PUBLICATION:              Vancouver Sun

DATE:                         2003.06.07

EDITION:                    Final

SECTION:                  Editorial

PAGE:                         C6

SOURCE:                   Vancouver Sun

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Federal gun registry doesn't make sense, but ignoring it does

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Why hasn't Ottawa just killed the joke known as the federal gun registry? It has already cost taxpayers $1 billion, and it's doing little, if anything to enhance public safety.

Is it myopic conviction that Father Knows Best? The empire-building imperative in an ethos where success is measured by money spent? Inability to understand how irredeemably flawed the program is? Or mere inertia?

Whatever the reason, if Ottawa won't officially put this misbegotten monster out of its misery, the provinces should unofficially do so.

Ontario and British Columbia this week joined Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta in saying they won't prosecute people who fail to register their rifles and shotguns by the end of the month.

It's the right decision.

We're not in the habit of urging governments not to enforce the law. But respect for this law is ever-more difficult to muster.

The feds provided us with yet another reason for disdain and despair on Wednesday. They admitted that a computer crash at the registry last December may have permanently erased the records of no one knows how many gun owners who thought they were in line for registration certificates.

This is the last of many straws, and it means that prosecuting anyone for failing to register a gun will be difficult, if not impossible.

Yet federal Solicitor-General Wayne Easter still has the temerity to insist Ottawa won't extend the June 30 deadline. This is despite the fact that the agency has yet to register half a million licensed gun owners. And that untold thousands more haven't received licenses that may or may not be in the mail.

There are also plenty of old reasons for wishing this boondoggle would end. Originally forecast to cost $2 million, the total is now close to $1 billion and counting. That money could have put hundreds more cops on the beat across the country, a proven way to prevent crimes.

The fact that criminals don't usually register their guns also seems to have escaped the Ottawa braintrust. Or that criminals' usual guns of choice are handguns, which have been registered in Canada for the past 70 years.

Nor should we forget that more than 90 per cent of all violent crimes in Canada don't involve firearms. And more than 80 per cent of fire-arm related deaths are suicides.

So it's a small percentage of deaths -- homicides and accidents -- where firearms are involved.

It's not surprising, therefore, that a 1994 briefing note from the justice ministry raised serious doubts about the effectiveness of the firearms registry. Specifically, "There are real questions about the extent to which these proposals [gun registry] would improve public safety and whether the high costs could be justified."

It's clear now that the costs aren't justified. This is what led Ontario Attorney-General Norm Sterling to say that Ottawa "should take responsibility for a badly flawed piece of legislation, which really persecutes the wrong people, innocent people, good people, who want to use long firearms for hunting and recreational use."

B.C. Attorney-General Geoff Plant noted that the gun registry is an "unmitigated disaster" and the province won't prosecute those who don't register their guns. Nova Scotia's Justice Minister Jamie Muir said, "It's their law; let them enforce it."

Mr. Easter responds that "Governments have a responsibility to uphold the laws of the land, and it's up to the provinces to prosecute under those laws." 

But it's also the responsibility of governments to be cost-effective with their crime control measures. No reasonable person can make the case that this gun registry is a cost-effective crime-busting tool.

And it would be irresponsible to throw good money after bad trying to enforce a badly flawed law when there isn't enough money and manpower to properly enforce so many laws that really matter.