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.

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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/

Mountie loses cash, drugs, has illegal gun

Mountie loses cash, drugs, has illegal gun

Docked 5 days pay for neglect of duty, discreditable conduct

By Gary Dimmock, Ottawa Citizen May 17, 2011



Const. Matt Wright's police work was anything but textbook the day he made an arrest in a street-level drugs and money bust.

The RCMP constable, a former military man, never fully documented the bag of pills and wad of cash he seized.

Then two months later, after working late at the Chilliwack, B.C. detachment, Wright, left with a box containing files, his notebooks, RCMP identification card, and the seized money and drugs.

He loaded the box into his personal vehicle and later that same night reported it had been stolen from his car. Everything was recovered, except the drugs and money. It is impossible to know what kind or the exact amount of drugs because they were never fully documented, nor was the cash. Wright says it was a bag of about 50 blue pills and a "thin wad" of cash, that contained at least one $20 note on the outside.

In an internal disciplinary ruling in Ottawa dated March 28, Wright, who admitted the allegations, was docked two days pay for neglect of duty.

"The lapse of judgment in the proper care, control and storage of an exhibit may be out of character; however, members must be vigilant in properly processing exhibits. The public and the courts expect nothing less than perfection," the disciplinary board ruled.

It wasn't the only problem the board had with Wright. In July 2007, months after he reported the missing drugs and money, the Mounties discovered he had purchased a rifle but didn't have a firearms certificate. Wright had purchased a 1973 Winchester RCMP Centennial rifle from a retired member in 2005. At the time, he asked a colleague to register it while he tried to get a firearms certificate.

Two years later, his supervisor learned Wright had a rifle in his possession that was not registered to him. And Wright still didn't have a firearms certificate.

His supervisor seized the gun and Wright was charged with disgraceful conduct under the RCMP Act. The constable was docked an additional three days pay for having a firearm without a licence. The disciplinary board stated: "We commit to uphold the law and by acquiring a firearm without the proper licensing, Constable Wright is breaking the very law he swore to enforce." Wright apologized to the disciplinary board and has shown remorse and regret for embarrassing the national police force. He also assured senior Mounties that he now processes crime exhibits "meticulously."

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Mountie+loses+cash+drugs+illegal/4794073/story.html#ixzz1Mc2bR6hd
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What this article tells us is that away for the media spotlight, the police think the registry is a waste of time also.