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
Showing posts with label gun control. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gun control. Show all posts
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.
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.
Monday, October 24, 2011
The end is near!!
It's the beginning of the end for the Long Gun Registry. The bill has been tabled, we will have to see what other gems lurk within the wording. the question now is will the police respect the will of Parliament and not try to keep a secret registry. http://parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Pub=NoticeOrder&Mode=1&Language=E&Parl=41&Ses=1&File=4
| No. 2 | No 2 |
| October 21, 2011 — The Minister of Public Safety — Bill entitled “An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act”. | 21 octobre 2011 — Le ministre de la Sécurité publique — Projet de loi intitulé « Loi modifiant le Code criminel et la Loi sur les armes à feu ». |
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Focus on real solutions to violence
Thought this letter really hit the nail on the head, I have bolded the part that is relevant.
Focus on real solutions to violence
Re: "Gun registry keeps women safe," Oct. 8.http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3327948
I was very disappointed to read this letter.
Supporters of the gun registry can't seem to keep their story straight. First they told us that the registry was needed for public safety. When that was debunked, they told us it was necessary for police officer safety. Since that was proven false, now they are telling us that the registry is needed for the safety of abused women.
In 2006, according to Statistics Canada, a mere 0.75% of all violent crimes, including spousal violence, were committed using a registered firearm. Given that such a tiny fraction of violent crimes involve registered guns, are we really expected to that the gun registry is such a useful tool in cases of domestic violence?
Why should legal gun owners be held accountable when legal guns are almost never used to commit a crime? If anyone should be held accountable, it's gun registry supporters. Instead of working toward real solutions to a complex problem, they have raised one false flag after another.
Instead of educating and empowering young women and teaching them how to avoid abusive relationships, gun control advocates have painted them as helpless victims of men and guns. All they have done is drive a wedge between the sexes and alienate the good men who are willing to help.
It's time to stop focusing on guns and start working toward real solutions to violence in our society.
A little update taken from a thread on CGN. some useful info.
Focus on real solutions to violence
Re: "Gun registry keeps women safe," Oct. 8.http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3327948
I was very disappointed to read this letter.
Supporters of the gun registry can't seem to keep their story straight. First they told us that the registry was needed for public safety. When that was debunked, they told us it was necessary for police officer safety. Since that was proven false, now they are telling us that the registry is needed for the safety of abused women.
In 2006, according to Statistics Canada, a mere 0.75% of all violent crimes, including spousal violence, were committed using a registered firearm. Given that such a tiny fraction of violent crimes involve registered guns, are we really expected to that the gun registry is such a useful tool in cases of domestic violence?
Why should legal gun owners be held accountable when legal guns are almost never used to commit a crime? If anyone should be held accountable, it's gun registry supporters. Instead of working toward real solutions to a complex problem, they have raised one false flag after another.
Instead of educating and empowering young women and teaching them how to avoid abusive relationships, gun control advocates have painted them as helpless victims of men and guns. All they have done is drive a wedge between the sexes and alienate the good men who are willing to help.
It's time to stop focusing on guns and start working toward real solutions to violence in our society.
A little update taken from a thread on CGN. some useful info.
Bottom line, of 38,000 or so reported incidents of domestic violence in
Canada apparently some 40 or less involve a firearm. And ever fewer domestic
violence incidents involving a firearm result in injury or
death...Dorthy Jourdrie shooting her husband in Calgary several years
ago brought those domestic violence gun status up as well. It is unknown
which spouse was using the gun in those 40 or fewer incidents per
year.
http://www.fact.on.ca/newpaper/np991122.htm |
Au contraire, we know answers to both questions:
http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/collectio...XIE2008000.pdf
See Table 1.10, page 24 of this report.
The 38,573 violent domestic incidents are the ones that caused serious harm and were reported to the police, so all 40 of those involved serious injury. The table also breaks the incidents down according to sex of the victim. Of those 40 incidents, 34 victims were women and 6 men. It doesn't give the sex of the attacker, however. Note the above report is from 2008 and the data from 2006, it is the most recent I have seen in regards to breaking down spousal violence incidents.
This report from 2006: http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collectio...XIE2006000.pdf
shows data from 1995-2004 in table 1.3, page 26. The total number of incidents was 211,791, with 358 involving firearms for a rate of 1.69 firearms incidents per 1000 total (0.169%).
