by Garry Breitkreuz, MP (Yorkton-Melville) July 29, 1999

I was browsing the Department of Justice website and came across a document called, "10 Reasons for the Registration of All Guns" [http://www.cfc-ccaf.gc.ca/General_public/Reason_register/Reason_E.html]. What a bunch of baloney the Liberals are trying to pass off on unsuspecting taxpayers as "information" - phony facts trying (but failing) to add credence to the Justice Minister’s "culture of safety" mantra. Since the Firearms Act (Bill C-68) was rammed through Parliament in 1995, the Department of Justice has failed to come up with even one valid reason to justify the government’s controversial registration scheme. In the meantime, the government has spent $216 million on the gun registry as of March 31, 1999 and the Minister admitted that the annual operating costs will run between $50-$60 million per year. That’s a billion dollars by the year 2015!

Flimsy Excuse #1 – The Federal Government is concerned that gun owners might be buying stolen firearms. They claim that registration of all guns will reduce gray and black market gun sales.

Rather than spending hundreds of millions to register between 7 and 21 million rifles and shotguns, why didn’t the government just list the 87,043 stolen, lost or missing firearms in Canada? Then set up a system that would allow anyone to check the guns they plan to buy against this stolen firearms list. Too cost-effective I guess.

Flimsy Excuse #2 – The Federal Government claims that the registry will keep guns away from people who should not have them.

Since 1979, the government has had this capability because everyone who wanted to buy a firearm (legally) had to present a valid Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC). All the government had to do is revoke the FACs of those individuals the police and the courts declare are "potentially dangerous".

Flimsy Excuse #3 – The Federal Government claims that the registry will allow police to return firearms to their rightful owners.

Everyone is required by law to report lost or stolen firearms to the police. Rather than spending hundreds of millions in a vain attempt to register millions of legally owned guns in Canada, why not just compare the list of firearms stolen with the list of firearms recovered by police?

Flimsy Excuse #4 – The Federal Government claims that charging people that fail to register their rifle or shotgun with a Criminal Code offence gives police a new tool to fight criminal behaviour and break up networks of organized crime.

Duck hunters, sport shooters and collectors are not criminals and are certainly not part of any organized crime network. To say that people who fail to properly fill out a piece of paper required by some Made-in-Ottawa edict are the same as firearm wielding violent criminals is ridiculous in the extreme. Or to try and make us believe that this useless exercise will be of any benefit to help police combat organized crime is truly laughable. No wonder the police have called the gun registry a "farce".

Flimsy Excuse #5 – The Federal Government claims that the registry will provide police officers with information on how many firearms to remove from the homes of violent spouses.

The government is foolish to think that police officers would put any amount of faith in a computerized registration system that is already riddled with errors and will have millions of firearms missing from its records.

Flimsy Excuse #6 – The Federal Government says the registry will help them trace firearms used in crime to their last known owner and potentially result in a higher rate of solved crimes involving a firearm.

Violent criminals don’t use firearms that can be traced to themselves (unless of course they’re insane). Criminals seldom leave a firearm at the scene of a crime so in the vast majority of crimes involving firearms, the police have nothing to trace. This is the main reason why the 65-year-old handgun registry has failed to help police solve a single crime. The other reason is that both the old and the new registration system are riddled with errors; consequently, most traces are unsuccessful and a complete waste of time and money for police.

Flimsy Excuse #7 – The Federal Government claims that registration of all firearms will ensure responsible firearm owners will take better care of their firearms, store them more safely and more likely to report them stolen or lost.

Failure to store a firearm properly and failure to report a stolen or lost firearm have been Criminal Code offences for more than twenty years. All the government has to do is enforce the existing laws, not create a horrendously expensive, highly ineffective registration system. Besides the priority for police is trying to catch the real criminals who break into our homes, invade our privacy and steal our property.

Flimsy Excuse #8 – The Federal Government claims that the firearm registry will give them more opportunities to review the complete status of a firearm owner.

As stated in response to Flimsy Excuse #2, the government has had this capability since 1979 and didn’t need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars implementing a firearm registry to conduct periodic reviews of individuals licenced to acquire firearms. Real criminals don’t apply to the government for a firearm licence and they don’t register their firearms. The government is wasting scarce resources reviewing honest people – instead of chasing real criminals who acquire their guns illegally.

Flimsy Excuse #9 – The Federal Government claims that the registry will reduce firearms smuggling by tracing firearms that are imported into the country for sale.

This is the flimsiest excuse of all. Firearms smugglers don’t acquire their firearms by legal means, they don’t register their firearms with any government, they don’t declare them at Canada Customs and they don’t pay the GST. That’s why it’s called smuggling.

Flimsy Excuse #10 – Finally, the Federal Government claims that having the registration done at a central site will put more police on the street.

The sad fact is that there are between 600 and 800 bureaucrats working in the federal gun registry and another 300 working in a special, separate registry in Quebec (paid for with federal tax dollars, of course). Politics is about choices and priorities. The Liberal government chose to spend a billion dollars and hire more than a thousand paper-pushers to harass honest citizens instead of hiring a thousand police officers and giving them the financial resources they need to fight real criminals.

For the government to try and convince Canadians to believe these ten tall tales is like trying to convince them that if they kiss an ugly toad, it will turn into a handsome prince. No amount of kissing this ugly toad of a registry by Minister McLellan is going to turn it into a prince of a program in her "culture of safety" fairy tale world.

Ask yourself this question: What possible difference will laying a piece of paper beside a firearm make to someone intent on using it for criminal purposes or to commit suicide? None! Nor will this billion-dollar registration scheme hinder in any way a real criminal’s ability to acquire firearms illegally. It’s time to scrap this politically motivated registration scheme and spend the money we save on real crime fighting initiatives – measures that will actually improve the safety of our police officers and the safety of the general public.

If you would like more information, please call, write, fax or e-mail: