Lorne Gunter has long been a worthy writer of common sense articles when it comes to crime, gun laws and effects of dubious regulation. This article is an excellent example, simple, to the point and loaded with checkable facts.
Gun registry proven worthless
Statistics Canada report comes to defence of Canada’s sport shooters, hunters and collectors
By Lorne Gunter ,QMI Agency
First posted: Saturday, December 08, 2012 07:00 PM CST
As soon as I saw the news releases this week from Statistics Canada announcing the annual publication of national murder figures, I readied my arguments about why the increase had nothing to do with the Harper government’s dismantling of the gun registry.
I knew the gun-banning groups would be all over the new numbers, which show a 7% increase from 2010 — a year in which Canada saw its lowest murder rate in four decades.
And I “knew” the anti-gunners would insist the rise was due to the Harper government’s dismantling of the gun registry, even though StatsCan’s latest numbers were from 2011 and the registry was not shut down until this year.
I knew the gun-controllers would jump on the increase in yet another attempt to reinstate the registry and make criminals of Canada’s law-abiding gun owners.
I needn’t have worried, though. StatsCan did my work for me. The national number-crunchers came (indirectly) to the defence of this country’s beleaguered sport shooters, hunters and gun collectors by stating very clearly that nearly all of the increase between 2010 and 2011 was due to knives. Guns weren’t to blame for the increased number of murders, nor were changes to federal gun laws.
And the last time I checked, knives weren’t included in the GUN registry.
Not only was the end of the registry not responsible for the uptick in homicides, StatsCan went further. Gun murders are at their lowest level in 50 years — half a century!
Indeed, StatsCan’s annual report was full of numbers that prove the uselessness of gun control.
For instance, some anti-gun activists will no doubt try to stretch the truth a little and claim the fact that gun crimes are so low is proof the registry worked to make the public safer.
Not so. As StatsCan points out, all murders — but especially firearms murders — have been on the decline since the mid-1970s, long before Ottawa began imposing draconian gun laws. The reason for the decline is demographics. There are simply fewer young men in the population now. And since men between the ages or 16 and 30 are the most likely to commit crime, if there are fewer of them on the street, there will be less crime.
Please read the rest here: http://www.winnipegsun.com/2012/12/07/gun-registry-proven-worthless
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
A moment of silence
This video sums up what we think of the LGR nicely.
Royal assent has been given to bill C-19, the bill that dismantles the Long Gun Registry. This is a great moment for democracy and for common sense. While much of the work was done by a small number of individuals both within and outside of the government, it was the combined will of millions of Canadians that gave them the power to be able to defeat the gun registry and it's entrenched and well funded supporters. The number of people who truly were for the gun registry and were willing to work at protecting it has always been a tiny number. But they held influential positions and had the ears of Ministers and decision makers to whisper in. This gave them power far beyond their numbers. But something changed that they could not cope with and that is the internet.
Hunters, shooter, collectors, firearm enthusiasts, soldiers and even police officers came together in internet forums and found that they were not alone. Soon we realized how many we were and with the help of the web we organized, we wrote letters, talked to politicians, shooters, police and anyone else we could. Only the Conservatives listened though and realized just how powerful an issue it was, (to be fair there was a small group of brave Liberals and NDPers who also listened) with shooters willing to volunteer and donate based on this issue, our influence as a group grew. There are more shooters than there are people in some Provinces and territories, that's a lot of votes. Although we had the support also of many non-shooters, people who were smart enough to know that the registry is nothing more than a pacifier for the public and a black hole sucking up money and resources. Combined we are a force to be reckoned with and let's be clear this is not a rural vs urban issue. There are many shooters that live in the cities and big towns and they are just as pissed as the farmer out in the country. So yes today is a good day for democracy, because it worked and we intend to keep pushing to change the law so people are not criminalized for paperwork crimes.
From the CFC webpage:
Changes to business requirements: elimination of the requirement to register non-restricted firearms Special Bulletin for Businesses No. 79
April 5, 2012
Snapshot
Implementation of Bill C-19, the Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act.
