Justice Dept. document:
“Risk to public safety is mitigated through
licencing – it is not a registration issue.”
Ottawa – Today, Garry Breitkreuz,
Official Opposition Critic on Firearms and Property Rights, released a damning
document the government has been trying to keep secret for the last nine months.
“We had other documents that the gun registry was experiencing a 90 per
cent error rate, but now we have the details that show it’s far worse than we
thought,” said Breitkreuz. “In
addition to the 90 per cent error rate in applications, the RCMP now tell us
that there is also a 42% error rate in the description of the firearms. The
alarm bells should be sounding in the head of every police officer in the
country; especially, since the Justice Minister, their chiefs and their union
bosses have been promising them since 1994 that the information in the registry
would be accurate,” explained Breitkreuz.
“Today, the problem with errors in the gun registry is even worse than
it was nine months ago because the Justice Minister ordered a stop to firearms
verification to try and meet the arbitrary registration deadline at the end of
this year.”
“We
filed the Access to Information Act request on July 18, 2001,
and after three complaints to the Information Commissioner, the RCMP documents
were finally delivered to my office on April 17, 2002.
The information in this report shows why the government was trying so
hard to keep it from the public, the media and Parliament.
Amazingly, the Justice Department claimed they had no records on this
subject. Ya right,” said
Breitkreuz.
The
RCMP report, File: 01ATIP-322180, documents sixty different types of errors on
firearms registration application forms and also provides the following
information covering the period from December 1, 1998 to July 18, 2001:
The number of distinct firearms registered as of July 18, 2001 were 839,390.
There are 339,756 applications that were
received with an application error.
The error rate for applications received up
to July 18, 2001, was 90% of a total of 362,375.
In addition to
errors detailed in Appendix A, 42% of firearms registration applications
contain errors in the firearms description, in comparison to the Firearms
Reference Table (i.e. spelling, information in the wrong field (model-make
reversed), missing information, etc.).
How long it takes to process and register a
firearm – Approx. 48 hours.
“All
this time and money is wasted because Statistics Canada homicide and robbery
data proves beyond any doubt that registering a gun is a totally useless policy.
Even the Justice Department has admitted that gun registration has
nothing to do with public safety,” revealed Breitkreuz.
Page 13 of a Justice Department document dated January 9, 2001 (ATIP
File: A-2001-0156) under a section titled: “Risk Assessment,” it states: “Risk
to public safety is mitigated through licencing – it is not a registration
issue.”
“A
gun registry is useless - one riddled with errors is even more useless.
Police already have the address of every licenced gun owner in Canada.
How is police or public safety improved by guessing what kind of firearms
they own?” asked Breitkreuz. “The
police should be totally disgusted that the Liberals are wasting a hundred
million dollars a year on this stupid gun registry when there are so many police
and public safety priorities lacking cash.
The police should join our cause to have this useless gun registry
scrapped.”
Click
here for copy of RCMP Report on Errors:
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/ErrorRate-FirearmsRegistrationSystem.pdf
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