NEWS RELEASE
March 22, 2000
For Immediate Release
LIBERALS STILL DREAMING - FIREARM LICENCING DEADLINE IMPOSSIBLE TO MEET!
"The Justice Department has licenced only 13% of the gun owners in the first 15 months of operation. They can’t possibly licence 87% in the remaining 10 months," reports Breitkreuz
Ottawa –
For the fourth time in the past fifteen months, Garry Breitkreuz, Official Opposition Firearms Critic, has exposed the inescapable fact that it will be impossible for the Liberals to licence millions of gun owners in Canada by the deadline at the end of this year. "The Canadian Firearms Centre’s (CFC) February 25th update (available on their web site) reveals the problem," stated Breitkreuz. "Since the Firearms Act came into effect on December 1, 1998, the department has issued only 128,376 firearms licences. Despite this low volume of licences issued, the Firearms Centre still has an application backlog of 64,438.""If they can’t handle this piddling production, how are they going to issue licences to the remainder of the three million gun owners the government estimates will need a licence before the end of this year?" asked Breitkreuz. "What will they do when they find out that the actual number of gun owners in Canada is more than five million? Jean Chretien’s pet political project has already cost taxpayers $350 million to do 1/8
th of the job; taxpayers must be wondering how many hundreds of millions more it’s going to cost to get the job done."Add the 128,376 new licences issued to those 272,837 firearm owners who already held a valid Firearms Acquisition Certificate before the Firearms Act came into effect, and the CFC reports a total of valid or issued licences for 401,213 law abiding firearm owners. "Only 2,632,213 responsible gun owners left to licence before the deadline, according to documents obtained from the RCMP under the Access to Information Act," observed Breitkreuz. "I don’t think I need to remind anyone that criminals are not applying to the government for firearms licences, do I?"
"In the first 15 months, the Dept. of Justice has licenced only 13 percent of the law abiding gun owners they think are in Canada. However, access documents show that Rock and McLellan’s brain trust estimated they would licence 45 percent of the gun owners in the first year," revealed Breitkreuz. "According to the Justice Department’s own reports, the Firearms Centre has issued 8,558 licences per month for the first 15 months. In the 10 months remaining (since the department issued their last update), they must issue at least 263,221 licences per month to meet the licencing deadline of January 1, 2001."
"The Liberals are either as stubborn as a mule or dreaming the impossible dream if they still think they don’t have an insurmountable problem here. They have as much hope of meeting their self-imposed licencing deadline as they have of pushing a rope from here to Regina," said Breitkreuz. "The government’s own numbers prove that Allan Rock’s ‘control model’ has failed. Proceed immediately to implement a ‘cooperative model’ supported by the majority of provinces and territories, police on the street, responsible firearms organizations and law abiding gun owners in the country," encouraged Breitkreuz.
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