Implications
The Government of Canada has changed the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act to eliminate the requirement to register non-restricted firearms effective April 5, 2012. Until further notice, due to a Court Order issued by the Quebec Superior Court, residents of Quebec are still required to register non-restricted firearms with the RCMP Canadian Firearms Program.
Beginning on April 5, 2012, firearms businesses are no longer required to obtain a Registration Certificate for non-restricted firearms from the Canadian Firearms Program (CFP). This does not impact registration requirements for restricted or prohibited firearms.
Businesses that use Business Web Services, available from the CFP website, are advised that the registration and transfer of non-restricted firearms is no longer required or supported.
Individuals and businesses buying or otherwise acquiring firearms must still have a firearms licence, and businesses are still responsible for checking the buyer’s licence. Businesses may continue to call the CFP at the toll-free number to confirm the buyer’s licence prior to completing a sale.
Now I have a confession to make, I was a criminal until Midnight Apr 5th , because I had 2 unregistered long guns. I had bought them both from some old timers who were giving up shooting, they didn't want them registered and I agreed. Owning them was a risk, a risk that I shared with millions of other Canadians because most firearm owners had a number of rifles that they did not register, I would hazard a guess that at least 2 million owners did not register their firearms. I am saying this to show people just how big a failure the LGR was. Almost 3 billion spent and almost no compliance from otherwise law abiding people.
To celebrate this day I went to the range a free man no longer worried about being arrested. I took one of those never registered guns with me and I proceeded to shoot my gun registration papers. It was a great way to tell people like Allan Rock and Wendy Cukier to go pound sand. It was a beautiful day and I felt damm good!
My unregistered firearm
Finally a good use for a firearms registration certificate
As for this blog, while the LGR is gone, the registry for restricted and prohibited firearms remain and no doubt so shall truly epic failures of those registries. Just think the handguns have been registered since 1934 and they are increasingly being used by bad guys to carry out their crimes. I guess we are just slow learners eh? but that's a battle for tomorrow, today we enjoy the fruits of victory and how sweet it is.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Flawed registration and bad data
Submitted by the "Duke"
A few years back, I had an opportunity to help a friend out by lending him a non restricted rifle. This lending was 100% legitimate. He had a valid PAL, I provided him with a copy of the registration certificate, I wrote a note explaining that I was lending it to him, and I wrote my 24hr contact and PAL information on the back.
One day, he was pulled over while driving and, somehow, the police officer got into looking into his trunk (SUV). Even though my friend was in the vehicle, the rifle was unloaded, locked, in a locked case and completely out of sight.
Anyhow, not thinking he had anything to hide (officer asked the "do you have any alcohol in the vehicle" line), he allowed the officer to check in the back of his SUV.
Rifle was found, inspected, and confiscated as "stolen property" on the spot, despite the paperwork and contact info. No call, no explanation, just a confiscated rifle. Also curious is that they let my friend drive off, even though he had been in possession of an apparently stolen firearm.
Anyhow, I head to the local RCMP office come Monday. It turned out that it wasn't the lending equation that sparked the stolen firearm confiscation, but the registry had a name other than my own in its database. Funny thing was the registration certificate, that I also had a copy of, was the whole page that included my full name. As was the certificate that my friend had provided during the incident.
The officer did politely return the firearm to me, explaining that he was following the direction of his superiors and that I would be thankful if the situation were different.
Inconvenience aside, the firearm was returned in good order. Frustrating that the almighty database can make your own property "stolen" and no longer yours due to a data entry error.
A few years back, I had an opportunity to help a friend out by lending him a non restricted rifle. This lending was 100% legitimate. He had a valid PAL, I provided him with a copy of the registration certificate, I wrote a note explaining that I was lending it to him, and I wrote my 24hr contact and PAL information on the back.
