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/

yet another registry failure....

An exceptional good piece by R. G. Harvie at the "Searching for Liberty Blog" regarding the recent murder of Jonathon Bacon and the pointlessness of laws that we have such as the gun registry.


In the middle of the summer holiday in Tourist Mecca Kelowna, B.C., at the Delta Grand Hotel, armed men in hoods jump out of an S.U.V. and start spraying bullets out of assault weapons at what appears to be rival gang members, reportedly killing one of them.




I was in Kelowna last summer.



Stayed at the Delta Grand, in fact. Very, very busy place.




So - it was with some sadness and shock that I read this morning that less than a year after my last visit, there are armed gang members shooting assault weapons at other gang members in the middle of the resort.


Just a few thoughts today:


a) How did this happen in the face of the National Gun Registry?


Doesn't the registry prevent people from shooting guns at other people? That's what Michael Ignatieff said as he paraded the shooting victims of KimV** Gill before the press (ignoring the fact that KimV**'s weapon was actually registered when he started shooting up Dawson College).



I'm assuming that these gangsters, when they stepped out of their SUV to commit murder were aware that we have a national gun registry. I'm assuming they realized, as they squeezed the trigger to shoot another human being, that there are strict penalties for possessing an unregistered firearm.


Definitely read the rest here

Mountie-killer's guns not registered, inquiry hears

Gee like who would have thunk, crimmanls ignoring laws......


Last Updated: January 18, 2011 4:48pm


EDMONTON — Notorious cop killer James Roszko was prohibited from owning guns when he fatally shot four Mounties, a fatality inquiry heard Tuesday.

And of the eight guns Roszko acquired, none were owned legally, the inquiry also heard.

"I think it's fair to say James Roszko had a wanton disregard for any (firearm) legislation," said RCMP Sgt. Dale Baumgartner, a gun-tracing expert.

Roszko had been under a court-ordered weapons prohibition when he fatally shot four Mounties on his Mayerthorpe property March 3, 2005.

Of the eight guns found on Roszko's property following the murders, three turned out to be stolen, while a fourth was smuggled into the country from the U.S.

Two others were either restricted or prohibited. None of the guns were registered.

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