DATE:
2003.07.07
EDITION: Final
SECTION:
Comment
PAGE:
A6
SOURCE:
Times Colonist
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
200,000
more lawbreakers here: The deadline for registering guns has passed, but the
government doesn't seem concerned
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
federal government estimates there are 200,000 criminals at large in Canada, but
doesn't plan to go after them. It estimates there are 1.6 million illegal
weapons in the country, but doesn't plan to look for them.
The
grace period to register rifles and shotguns expired last week, but Ottawa is
strangely sanguine about all those who have refused to obey its infamous
gun-registration law and are therefore committing crime. The Canadian Firearms
Centre doesn't seem to care, anymore, whether gun-owners register themselves and
their weapons after the deadline has past.
It's
leaving enforcement up to accident. If, for example, police catch people with
unregistered firearms while stopping them for a roadside check, or find
unregistered weapons during a drug raid, the culprits can be charged and face up
to 10 years in prison.
The
Firearms Centre officials talk about being easy on those who register in the
next few weeks, but who knows when they will decide to go out and look for all
these unregistered weapons and enforce a law that is supposed to protect us from
drive-by shooters, drug lords, gangsters and madmen? If they didn't intend to
enforce it, why did they put gun-owners through all this error-prone process
that is going to cost us, whether we own guns or not, some $1 billion by 2005?
Is
it possible that these officials believe that those who have registered their
weapons were the most dangerous or irresponsible gun-owners in the country, and
that those who have defied the law are otherwise law-abiding citizens who are a
threat to nobody?
The
feds are looking pretty foolish. Even if unregistered weapons are found by
police in this province, Crown attorneys won't prosecute them. Nova Scotia,
Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba authorities have also announced they
won't prosecute offenders of the gun registry law.
Craig
Chandler, who ran unsuccessfully for the Tory leadership, plans to hold a
shoot-in in Calgary next month to try to cover his $10,000 campaign expenses.
Participants, using handguns, shotguns, even Uzis, will pay to fire at targets
covered with the Liberal party logo. It's not beyond the realm of possibility
that there'll be some unregistered firearms at the event, should the authorities
care to check.
They
probably won't. Oscar Lacombe, a former sergeant-at-arms in the Alberta
legislature, carried his unregistered .22-calibre rifle onto the legislative
precincts in January, pleading to be arrested so he could fight the Firearms Act
all the way to the Supreme Court. Instead, he was charged under the Criminal
Code for unauthorized possession of a firearm and carrying a weapon at a public
meeting.
So
far, those who have defied the gun registry law are just criminals on paper. The
Firearms Act, it seems, is just a paper law. That should make it easy to tear
up. Why won't the government do it?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GOVERNMENT
ESTIMATES OF THE NUMBER OF GUN OWNERS
WHO STILL HAVEN’T REGISTERED OR RE-REGISTERED
THEIR
GUNS AS OF APRIL 15, 2003 = 632,422
NUMBER OF LICENCED INDIVIDUALS STILL TO REGISTER = 294,301
Documented
as of: April 15, 2003
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/FirearmsRegistered-2003-04-15.xls
NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS STILL TO RE-REGISTER THEIR GUNS = 338,121
Documented
as of: April 15, 2003
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/FirearmsRegistered-2003-04-15.xls
NUMBER
OF GUNS STILL TO BE REGISTERED = 1.9 MILLION
Documented
as of: April 15, 2003
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/FirearmsRegistered-2003-04-15.xls
NUMBER OF HANDGUNS STILL TO BE RE-REGISTERED = 727,386
Documented
as of: April 15, 2003
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/FirearmsRegistered-2003-04-15.xls
NUMBEROF OWNERS OF REGISTERED HANDGUNS WITHOUT A LICENCE= 304,375
Documented
as of: May 27, 2002
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/ohwhatamess.htm