One day, he was pulled over while driving and, somehow, the police officer got into looking into his trunk (SUV). Even though my friend was in the vehicle, the rifle was unloaded, locked, in a locked case and completely out of sight.
Anyhow, not thinking he had anything to hide (officer asked the "do you have any alcohol in the vehicle" line), he allowed the officer to check in the back of his SUV.
Rifle was found, inspected, and confiscated as "stolen property" on the spot, despite the paperwork and contact info. No call, no explanation, just a confiscated rifle. Also curious is that they let my friend drive off, even though he had been in possession of an apparently stolen firearm.
Anyhow, I head to the local RCMP office come Monday. It turned out that it wasn't the lending equation that sparked the stolen firearm confiscation, but the registry had a name other than my own in its database. Funny thing was the registration certificate, that I also had a copy of, was the whole page that included my full name. As was the certificate that my friend had provided during the incident.
The officer did politely return the firearm to me, explaining that he was following the direction of his superiors and that I would be thankful if the situation were different.
Inconvenience aside, the firearm was returned in good order. Frustrating that the almighty database can make your own property "stolen" and no longer yours due to a data entry error.
__________________
Friday, March 16, 2012
Disingenuous game with suicide stats
A good article on the effect of the LGR of suicides and rebuttal to the Wendy's of the world.
Lorne Gunter: Gun control advocates play disingenuous game with suicide stats
“In 1995, there were 1,125 firearms deaths in Canada, in 2008 it was 754, so that’s almost 400 fewer deaths per year,” Ms. Cukier told reporters. Most of the drop, she explained, was a result of fewer firearms accidents and, especially, suicides. “Experts say legislation has had a profound impact on suicides with firearms,” she contended.
---
But this only matters if you care how people commit suicide, not whether they kill themselves.
There are roughly the same number of suicides committed in Canada each year. Annually between 3,500 and 3,800 Canadians decide to end their own lives, and the number has been remarkably consistent for nearly a quarter of a century.
--
People intent on killing themselves may not be using guns to do so as often as they did before the registry opened in 1998, but they are still killing themselves. They are simply using other methods more now. For instance, during the time firearms suicides have declined, suicides by hanging have gone up nearly 75%. Instead of using guns, troubled Canadians have turned to ropes (and pills and poisons and gas, etc.)
In effect, she is saying it was worth spending $2 billion or $3 billion of taxpayers’ money (not to mention branding law-abiding gun owners as criminals) just so 400 or so disturbed Canadians each year could be persuaded to end their lives with a noose rather than a shotgun.
Read the full article at the National Post
“In 1995, there were 1,125 firearms deaths in Canada, in 2008 it was 754, so that’s almost 400 fewer deaths per year,” Ms. Cukier told reporters. Most of the drop, she explained, was a result of fewer firearms accidents and, especially, suicides. “Experts say legislation has had a profound impact on suicides with firearms,” she contended.
---
But this only matters if you care how people commit suicide, not whether they kill themselves.
There are roughly the same number of suicides committed in Canada each year. Annually between 3,500 and 3,800 Canadians decide to end their own lives, and the number has been remarkably consistent for nearly a quarter of a century.
--
People intent on killing themselves may not be using guns to do so as often as they did before the registry opened in 1998, but they are still killing themselves. They are simply using other methods more now. For instance, during the time firearms suicides have declined, suicides by hanging have gone up nearly 75%. Instead of using guns, troubled Canadians have turned to ropes (and pills and poisons and gas, etc.)
In effect, she is saying it was worth spending $2 billion or $3 billion of taxpayers’ money (not to mention branding law-abiding gun owners as criminals) just so 400 or so disturbed Canadians each year could be persuaded to end their lives with a noose rather than a shotgun.
Read the full article at the National Post
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Solomon Friedman talks to CKNW's Sean Leslie
A great interview about the scrapping of the registry. Useful for people who don't understand the issues.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
159-130 votes, the LGR is almost gone!!!
