NEWS RELEASE
March
9, 2004
For
Immediate Release
WHAT DID CANADIANS GET FOR THEIR BILLION-DOLLAR GUN REGISTRY?
“Liberals
still can’t tell us the number of crimes committed with handguns registered to
the accused.”
Ottawa – Today,
Garry Breitkreuz, Deputy House Leader and Official Opposition Justice Critic for
Gun Control, released a startling admission from Statistics Canada.
Despite 70 years of registering handguns and despite spending a billion
dollars on a new gun registry, Statistics Canada finally admitted that it
can’t provide an answer to Breitkreuz’s simple questions: What are the
total number of crimes committed by persons with a registered handgun, and the
number of times the handgun was registered to the accused?
“This is outrageous. How
is Parliament ever going to determine if gun registration is worth two billion
dollars if the Liberals aren’t even collecting the data to prove whether or
not it works?” asked Breitkreuz.
On January 9th, Breitkreuz asked the
Library of Parliament for answers to his questions.
Almost immediately Statistics Canada admitted that they couldn’t
provide any statistics with respect to ‘all crimes’.
On February 23rd, they also admitted that they were unable to
tell if the handguns used in homicides were registered to the accused
murderer,” reported Breitkreuz.
After
reviewing the tables provided by Statistics Canada, Breitkreuz asked StatsCan to
explain why Table #3 didn’t identify how many of the handguns listed under the
“Accused” column were registered to the accused?
On February 23rd, Statistics Canada officials finally admitted
to the Library of Parliament researcher:"Owner"
is defined as the legal owner of the firearm - the person to whom the firearm is
registered or the person to whom the firearm would be registered, if it were
registered.
“This means that StatsCan
was forced to assume who is the owner because they don't know the legal status
of the gun. They didn't even ask the police for this information. Why not?”
asked Breitkreuz. “The Liberal
government’s gun registry seeks to lay a piece of paper beside every gun in
the country. Could it be that the
Liberals don’t collect statistics on the number of crimes committed with
registered hand guns because it would prove the folly of this two billion dollar
paper-pushing exercise?”
“For
ten years, the Liberals have been saying that their billion-dollar gun registry
would keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
But now we learn that the Liberal’s statistics wizards can’t even
tell if homicide handguns ‘owned’ by the accused were registered or
not,” exclaimed Breitkreuz. “Let’s
scrap the gun registry before they waste another billion on this boondoggle!”
On February 17, 2004, officials
with Statistics Canada provided three tables showing:
(1)
Victims of Firearms-related Homicides by Type of Firearms, Canada,
1991-2002
(2)
Victims of Homicide Committed by a Handgun, by Registration Status of
Handgun, 1997-2002
(3)
Victims
of Homicide Committed by a Handgun, by Ownership of Handgun, 1997-2002
NOTE: Click here to view tables:
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/Firearms(LibraryofParliament)2004-03-04.xls
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