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Get on with dropping the gun registry

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Wendy Cukier, a professor at Toronto's Ryerson University and president of the Coalition for Gun Control, told the Canadian Press (CP) Tuesday that it would be foolish for the Conservative government to dismantle the gun registry when it has proven itself to be "an effective public safety tool." As proof of the registry's worth, CP referred to the killing earlier this month of two Mounties outside Spiritwood, Sask., as well as a handful of other police officer shootings in the past two years. But if anything, these tragic murders prove the opposite. They reinforce the criticism offered by those who argue the registry does nothing to stop crime.

Not one of the shootings cited was committed with a registered gun. Criminals simply don't register their guns. How, then, would the registry ever be useful in preventing most criminal use of firearms?

RCMP Constables Robin Cameron and Marc Bourdages, who were fatally injured on July 7, and succumbed to their wounds last weekend, were allegedly shot by Curtis Dagenais using a high-powered hunting rifle that was not registered. Just before Christmas in the Montreal suburb of Laval, Francois Pepin shot and killed local Constable Valerie Gignac. The hunting rifle he used also was not registered, and he possessed it despite a 1999 order banning him from having any guns. He even had in his apartment the two registered guns that were named in his court-ordered ban. The federal firearms centre was incapable of ensuring registered guns were kept out of Pepin's reach. How could it possibly, then, make Canadians safer from unregistered guns, which are the guns most commonly used in armed crimes?

The same is true in the case of James Roszko, the Mayerthorpe, Alta., pedophile and violent offender who killed four Mounties in March, 2005. Like Pepin, Roszko was under a court prohibition against possessing any firearms. Yet he still managed to acquire a veritable arsenal of high-powered weapons. The gun he used to kill all four Mounties -- a Heckler & Koch .308-calibre rifle -- has enough power to fell an elephant. And Roszko had modified it so it could shoot more bullets without reloading than is permitted by law.

None of the guns used in the firefight that claimed the life of Jane Creba, an innocent bystander killed in Toronto last December, was likely registered either. Indeed, according to Statistics Canada's Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, just two of the 549 murders recorded in Canada in 2003 were committed with long-guns known to be registered. Only two.

Last week, too, the Library of Parliament completed an analysis of murders in Canada between 1997 and 2004, roughly the first seven years under the current Firearms Act enacted by the Liberals a decade ago. There were 4,534 homicides committed in Canada during that period. Of all the persons accused in those killings, just 124 were holders of a valid firearms licence at the time of their indictments, and just 95 of those murders (2.1%) were committed with registered long guns.

Again and again, critics of the registry have pointed out the utter futility of this billion-dollar fiasco: It quite simply can't work because registered guns in the hands of law-abiding Canadians are a threat to almost no one.

Yet again and again, advocates for gun control such as Ms. Cukier have chosen to ignore the evidence that puts the lie to their claim that the registry will make Canadians safer. Instead they have exploited public grief and fear to make their point. It's time we stopped listening and got on with the business of dismantling the expensive, intrusive and useless registry.