One thing I find interesting is they break down the number of one time incidents and repeat incidents. 9 out of 358 firearms related incidents were considered "chronic". That is 2.5%. This completely belies the anti argument that guns are used all the time in domestic violence. Only 0.169% of all these incidents involved firearms and of that incredibly tiny number, only 2.5% were in the "chronic abuse" category. That means that firearms are used in chronic domestic abuse incidents only 0.004% of the time. That is 4 times out of 100,000 incidents. That doesn't really equate to "all the time" in my world.
Mark
http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/collectio...XIE2008000.pdf
See Table 1.10, page 24 of this report.
The 38,573 violent domestic incidents are the ones that caused serious harm and were reported to the police, so all 40 of those involved serious injury. The table also breaks the incidents down according to sex of the victim. Of those 40 incidents, 34 victims were women and 6 men. It doesn't give the sex of the attacker, however. Note the above report is from 2008 and the data from 2006, it is the most recent I have seen in regards to breaking down spousal violence incidents.
This report from 2006: http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collectio...XIE2006000.pdf
shows data from 1995-2004 in table 1.3, page 26. The total number of incidents was 211,791, with 358 involving firearms for a rate of 1.69 firearms incidents per 1000 total (0.169%).
One thing I find interesting is they break down the number of one time incidents and repeat incidents. 9 out of 358 firearms related incidents were considered "chronic". That is 2.5%. This completely belies the anti argument that guns are used all the time in domestic violence. Only 0.169% of all these incidents involved firearms and of that incredibly tiny number, only 2.5% were in the "chronic abuse" category. That means that firearms are used in chronic domestic abuse incidents only 0.004% of the time. That is 4 times out of 100,000 incidents. That doesn't really equate to "all the time" in my world.
Mark
Monday, October 3, 2011
480 BREACHES OF NATIONAL POLICE COMPUTER SYSTEM, RCMP REPORT
This related to the gun registry as the CPIC system looks at the registry to tell the viewer if the person has firearms registered to them. In other words the Registry is just a giant shopping list waiting for any organized criminal gang to pluck.
480 BREACHES OF NATIONAL POLICE COMPUTER SYSTEM, RCMP REPORT
“Police computer system is putting Canadian gun owners at risk.”
Since 1995, the RCMP reported that Canadian Police Computer Centre (CPIC) system has been breached a total of 480 times. In a recent response to an Access to Information Act request the RCMP confirmed 66 additional breaches of the police computer system (CPIC) over the last five years. “The privacy rights of all individuals are being violated by trusted police sources, but Canada’s law-abiding gun owners are at particular risk,” said National Firearms Association (NFA) President, Sheldon Clare.
This new information was obtained from the RCMP through an Access to Information Act (ATI) request submitted as a collaborative effort by two independent researchers, Gary A. Mauser, Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University and Dennis R. Young, retired Parliamentary Assistant to Garry Breitkreuz, MP. “It is unfortunate that RCMP does not regularly report these breaches of privacy to Parliament,” added Clare. The RCMP’s response to our ATI request is now available on the NFA website:
http://www.nfa.ca/sites/default/files/RCMP-ATI-CPIC-Breaches.pdf
Without any real evidence showing that law-abiding gun owners have ever been a threat to public safety, the former Liberal Government used closure to force an unfair law through Parliament (1995’s Bill C-68, the Firearms Act) making simple possession of a firearm a Criminal Code offence thereby requiring every gun owner in Canada to obtain a firearms license under threat of serious jail time. Two million gun owners complied and now all their private and personal information including their addresses, the number and types of guns they own are on the RCMP’s leaky computer system. “How many times have criminals used untrustworthy police sources to pinpoint the location and type of gun they want to steal?” asked the NFA President.
“The old Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC) program was more effective at screening new firearm owners than the current licensing scheme that costs taxpayers at least eight times more each year to operate. As an added benefit the FAC system didn’t put private and personal information on vulnerable computers to be hacked, or violated by criminals and police personnel we trust to protect us,” concluded Mr. Clare.
For more information contact:
Blair Hagen, Executive VP Communications, 604-753-8682 Blair@nfa.ca
Sheldon Clare, President, 250-981-1841 Sheldon_Clare@shaw.ca
Canada’s NFA toll-free number - 1-877-818-0393
NFA Website: www.nfa.ca
480 BREACHES OF NATIONAL POLICE COMPUTER SYSTEM, RCMP REPORT
“Police computer system is putting Canadian gun owners at risk.”