Today is a good day, the bill to end the Long gun registry has gone through with 159 to 130 votes which means the LGR is almost dead, now only the Senate to pass through and then have the bill declared law.
This is the tide turning, today we celebrate and enjoy the moment, made possible by the hard work of thousands of Canadians and the politicians who represent them. many of us thought this day would never come, but some kept working at it, till the moment was right. As soon as the bill is declared law, I plan on shooting my papers.
Frankly I think we should get rid of the complete registry, but I suspect for the moment it's a bridge to far. I think though after about 5 years of data to back up the fact that the LGR was useless, then we can work on the remaining registry.
Finally a post that is not about a failure of the gun registry.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
159 failures is a success in police eyes
Re: "Man arrested after 159 guns stolen from outdoor store," Feb. 7.
The article contains some puzzling contradictions. Most glaring is the quote attributed to Saanich Police Sgt. Dean Jantzen: "Access to the long-gun registry has been critical to advancing the speed of this investigation."
This comment follows the police observation that, "a remarkable thing is that all the guns were registered through the long-gun registry . a valuable tool in tracking and accounting for all the weapons."
Why didn't the registry track and identify the 159 guns when they were being registered to the wrong person? Aren't we fortunate that this individual had no violent intent.
One can only pale at the prospect of how many similar registry errors may have placed hundreds or thousands of weapons into the hands of hardened criminals.
Moreover, the article states that police were tipped off by an owner of Island Outfitters after a year-end audit. It looks to me like the long-gun registry had nothing to do with the tip-off. In addition, it is reported that the suspect is co-operating with police, which indicates he has turned over all of the registry's erroneously issued paperwork with the firearms in question.
No other information is available or required for an investigation like this.
The only contribution the long-gun registry made was to waste taxpayer money by repeating the same error 159 times.
Myrna Francis
Brentwood Bay
http://www.timescolonist.com/Long+registry+only+wasted+money/6125527/story.html
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/Long+registry+only+wasted+money/6125527/story.html#ixzz1m72olhPr
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Lorne Gunter: The gun-control lobby’s statistical black hole
The list of reasons for getting rid of the registry just gets longer and longer....
Lorne Gunter: The gun-control lobby’s statistical black hole
Last month, the RCMP and Statistics Canada were forced to admit that they don’t keep statistics relating to the number of violent gun crimes in Canada that are committed by licenced gun owners using registered guns.
“Please note,” Statistics Canada wrote in response to an access to information request filed by the National Firearms Association, “that the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) survey does not collect information on licensing of either guns or gun owners related to the incidents of violent crime reported by police.” Nor does StatsCan’s annual homicide survey “collect information on the registration status of the firearm used to commit a homicide.”
This raises the question: Why did it take so long for the government to begin ridding Canada of the horribly expensive, unjustifiably intrusive federal gun registry? If no one in Ottawa had any systematic way of tracking whether or not Canadians suspected of committing a violent gun crime were licensed to own a gun and had registered the gun being used, then they had no way of knowing whether registration and licensing were having a positive impact on crime.
There are around 340,000 violent crimes reported to police in Canada each year. Just over 2% of those (around 8,000) involve firearms. (There’s another reason to question the initial wisdom of the gun registry: Why was Ottawa expending so much time, effort and taxpayer money on such a tiny percentage of violent crimes, while doing comparatively little to prevent the 98% of murders, robberies, kidnappings, rapes and beatings not committed with a gun?)
Typically, gun crime is committed by street criminals using stolen or contraband weapons. The gun registry never had any effect on this class of thug. Some of the 8,000 violent gun crimes no doubt were committed by licensed owners using registered guns — people who might be tracked or even deterred using a registry system. But since no one in Ottawa ever had any idea how many people are in this latter group, they had no way of determining the usefulness of the registry.
A cynic might say that not knowing was the point all along. Backers of the registry knew it would produce very little impact, so they deliberately didn’t bother collecting data that would confirm the database’s uselessness.
