committed any firearms offenses. Let’s begin there, ’cause right now we are hammering the latter for no logical reason.
Police take no chances, they have their hands on their guns at all times, and I have seen them being pulled out and pointed quite frequently. They do a good job protecting us, but they have an intense desire to also retain their own life also.