Since 1995, the RCMP reported that Canadian Police Computer Centre (CPIC) system has been breached a total of 480 times. In a recent response to an Access to Information Act request the RCMP confirmed 66 additional breaches of the police computer system (CPIC) over the last five years. “The privacy rights of all individuals are being violated by trusted police sources, but Canada’s law-abiding gun owners are at particular risk,” said National Firearms Association (NFA) President, Sheldon Clare.
This new information was obtained from the RCMP through an Access to Information Act (ATI) request submitted as a collaborative effort by two independent researchers, Gary A. Mauser, Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University and Dennis R. Young, retired Parliamentary Assistant to Garry Breitkreuz, MP. “It is unfortunate that RCMP does not regularly report these breaches of privacy to Parliament,” added Clare. The RCMP’s response to our ATI request is now available on the NFA website:
http://www.nfa.ca/sites/default/files/RCMP-ATI-CPIC-Breaches.pdf
Without any real evidence showing that law-abiding gun owners have ever been a threat to public safety, the former Liberal Government used closure to force an unfair law through Parliament (1995’s Bill C-68, the Firearms Act) making simple possession of a firearm a Criminal Code offence thereby requiring every gun owner in Canada to obtain a firearms license under threat of serious jail time. Two million gun owners complied and now all their private and personal information including their addresses, the number and types of guns they own are on the RCMP’s leaky computer system. “How many times have criminals used untrustworthy police sources to pinpoint the location and type of gun they want to steal?” asked the NFA President.
“The old Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC) program was more effective at screening new firearm owners than the current licensing scheme that costs taxpayers at least eight times more each year to operate. As an added benefit the FAC system didn’t put private and personal information on vulnerable computers to be hacked, or violated by criminals and police personnel we trust to protect us,” concluded Mr. Clare.
For more information contact:
Blair Hagen, Executive VP Communications, 604-753-8682 Blair@nfa.ca
Sheldon Clare, President, 250-981-1841 Sheldon_Clare@shaw.ca
Canada’s NFA toll-free number - 1-877-818-0393
NFA Website: www.nfa.ca
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
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
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
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
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.
article
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.
article
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Confiscation has always been a Liberal goal
Update
The NRA advises they have been aware of this document for a long time, they have never been able to verify it completely so they have not used it. So you can’t really include it yet with other Liberal underhanded undertakings like, Adscam, Gun registry costs, etc, etc. nevertheless I hold that the main thrust of the document is true and fits the activities of the Liberal connected politicians, police forces and the Canadian Firearms Officers.
The more I know the more I despise the Liberal party. As an institution it needs to destroyed and the ground it was on needs to plowed and salted so it never springs forth again. Perhaps then a party might then form that has elements of honour and truth as it key virtues.
This document makes it clear why the registry is so important to them. Without it two things will happen, or more to the point two things won’t happen. First the world will not end, murders will not skyrocket, police and law abiding citizens will go about their daily lives just as before. At some point people will realize they have been fed lies about the value of the registry and they will be anger at it’s supporters and authors. What little trust they have for them will be wiped out and desire to believe their gun control claims will be nil.
2nd and more important, is that the goal of disarming Canadians will be set back generations, because fundamental that is the one and only purpose of the registry. Look at every instances of the setup of a firearm registry and you will see that it has been used for confiscation purposes or attempts have been made to do so.
Read this document, give it to all of your firearm owning friends, post it at gun ranges, make it clear to everyone who thinks this does not effect them, that it does. Yes you the duck hunter, target shooter are in their sights and have always been.
The Liberals have claimed confiscation of firearms was never their goal, but this document released in a Freedom of Information request shows that it was exactly their intent Read the rest of this disgusting piece at the Don't tread on me blog.
The NRA advises they have been aware of this document for a long time, they have never been able to verify it completely so they have not used it. So you can’t really include it yet with other Liberal underhanded undertakings like, Adscam, Gun registry costs, etc, etc. nevertheless I hold that the main thrust of the document is true and fits the activities of the Liberal connected politicians, police forces and the Canadian Firearms Officers.
The more I know the more I despise the Liberal party. As an institution it needs to destroyed and the ground it was on needs to plowed and salted so it never springs forth again. Perhaps then a party might then form that has elements of honour and truth as it key virtues.
This document makes it clear why the registry is so important to them. Without it two things will happen, or more to the point two things won’t happen. First the world will not end, murders will not skyrocket, police and law abiding citizens will go about their daily lives just as before. At some point people will realize they have been fed lies about the value of the registry and they will be anger at it’s supporters and authors. What little trust they have for them will be wiped out and desire to believe their gun control claims will be nil.
