Dear Mark:

Re: NWEST REPORTS LOTS OF ACTIVITY BUT NO EVIDENCE OF SUCCESS

I enjoy your magazine and appreciate your journalistic integrity and demonstrated commitment to reporting both sides of the gun control issue. I am writing in response to your cover story, “Triggering effective gun control – Following the misty trail of illegal firearms,” in your June/July 2005 issue.
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/p6_8_2005_06.pdf

Since 1999, I have filed more than 500 Access to Information Act requests trying to find out what benefit taxpayers received for their now $2 billion dollar firearms program. Your article read like the government’s responses – reports of lots of activity showing little or no real results.

My duty as a Member of Parliament is to oversee the activities of government and ensure that tax money is spent in the most cost effective way possible. A comment I often hear in defence of the present gun control scheme (usually very senior police officials) is, “If it saves one life, it’s worth it.” The real questions we should all be asking ourselves are: “How many lives could have been saved with these two billion dollars?” And, “Was this the best way to spend money to improve public safety and reduce violent crime?”

We all have reasons to doubt both the wisdom and the expense of this paper-pushing exercise called the Firearms Act. Here are just a few: Statistics Canada reports clearly show that Criminal Code incidents per police officer (excluding traffic offences) have more than doubled since 1962; that violent crime is now more than four times greater than it was forty years ago; and that in 2003, firearms were present in just 2.74% of violent crimes.

While NWEST’s goals are laudable and all the activity you reported sounds good, neither the government nor NWEST has been able to produce real evidence of success. Assisting in 4,500 cases is evidence of activity – not evidence of success. How many gun smugglers were put in jail? How many gun traffickers were put out of business? What types and how many charges were laid and convictions obtained? How many illegal firearms were seized? How many stolen firearms were recovered? How many registered firearm owners were actually linked to the person that committed the crime with their firearm? How many seized firearms were eventually returned to their registered owners? Maybe you will be able to use these suggestions for another article on the subject.

What could be accomplished if we invested this money into front-line policing priorities?

Sincerely,

[Original signed by]

Garry Breitkreuz, MP
Yorkton-Melville