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Accused man had two illegal rifles, police say
Experts questioning value of gun registry

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The man accused of killing a 25-year-old policewoman had not one, but two rifles stashed illegally in his bachelor apartment, police say.

Despite being banned from having guns since 1999, Francois Pepin had managed to keep both weapons. Neither rifle, The Globe and Mail has learned, was among the weapons he was given an exemption to carry during hunting season. "We're trying to find out how he came into possession of these weapons," Sergeant Francois Dore, a spokesman for the provincial police, said.

Police have already said that Mr. Pepin -- who they say had a history of uttering violent threats and stalking policewomen -- used a .338-calibre hunting rifle to slay Laval Constable Valerie Gignac.

The 25-year-old officer was shot by a blast so powerful that the bullet travelled through Mr. Pepin's closed door and the officer's police vest. Constable Gignac had arrived to investigate a noise complaint. She knew Mr. Pepin because she had arrested him this month for allegedly stalking one of her colleagues.

The shooting bears some parallels to the slaying of four RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alta., in March. In that case, a convicted pedophile was found to have armed himself with a small arsenal of guns despite being ordered to stay away from weapons. James Roszko, who police knew to be dangerous, used a modified Heckler & Koch .308-calibre rifle to slay the Mounties before turning a gun on himself.

Criminal justice critics say they are outraged by a system that coddles dangerous people, registers weapons en masse, and yet fails to check up on individuals prohibited from having guns. "Firearms registration and putting money into all kinds of fancy court systems don't protect the public," said Professor Gary Mauser, a gun-law expert at Simon Fraser University.

At the heart of the latest shooting is the question of how Mr. Pepin could have got his guns. Under the 1999 court order, Mr. Pepin's collection of six rifles was confiscated and placed in the custody of an acquaintance, Remi Roy.

Mr. Roy told The Globe yesterday that Mr. Pepin never returned to use the rifles, even during hunting season when he was allowed to have them. Mr. Roy said that he doesn't know where the weapon allegedly used in Wednesday's shooting came from. But he said it was not one left in his care.

"He never came to get a weapon here," Mr. Roy said. "That was absolutely forbidden. I said to him, 'You know the ban you've got? I don't want trouble.' " Mr. Roy bought Mr. Pepin's guns himself and registered them with the Canadian gun registry, he said from his home in Saint-Georges-de-Beauce. He eventually sold two of the rifles. Mr. Roy said Mr. Pepin was unhappy when his rifles were confiscated. "He didn't like it but he didn't have a choice. He had hoped to get his weapons back after a while," he said.

Mr. Pepin's landlord told The Globe this week that his tenant had been talking about buying new guns on the "black market" in recent days. "He said he intended to buy a weapon," the landlord said.

A decade ago, politicians had expressed hope that a new firearms registry could help prevent shootings of police officers and civilians. Critics always countered that the weapons not in the database would inevitably turn out to be more crucial than the ones registered by law-abiding citizens. Today, the Canadian Firearms Centre says it has more than two million gun owners in its database, a population that police can easily identify using the Canadian Police Information Centre. The firearms centre also says that since 1998, it has refused or revoked licences of more than 16,000 people deemed too violent, dangerous or unstable to be allowed to possess weapons.

But there is a bigger problem, according to Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz. He says that police have no real means of checking up on tens of thousands of people who have been ordered by courts not to have weapons. "I know there are more than 176,000 people under orders not to have a firearm," said Mr. Breitkreuz, a frequent critic of the $1-billion gun registry. "The police don't enforce these orders because they don't have the resources to do it." A lack of follow-up on weapons bans has been a problem for years.

Toronto Crown attorney Paul Culver said the problem dates back to at least 1994, when Toronto Constable Todd Baylis was killed by an offender banned from having weapons. Mr. Culver said the federal gun registry has not assisted in any prosecution by his office.