2nd and more important, is that the goal of disarming Canadians will be set back generations, because fundamental that is the one and only purpose of the registry. Look at every instances of the setup of a firearm registry and you will see that it has been used for confiscation purposes or attempts have been made to do so.
Read this document, give it to all of your firearm owning friends, post it at gun ranges, make it clear to everyone who thinks this does not effect them, that it does. Yes you the duck hunter, target shooter are in their sights and have always been.
The Liberals have claimed confiscation of firearms was never their goal, but this document released in a Freedom of Information request shows that it was exactly their intent Read the rest of this disgusting piece at the Don't tread on me blog.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Recovered stolen guns
A very good friend of mine who was in the process of tranfering a shotgun to me, an over and under Marlin model 90, in 16 ga, was informed by the registrar person that it had been reported as a stolen gun several years before, registered in his name some 6 years,at that time? he was paid a visit by the police, who took the firearm away, he purchased it originally from a dealer,depite many inquiries over the years, he has never been contacted again, or found out what the final disposition of the matter was??
And the beat go's on! regards Bully
From a CGN thread on the previous post
And the beat go's on! regards Bully
From a CGN thread on the previous post
If a stolen gun fell in the forest, would the gun registry hear?
MONTREAL—Vito Anobile snips the gray hairs of a long-time client and shakes his head. “It’s crazy,” the affable east-end Montreal barber says, scissors and comb balancing in each of his thrown-up hands. “Really crazy.”
What has Anobile, an avid hunter, both frustrated and mystified are the recent actions of Canada’s controversial gun registry.
The $70 million firearms program, (cough* 2 billion, cough*) including the gun registry, is supposed to protect the public by preventing the misuse of guns and controlling just who can get them and own them.
But the 68-year-old Anobile has a story that seems to call all of that into question.
His frustration has been building ever since last summer when the registry sent him a notice that someone was trying to register a shotgun. Anobile’s shotgun.
The only problem? It had been stolen 11 years before.
To make matters worse, despite Anobile’s repeated attempts to tell the registry the gun was stolen property, no one seemed to listen or understand.
The agency, for which the RCMP has responsibility, even assumed he had applied to transfer the weapon to the new owner.
“How could I transfer a stolen gun I don’t have, to someone I don’t know?” Anobile asks.
And for that matter, “How can a gun be registered 11 years after it was stolen?”
As all this was happening, the Conservative government, no fan of the long-gun registry, was making its most serious attempt yet to shut it down. Among the reasons? The government said it was simply ineffective.
And as hints of an election campaign grow, the registry is sure to be a major issue. After losing a razor-thin vote on the matter last September, the Conservatives are still vowing to scrap it.
“This is just one of many examples of how inaccurate and ineffective the long-gun registry continues to be,” said Candice Hoeppner, the Manitoba Tory MP whose anti-registry bill died in that vote, in an email to the Star.
Meanwhile, the RCMP released an evaluation last fall strongly supporting the registry. It said the registry protects officers by signalling the presence of guns in a dwelling, for instance. And it aids in many types of investigations. Police now heavily consult the registry.
Doctors and police chiefs point out that long-gun homicides are decreasing in Canada. (Handgun homicides, however, are on the rise.)
The story of Anobile’s gun begins on a frigid Sunday in November 1999. He returns from a hunting trip, leaving all his hunting gear, including his shotgun, a Beretta A-M-301 12-gauge, in his car. It’s a decision he’ll come to regret.
The next day, he visits his ailing 98-year-old father in Montreal’s Santa Cabrini hospital. When he returns to the parking lot, however, his Chevy Lumina is gone.
He reports the theft to the police. Three or four days later, he remembers, the police call to say the Lumina had been recovered. It had been used, they say, in a robbery at an east-end brasserie, and abandoned.
There’s no sign of the gun.
Eventually, Anobile’s insurance company replaces the gun with a new Beretta. And he hears nothing more on the subject.
Until last June.
The old gun resurfaces in a letter from the Canadian Firearms Registry, saying it had received a registration demand for the A-M-301. There’s no mention it had been stolen.
Anobile calls the registry. “They ask me if I sold the gun. I tell them, ‘No! It was stolen!’ ” They promise to open a file and investigate.
Then, in July, another letter. The exact same letter as in June. As if the previous communication never happened.
“I laughed because it was like they’re imbeciles,” Anobile says.
Then, in August, another letter. This time more specific, saying it has processed his application to transfer the gun to the new owner, who, an employee tells Anobile, lives in Brossard, a Montreal suburb.
