“Where
did the millions of guns go between 1974 and 1994?
Why is the government misleading us?"
Ottawa – Today,
Garry Breitkreuz, the Official Opposition’s gun control critic, threw another
monkey wrench into the Liberal’s problem-plagued gun registry.
No matter how you count the number of guns in Canada, the government’s
own reports show that there are millions more guns in Canada than the government
is willing to admit. “This research will be an embarrassment to the government
because the Justice Department is busy conducting new polls to once again lower
the estimate of the number of firearms they have to register before the end of
December 2002,” said Breitkreuz.
“There
are two ways of counting guns. One
is to examine official records and the other is to survey firearm owners.
On both counts the government’s current estimate of 7 million
non-military firearms is vastly underestimated,” revealed Breitkreuz.
(Note: Research paper is
available here )
ACTUAL
NUMBER OF FIREARMS IN CANADA
In
1945, despite massive non-compliance, the RCMP managed to register nearly 2
million firearms, comprised of 1.7 million rifles and shotguns and the remainder
handguns. Add to this the nearly 8
million firearms imported between 1945 and 2000 and you get 10 million
firearms.
Please
note that to arrive at this figure of 10 million firearms we did not:
In
May of 1976, Liberal Justice Minister Ron Basford published a report that
stated: “At the same time, there has been a steady increase in the number
of firearms in Canada. Estimates
place the number at over ten million in 1974, with almost one-quarter
million added to the stock every year.
Most of these firearms are long guns (rifles and shotguns).”
[Emphasis added] The
Minister was no doubt referring to an extensive Statistics Canada survey that
reported that in 1974 the Firearms Stock in Canada consisted of 11,186,000
firearms.
Using the Justice Minister’s 1974
estimates I calculated: 10 million firearms + 6,500,000 (250,000/year x 26
years) = 16,500,000 firearms in Canada in 2001.
Over the next eighteen years, despite the importation of 5 million
firearms, the government lowered their estimates of the number of firearms in
Canada from 10 or 11 million in 1974 to 7 million in 1994.
A Justice Department briefing note dated March 9, 1994 stated: “In
total, it is estimated that 7 million guns are owned by 3 million gun
owners…2.7 million households contain 2.7 guns each.”
RCMP documents obtained though Access to Information indicate that
this number was only the “Low End” estimate and that the
government’s “High End” estimate was over 11 million firearms.
“Since 1995, I’ve been asking the government to
explain where millions of guns went between 1974 and 1994,” said Breitkreuz.
Without even counting the 5 million guns imported since 1974, there is
still a 4 million-firearm discrepancy between Statistics Canada’s 1974 survey
and the government’s current estimates. “The
Liberals have never answered the question.
I wonder why the government is misleading us?”
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