I think the truth is less conspiratorial (and far more arrogant): Backers were so sure the registry would produce tangible benefits, they never thought they might need to show proof. After all, they were experts and they had thought it up, so how could it not work?
I would have thought it was a better strategy to collect as much data as possible from year one. That way backers could track the decline in gun crimes committed by licensed owners using guns they themselves had registered. But neither StatsCan nor the RCMP — nor, for that matter, local police forces — tallies gun crimes relative to who committed them and whether or not the gun used was registered with the federal government. It was purely on blind faith that supporters of the registry — police chiefs, victims’ rights groups, women’s shelter operators and grandstanding politicians — assumed that making Canadians register their guns would magically cut down on violent crime.
Gary Mauser, an emeritus professor at the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., and one of the country’s leading firearms researchers, has done his best to piece together some sort of statistical analysis of firearms crime and licenced gun owners. Using Library of Parliament data and raw StatsCan crime numbers, Prof. Mauser believes about 3% of murders committed in Canada since the registry opened in 1998 have been committed by licenced gun owners using firearms, registered or not — this despite the fact that at least 8% of Canadians own firearms. Prof. Mauser calculates that this works out to a rate of 0.38 murders per 100,000 licensed gun owners versus a murder rate of 1.85 per 100,000 — nearly five times higher — for the population as a whole.
All of this shows what a horrendous waste of time and money the registry has been. The sooner it is dismantled, the better.
National Post
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/25/lorne-gunter-the-gun-control-lobbys-statistical-black-hole/
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Birth of the Canadian Gun Registry
Birth of the Canadian Gun Registry
A gang that couldn't shoot straight
by John Dixon
The Liberals' gun registry program was pointed at Kim Campbell, not crime. That's why it shot itself in the foot, says former justice adviser JOHN DIXON.
We now know that the government's gun-control policy is a fiscal and administrative debacle. Its costs rival those of core services like national defence. And it doesn't work. What is less well known is that the policy wasn't designed to control guns. It was designed to control Kim Campbell.
When Ms. Campbell was enjoying a brief season of success in her re-election bid in the summer campaign of 1993, Mr. Chretien was kept busy reassuring what he called the "Nervous Nellies" in his caucus that Ms. Campbell's star would soon fall. To bring her down, the Liberals planned to discredit her key accomplishment as minister of justice, an ambitious gun-control package.
Those measures -- enacted in the wake of the Montreal Massacre -- Included new requirements for the training and certification of target shooters and hunters.
We got new laws requiring: the safe storage of firearms and ammunition, which essentially brought every gun in the country under Lock and key; screening of applicants for firearms licences; courts to actively seek information about firearms in spousal assault cases; the prohibition of firearms that had no place in Canada's field-and-stream tradition of firearms use.
I was one of the department of justice officials involved in that Earlier gun-control program. When the House of Commons passed the legislation, Wendy Cukier and Heidi Rathgen of the Coalition for Gun Control, which had been part of the consultation process, supplied the champagne for a party at my Ottawa home.
So what were the Liberals to do, faced with a legislative accomplishment on this scale?
Simple: Pretend it hadn't happened, and promise to do something so dramatic that it would make Ms. Campbell look soft on gun control.
The obvious policy choice was a universal firearms registry.
The idea of requiring the registration of every firearm in the country wasn't new. Governments love lists. Getting lists and maintaining them is a visible sign that the government is at work. And lists are the indispensable first step to collecting taxes and licence fees. There is no constitutional right to bear arms in Canada, as is arguably the case in the United States.
So why not go for a universal gun registry? The short answer, arrived at by every study in the Department of Justice, was that universal registration would be ruinously expensive, and could actually yield a negative public security result (more on this in a moment). Besides, in 1992 Canada already had two systems of gun registration: the complete registry of all restricted firearms, such as handguns (restricted since the 1930s) and a separate registry of ordinary firearms.