Only he made no such application. “How could I have?” Anobile says. “It’s impossible.”
Reached by phone, an agent from the registry told the Star he had no idea where the gun has been all these years, or how it got in the hands of the new owner.
He also said that the police have decided to “overlook” the fact that it was stolen because the new owner appeared to have acquired it “in good faith.”
(So can I re-register a stolen car?)
An RCMP spokesperson said this type of situation “is quite common.”
“People who have their firearm stolen, and are compensated for the firearm through insurance, lose legal ownership of the firearm at that moment,” Sgt. Greg Cox wrote in an email.
“If the firearm is recovered, oftentimes the insurance company may take possession of the firearm and put it up for sale on consignment with a firearms dealer.”
So why the notices to Anobile? Why the assumption he had applied to transfer the firearm? And why didn’t the registry seem to know it was stolen?
We don’t know, because the RCMP refused to discuss Anobile’s case, for privacy reasons.
When it comes to stolen weapons, the RCMP argues the registry can help police find a stolen firearm’s rightful owner if it’s recovered.
For Anobile, it’s all very unnerving. “Did it kill 50 people in the last decade that we don’t know?”
“Something’s not working right,” he reasons. “For me (the registry) has been useless. It is there to create jobs, nothing more.”
“We are obliged to follow the law, but it’s not worth very much.”
The gun registry has been plagued by controversy ever since it was made into law by the government of then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in 1995.
There was severe criticism over cost overruns in the early years. And Canada’s auditor general in 2006 questioned how the registry is actually improving public safety.
The registry is only a small part of the firearms program, making up 1.6 to 4.8 per cent of overall costs, or about $2.5 million, according to a 2009 analysis for the RCMP. Don't bet on these figures, previous documents place it at around 79 million a year.
courtsey of the Toronto Star
What has Anobile, an avid hunter, both frustrated and mystified are the recent actions of Canada’s controversial gun registry.
The $70 million firearms program, (cough* 2 billion, cough*) including the gun registry, is supposed to protect the public by preventing the misuse of guns and controlling just who can get them and own them.
But the 68-year-old Anobile has a story that seems to call all of that into question.
His frustration has been building ever since last summer when the registry sent him a notice that someone was trying to register a shotgun. Anobile’s shotgun.
The only problem? It had been stolen 11 years before.
To make matters worse, despite Anobile’s repeated attempts to tell the registry the gun was stolen property, no one seemed to listen or understand.
The agency, for which the RCMP has responsibility, even assumed he had applied to transfer the weapon to the new owner.
“How could I transfer a stolen gun I don’t have, to someone I don’t know?” Anobile asks.
And for that matter, “How can a gun be registered 11 years after it was stolen?”
As all this was happening, the Conservative government, no fan of the long-gun registry, was making its most serious attempt yet to shut it down. Among the reasons? The government said it was simply ineffective.
And as hints of an election campaign grow, the registry is sure to be a major issue. After losing a razor-thin vote on the matter last September, the Conservatives are still vowing to scrap it.
“This is just one of many examples of how inaccurate and ineffective the long-gun registry continues to be,” said Candice Hoeppner, the Manitoba Tory MP whose anti-registry bill died in that vote, in an email to the Star.
Meanwhile, the RCMP released an evaluation last fall strongly supporting the registry. It said the registry protects officers by signalling the presence of guns in a dwelling, for instance. And it aids in many types of investigations. Police now heavily consult the registry.
Doctors and police chiefs point out that long-gun homicides are decreasing in Canada. (Handgun homicides, however, are on the rise.)
The story of Anobile’s gun begins on a frigid Sunday in November 1999. He returns from a hunting trip, leaving all his hunting gear, including his shotgun, a Beretta A-M-301 12-gauge, in his car. It’s a decision he’ll come to regret.
The next day, he visits his ailing 98-year-old father in Montreal’s Santa Cabrini hospital. When he returns to the parking lot, however, his Chevy Lumina is gone.
He reports the theft to the police. Three or four days later, he remembers, the police call to say the Lumina had been recovered. It had been used, they say, in a robbery at an east-end brasserie, and abandoned.
There’s no sign of the gun.
Eventually, Anobile’s insurance company replaces the gun with a new Beretta. And he hears nothing more on the subject.
Until last June.
The old gun resurfaces in a letter from the Canadian Firearms Registry, saying it had received a registration demand for the A-M-301. There’s no mention it had been stolen.
Anobile calls the registry. “They ask me if I sold the gun. I tell them, ‘No! It was stolen!’ ” They promise to open a file and investigate.
Then, in July, another letter. The exact same letter as in June. As if the previous communication never happened.
“I laughed because it was like they’re imbeciles,” Anobile says.
Then, in August, another letter. This time more specific, saying it has processed his application to transfer the gun to the new owner, who, an employee tells Anobile, lives in Brossard, a Montreal suburb.
Only he made no such application. “How could I have?” Anobile says. “It’s impossible.”
Reached by phone, an agent from the registry told the Star he had no idea where the gun has been all these years, or how it got in the hands of the new owner.
He also said that the police have decided to “overlook” the fact that it was stolen because the new owner appeared to have acquired it “in good faith.”
(So can I re-register a stolen car?)
An RCMP spokesperson said this type of situation “is quite common.”
“People who have their firearm stolen, and are compensated for the firearm through insurance, lose legal ownership of the firearm at that moment,” Sgt. Greg Cox wrote in an email.
“If the firearm is recovered, oftentimes the insurance company may take possession of the firearm and put it up for sale on consignment with a firearms dealer.”
So why the notices to Anobile? Why the assumption he had applied to transfer the firearm? And why didn’t the registry seem to know it was stolen?
We don’t know, because the RCMP refused to discuss Anobile’s case, for privacy reasons.
When it comes to stolen weapons, the RCMP argues the registry can help police find a stolen firearm’s rightful owner if it’s recovered.
For Anobile, it’s all very unnerving. “Did it kill 50 people in the last decade that we don’t know?”
“Something’s not working right,” he reasons. “For me (the registry) has been useless. It is there to create jobs, nothing more.”
“We are obliged to follow the law, but it’s not worth very much.”
The gun registry has been plagued by controversy ever since it was made into law by the government of then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in 1995.
There was severe criticism over cost overruns in the early years. And Canada’s auditor general in 2006 questioned how the registry is actually improving public safety.
The registry is only a small part of the firearms program, making up 1.6 to 4.8 per cent of overall costs, or about $2.5 million, according to a 2009 analysis for the RCMP. Don't bet on these figures, previous documents place it at around 79 million a year.
courtsey of the Toronto Star
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Ten reasons gun registry must go
Bill C-391 is designed to eliminate the ineffective and expensive long gun registry. And of the many witnesses supporting Bill C-391, few are as credible as Gary Mauser, a Professor Emeritus in criminology from Simon Fraser University who recently made a presentation before the House of Commons Public Safety Committee.
Mauser's presentation had one simple goal: to "show how claims made by the opponents of Bill C-391 are blatantly false or misleading" as outlined below. Mauser's entire presentation and supporting data, is on the website of the National Firearms Association, www.nfa.ca .
Claim No. 1: Access to a gun increases the risk of murder.
False: Canadian gun owners are less likely than other Canadians to commit homicide.
Claim No. 2: Rifles and shotguns are the weapons most likely to be used in domestic homicides.
False: The problem is the murder of family members, not the means of killing. Rifles and shotguns are not the weapons most likely to be used in domestic homicides. Knives are.
Claim No. 3: Spousal murders with guns have fallen threefold since the law passed, while spousal murders without guns have remained the same.
False: Spousal murders have slowly been declining since the mid-1970s. There is no empirical support for the claim that the long-gun registry has reduced spousal murders. The long-gun registry was not begun until 2001.
Claim No. 4: Stronger gun laws have helped reduce gun violence.
False: The rate of homicides committed with a firearm generally declined from the mid-1970s to 2002. This steady, long-term decline has been driven by economic and demographic changes. However, the use of firearms in homicide has increased since 2002.
Claim No. 5: Firearms stolen from legal owners are a significant source of crime guns. Registration is essential to prevent dangerous individuals from getting guns.
False: All studies of crime guns agree that stolen registered firearms are infrequently involved. It is the criminal record check, which is part of licensing, and certainly not registration, that stops criminals from getting guns legally. Bill C-391 will not change the current provisions for obtaining a firearms licence. Registration simply refers to the firearm, not the owner.
Claim No. 6: Firearms pose more problems in smaller cities where there are more gun owners.
False: Homicide is a particularly acute problem in large cities where ironically there are fewer legal gun owners.
Claim No. 7: The registry is an essential tool for police when taking preventative action and when enforcing prohibition orders to remove firearms from dangerous individuals.
False: The long-gun registry does not contain information on a gun's location. The registry only contains descriptive information about the registered guns.
