--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harper should stick to his guns: Police claims alone not enough to alter long-gun registry plan

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the perspective of the new Conservative government, the long-gun registry has something in common with a minefield that has outlived its war. It is definitely time for it to be removed, but doing so is not without risk. Certainly, there is no softening of government's intentions.

On Monday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper reiterated two election pledges to a gathering of the Canadian Professional Police Association. First, his government still means to take a strong line on enforcement -- reviewing the prison system's parole and mandatory release policies. Second, money saved on the long-gun registry will be used to hire more police officers. The first was strongly applauded, the second less so. Indeed, the police association's president said later his organization would lobby to keep the registry in place, as police forces nationally made 5,000 inquiries into it daily.

However, the Conservatives will not -- and should not -- be easily deflected from their goal of returning the registry's function to what it had been from the early 1930s -- a means to keep track of handguns. For their commitment to dump the long-gun registry was not merely a key promise to an important regional constituency.

Canadians of all parties, and from all parts of the country, have questioned the value of the registry, if not for its purpose, certainly for its appalling diversion of scarce financial resources to so little good effect. The registry's known costs to date are in the $2 billion ballpark. But, scandalous as that is, even that might not be all. In 2002, the auditor general complained of receiving inadequate data to properly assess the program and suggested some of its expenses may have been absorbed by other government departments.

Nor should the government be persuaded by police arguments that they make extensive use of the registry. An exchange of e-mails between firearms officials, released by MP Garry Breitkreuz, shows many claimed inquiries were actually "automatic hits," occasioned when a police officer's interrogation of the national police computer system on a non-firearms matter sent an echo inquiry to the registry. Police are justifiably wary of the registry, and think it an unreliable guide to the presence of guns in a home when responding to domestic violence complaints, for instance. Nor, of course, does the registry help with guns held by criminals.

The problem for Harper is that although an order-in-council can be changed through another order-in-council, it takes a bill to change legislation. Thus, even if that part of the registry dealing with long guns were closed tomorrow by order, rifle and shotgun owners who did not register them would remain in breach of the law until Parliament enacts legislation ending the need. The way Commons seats are now distributed, Harper would risk defeat if he tried to do that.

So, long-gun owners will have to take him at his word for now: It is hard to put a time-frame to reforming the registry. But, unlike his predecessors, at least his heart is in it. And, in Stockwell Day (Public Security) and Vic Toews (Justice), he has placed ministers in charge who share with law-abiding owners the conviction that crime control is more important than gun control. It's a better situation than they've seen for years.

In fact, shooters, of all people, should understand the dangers of impatience. Now that they have the legislation in the crosshairs, it is steady trigger pressure that will give them their best shot.