This latter registry, which started in the early 1970s, was a feature of the firearms acquisition certificate (or FAC) required by a person purchasing any firearm. Every firearm purchased from a dealer had to be registered to the FAC holder by the vendor, and the record of the purchase passed on to the RCMP in Ottawa. So we were already building a cumulative registry of all the owners of guns in Canada purchased since 1970.
The FAC system was a very Canadian (i.e. sensible) approach to the registration of ordinary hunting and target firearms. If you were a good ol' boy from Camrose, Alta., and didn't want to get involved, you didn't have to - as long as you didn't buy more guns. Good ol' boys die off, so younger people in shooting sports would eventually all be enrolled in the system.
After the Montreal Massacre, the then-deputy minister of justice, John Tait, asked me to review the gun-control package under development. One thing I immediately wanted to know was how many Canadians owned Ruger Mini-14s (the gun used by the Montreal murderer). The Mini-14 came into production about the time the FAC system was introduced, so the FAC should have a good picture of the gun's distribution.
But when our team asked the RCMP for the information, we couldn't get it. Computers were down; the information hadn't been entered yet; there weren't enough staff to process the request; there was a full moon. After a week, I said I didn't want excuses, I wanted the records. Then a very senior person sat me down and told me the truth.
The RCMP had stopped accepting FAC records, and had actually destroyed those it already had. The FAC registry system didn't exist because the police thought it was useless and refused to waste their limited budgets maintaining it. They also moved to ensure that their political masters could not resurrect it.
Such spectacular bureaucratic vandalism persuaded my deputy and his minister to concentrate on developing compliance with affordable gun-control measures that could work. A universal gun registry could only appeal to people who didn't care about costs or results, and who didn't understand what riled up decent folks in Camrose.
Which is precisely why it appealed to those putting together the Liberal Red Book for the pivotal 1993 election. If the object of the policy exercise was to appear to be "tougher" on guns than Kim Campbell, they had to find a policy that would provoke legitimate gun-owners to outrage. Nothing would better convince the Liberals' urban constituency that Jean Chretien and Allan Rock were taking a tough line on guns than the spectacle of angry old men spouting fury on Parliament Hill.
The supreme irony of the gun registry battle is that the policy was selected because it would goad people who knew something about guns to public outrage. That is, it had a purely political purpose in the special context of a hard-fought election. The fact that it was bad policy was crucial to the specific political effect it was supposed to deliver.
And so we saw demonstrations by middle-aged firearm owners, family men whose first reflex was to respect the laws of the land. This group's political alienation is a far greater loss than the $200-million that have been wasted so far.
The creation of this new criminal class -- the ultimate triumph of negative political alchemy -- may be the worst, and most enduring product of the gun registry culture war.
John Dixon is a hunter, and president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. From 1991 to 1992, he was adviser to then-deputy minister of justice John Tait.
A gang that couldn't shoot straight
by John Dixon
The Liberals' gun registry program was pointed at Kim Campbell, not crime. That's why it shot itself in the foot, says former justice adviser JOHN DIXON.
We now know that the government's gun-control policy is a fiscal and administrative debacle. Its costs rival those of core services like national defence. And it doesn't work. What is less well known is that the policy wasn't designed to control guns. It was designed to control Kim Campbell.
When Ms. Campbell was enjoying a brief season of success in her re-election bid in the summer campaign of 1993, Mr. Chretien was kept busy reassuring what he called the "Nervous Nellies" in his caucus that Ms. Campbell's star would soon fall. To bring her down, the Liberals planned to discredit her key accomplishment as minister of justice, an ambitious gun-control package.
Those measures -- enacted in the wake of the Montreal Massacre -- Included new requirements for the training and certification of target shooters and hunters.
We got new laws requiring: the safe storage of firearms and ammunition, which essentially brought every gun in the country under Lock and key; screening of applicants for firearms licences; courts to actively seek information about firearms in spousal assault cases; the prohibition of firearms that had no place in Canada's field-and-stream tradition of firearms use.