In approaching dangerous situations, the police must assume there is a weapon.
Claim No. 8: The gun registry is consulted by police 10,000 times a day and provides important information.
False: Almost all of the "inquiries" are routinely generated by traffic stops or firearm sales and are not specifically requested, nor do police often find them useful. Almost all of these inquiries involve licensing, not the long-gun registry.
Claim No. 9: Polls show Canadians believe the gun registry should not be dismantled.
False: Two recent polls show that the public does not support the long-gun registry. This is consistent with at least 11 earlier polls, all of which have clearly demonstrated that the Canadian public has no faith in the long-gun registry or its ability to increase public safety.
Claim No. 10: Stronger gun laws have helped reduce gun-related death, injury, violence and suicide.
False. No properly designed study has been able to show that gun laws have been responsible for reducing criminal violence rates or suicide rates in any country in the world.
In sum, the test of any governmental program should be whether it meets its goals. In this case, the long-gun registry has failed.
sopuckrdATxplornet.com
via Winnipeg Free Press
Mauser's presentation had one simple goal: to "show how claims made by the opponents of Bill C-391 are blatantly false or misleading" as outlined below. Mauser's entire presentation and supporting data, is on the website of the National Firearms Association, www.nfa.ca .
Claim No. 1: Access to a gun increases the risk of murder.
False: Canadian gun owners are less likely than other Canadians to commit homicide.
Claim No. 2: Rifles and shotguns are the weapons most likely to be used in domestic homicides.
False: The problem is the murder of family members, not the means of killing. Rifles and shotguns are not the weapons most likely to be used in domestic homicides. Knives are.
Claim No. 3: Spousal murders with guns have fallen threefold since the law passed, while spousal murders without guns have remained the same.
False: Spousal murders have slowly been declining since the mid-1970s. There is no empirical support for the claim that the long-gun registry has reduced spousal murders. The long-gun registry was not begun until 2001.
Claim No. 4: Stronger gun laws have helped reduce gun violence.
False: The rate of homicides committed with a firearm generally declined from the mid-1970s to 2002. This steady, long-term decline has been driven by economic and demographic changes. However, the use of firearms in homicide has increased since 2002.
Claim No. 5: Firearms stolen from legal owners are a significant source of crime guns. Registration is essential to prevent dangerous individuals from getting guns.
False: All studies of crime guns agree that stolen registered firearms are infrequently involved. It is the criminal record check, which is part of licensing, and certainly not registration, that stops criminals from getting guns legally. Bill C-391 will not change the current provisions for obtaining a firearms licence. Registration simply refers to the firearm, not the owner.
Claim No. 6: Firearms pose more problems in smaller cities where there are more gun owners.
False: Homicide is a particularly acute problem in large cities where ironically there are fewer legal gun owners.
Claim No. 7: The registry is an essential tool for police when taking preventative action and when enforcing prohibition orders to remove firearms from dangerous individuals.
False: The long-gun registry does not contain information on a gun's location. The registry only contains descriptive information about the registered guns.
In approaching dangerous situations, the police must assume there is a weapon.
Claim No. 8: The gun registry is consulted by police 10,000 times a day and provides important information.
False: Almost all of the "inquiries" are routinely generated by traffic stops or firearm sales and are not specifically requested, nor do police often find them useful. Almost all of these inquiries involve licensing, not the long-gun registry.
Claim No. 9: Polls show Canadians believe the gun registry should not be dismantled.
False: Two recent polls show that the public does not support the long-gun registry. This is consistent with at least 11 earlier polls, all of which have clearly demonstrated that the Canadian public has no faith in the long-gun registry or its ability to increase public safety.
Claim No. 10: Stronger gun laws have helped reduce gun-related death, injury, violence and suicide.
False. No properly designed study has been able to show that gun laws have been responsible for reducing criminal violence rates or suicide rates in any country in the world.
In sum, the test of any governmental program should be whether it meets its goals. In this case, the long-gun registry has failed.
sopuckrdATxplornet.com
via Winnipeg Free Press
Friday, October 29, 2010
Falsely accused of owning a Prohibted gun, do not pass Go, go directly to jail!
I received a nasty call from the CFC years ago. The lady was irate on the phone as I apparently had a Smith and Wesson Model 19 with a 2" barrel registered to me and I was not not 12(6). The gun would have to be turned in for destruction as I was in criminal possession of a prohibited firearm without the proper endorsement on my PAL... After listening quietly to the lady I informed her I did not own a Model 19 with a 2" barrel. After about 30 minutes we established that the Model 19 belonged to some guy in BC and they had registered my 617 with a 6" barrel to him. Just a little error...
Another example is the crap I went through to register a AR15 lower received (stripped) as a complete 16" barreled rifle. Took six years for the change to go through, by the time it did I had sold the uppers and it was a stripped lower again. Sigh.
Got a registration slip in the mail for a SKS one day after purchasing a Russian SKS two weeks previous. The serial number did not match any of mine. Turns out the CFC mis-entered that serial. I got the correct SKS reg slip and all was good. 2 weeks later I bought a SKS with that same serial number, what are the odds?
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Another example is the crap I went through to register a AR15 lower received (stripped) as a complete 16" barreled rifle. Took six years for the change to go through, by the time it did I had sold the uppers and it was a stripped lower again. Sigh.
Got a registration slip in the mail for a SKS one day after purchasing a Russian SKS two weeks previous. The serial number did not match any of mine. Turns out the CFC mis-entered that serial. I got the correct SKS reg slip and all was good. 2 weeks later I bought a SKS with that same serial number, what are the odds?
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150 year old gun owner?
A friend of mine (who will remain nameless), who i've bought a pistol from.
He buys out entire estates where firearms are involved and then sells them off for a profit.
He called in to inquire about a pistol that was in a certain estate. Apparently it wasn't registered to the (now dead) owner of the estate. They also apparently had 2 certificuts listed in their system for it but wouldn't tell the person who possessed it now the information. It was then apparently flagged to be destroyed.
After a long bout and numerous phone calls, he was able to identify the 'original' owner of the pistol. Lots of paperwork indicated it was sold to 2 different people and then to the dead estate owner. All of this got faxed in.
What my friend asked of the CFC, "So what your telling me is there was a pistol in your database, with 2 entries, and at least one was registered to a 150 year old man. At no point did any of you wonder how someone could be alive after 150 years legally owning a pistol."
So the moral of the story, even if there is a firearm listed to someone with a birth date of 1900, the CFC wouldn't recognize this as a situation that required someone to at least look at.
He buys out entire estates where firearms are involved and then sells them off for a profit.
He called in to inquire about a pistol that was in a certain estate. Apparently it wasn't registered to the (now dead) owner of the estate. They also apparently had 2 certificuts listed in their system for it but wouldn't tell the person who possessed it now the information. It was then apparently flagged to be destroyed.
After a long bout and numerous phone calls, he was able to identify the 'original' owner of the pistol. Lots of paperwork indicated it was sold to 2 different people and then to the dead estate owner. All of this got faxed in.
What my friend asked of the CFC, "So what your telling me is there was a pistol in your database, with 2 entries, and at least one was registered to a 150 year old man. At no point did any of you wonder how someone could be alive after 150 years legally owning a pistol."
So the moral of the story, even if there is a firearm listed to someone with a birth date of 1900, the CFC wouldn't recognize this as a situation that required someone to at least look at.
Thousands of ghost guns registered to business!
I remember hearing that the record for "ghost guns" was held by an auctioneer in Alberta. He was getting close to retirement and was winding up the business. He contacted the RCMP to talk about handing back his firearms business license and winding up his business and discovered that he still "had" several THOUSAND guns in his inventory.
All of them were sold and legally transfered and the new owners probably all had valid reg certs, but they had not removed them from his file. (I understand that this was common under the old "green sheet" system).
The NFA had a story of a legal case where a guy in the maritimes (a cop no less) was charged because he had allegedly moved, changed his address and moved a handgun without authourisation. Turned out at trial that there were three existing reg certs, one for him at his old address, one for a gun dealer to whom he had at one time consigned it, and the current reg cert that HE HAD IN HIS POSSESSION for HIS NEW ADDRESS, but that the RCMP had no record of in THEIR files (again, this was under the "old" system).
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All of them were sold and legally transfered and the new owners probably all had valid reg certs, but they had not removed them from his file. (I understand that this was common under the old "green sheet" system).
The NFA had a story of a legal case where a guy in the maritimes (a cop no less) was charged because he had allegedly moved, changed his address and moved a handgun without authourisation. Turned out at trial that there were three existing reg certs, one for him at his old address, one for a gun dealer to whom he had at one time consigned it, and the current reg cert that HE HAD IN HIS POSSESSION for HIS NEW ADDRESS, but that the RCMP had no record of in THEIR files (again, this was under the "old" system).
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