I was one of the department of justice officials involved in that Earlier gun-control program. When the House of Commons passed the legislation, Wendy Cukier and Heidi Rathgen of the Coalition for Gun Control, which had been part of the consultation process, supplied the champagne for a party at my Ottawa home.
So what were the Liberals to do, faced with a legislative accomplishment on this scale?
Simple: Pretend it hadn't happened, and promise to do something so dramatic that it would make Ms. Campbell look soft on gun control.
The obvious policy choice was a universal firearms registry.
The idea of requiring the registration of every firearm in the country wasn't new. Governments love lists. Getting lists and maintaining them is a visible sign that the government is at work. And lists are the indispensable first step to collecting taxes and licence fees. There is no constitutional right to bear arms in Canada, as is arguably the case in the United States.
So why not go for a universal gun registry? The short answer, arrived at by every study in the Department of Justice, was that universal registration would be ruinously expensive, and could actually yield a negative public security result (more on this in a moment). Besides, in 1992 Canada already had two systems of gun registration: the complete registry of all restricted firearms, such as handguns (restricted since the 1930s) and a separate registry of ordinary firearms.
This latter registry, which started in the early 1970s, was a feature of the firearms acquisition certificate (or FAC) required by a person purchasing any firearm. Every firearm purchased from a dealer had to be registered to the FAC holder by the vendor, and the record of the purchase passed on to the RCMP in Ottawa. So we were already building a cumulative registry of all the owners of guns in Canada purchased since 1970.
The FAC system was a very Canadian (i.e. sensible) approach to the registration of ordinary hunting and target firearms. If you were a good ol' boy from Camrose, Alta., and didn't want to get involved, you didn't have to - as long as you didn't buy more guns. Good ol' boys die off, so younger people in shooting sports would eventually all be enrolled in the system.
After the Montreal Massacre, the then-deputy minister of justice, John Tait, asked me to review the gun-control package under development. One thing I immediately wanted to know was how many Canadians owned Ruger Mini-14s (the gun used by the Montreal murderer). The Mini-14 came into production about the time the FAC system was introduced, so the FAC should have a good picture of the gun's distribution.
But when our team asked the RCMP for the information, we couldn't get it. Computers were down; the information hadn't been entered yet; there weren't enough staff to process the request; there was a full moon. After a week, I said I didn't want excuses, I wanted the records. Then a very senior person sat me down and told me the truth.
The RCMP had stopped accepting FAC records, and had actually destroyed those it already had. The FAC registry system didn't exist because the police thought it was useless and refused to waste their limited budgets maintaining it. They also moved to ensure that their political masters could not resurrect it.
Such spectacular bureaucratic vandalism persuaded my deputy and his minister to concentrate on developing compliance with affordable gun-control measures that could work. A universal gun registry could only appeal to people who didn't care about costs or results, and who didn't understand what riled up decent folks in Camrose.
Which is precisely why it appealed to those putting together the Liberal Red Book for the pivotal 1993 election. If the object of the policy exercise was to appear to be "tougher" on guns than Kim Campbell, they had to find a policy that would provoke legitimate gun-owners to outrage. Nothing would better convince the Liberals' urban constituency that Jean Chretien and Allan Rock were taking a tough line on guns than the spectacle of angry old men spouting fury on Parliament Hill.
The supreme irony of the gun registry battle is that the policy was selected because it would goad people who knew something about guns to public outrage. That is, it had a purely political purpose in the special context of a hard-fought election. The fact that it was bad policy was crucial to the specific political effect it was supposed to deliver.
And so we saw demonstrations by middle-aged firearm owners, family men whose first reflex was to respect the laws of the land. This group's political alienation is a far greater loss than the $200-million that have been wasted so far.
The creation of this new criminal class -- the ultimate triumph of negative political alchemy -- may be the worst, and most enduring product of the gun registry culture war.
John Dixon is a hunter, and president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. From 1991 to 1992, he was adviser to then-deputy minister of justice John Tait.
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