PUBLICATION:
Edmonton Journal
DATE:
2003.07.23
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Opinion
PAGE:
A12
COLUMN:
Lorne Gunter
BYLINE:
Lorne Gunter
SOURCE:
The Edmonton Journal
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Most
aboriginals ignore gun registry: Ottawa hired counsellors to help promote
registry
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When
it was revealed two weeks ago that the Liberals' national gun registry had
registered and re-registered the same stolen rifle three times, I made a
prediction: Because their registry caught the error, even though it was on the
fourth attempt, I predicted the Liberals would proclaim their registry to be a
resounding success. After all, the registry had identified the rifle as stolen
and ordered police to seize it.
The
following week, David Austin did just that. Austin, spokesman for the Canadian
Firearms Centre, told the local paper in Orillia, Ont., where the stolen gun was
finally seized, that identifying it proved the registry works. "In terms of
the system working, it appears the fact that the gun was stolen has come to
light as part of the registration process," he said.
Sorry,
that was too easy. Yep, give them enough tries and even federal firearms
bureaucrats eventually get it right. Now if we could only convince gun-wielding
criminals to be equally inept, then there might be a chance the registry will
make Canadians safer. Naw!
Anyway,
I raise this example not to gloat ... much ... but mostly to point out how the
Liberals will use even the thinnest pretext to trumpet the virtues of their
registry. Even news that isn't good the Liberals beamingly declare to be
stunning proof of their registry's public benefit. So why would the government
black out the compliance rates from 68 native reserves in access to information
documents released last month to Canadian Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz? If there
was any way -- any way at all --for the Liberals to make the rates look like a
success, you can bet they would. So if they are declaring off-limits data from
hundreds of thousands of native gun owners, then you can be sure it's because
the compliance rate among aboriginals is abysmal -- worse than abysmal, likely
laughable. On most reserves, it's a safe bet (based on the numbers the Liberals
did release), that almost no aboriginals have bothered to acquire a gun owner's
licence or to register their guns.
Prominent
among the 136 pages of documents released to Breitkreuz is the assertion that on
the Mohawk reserve of Kanesatake, south of Montreal, 60 per cent of native gun
owners have complied at least with the licensing requirements.
But
Ottawa was forced, in its own documents, to admit "these results may
reflect overlaps in postal codes," which means this compliance rate likely
comes from "a mixed aboriginal and non-aboriginal applicant
population."
In
plain English, the only reason it looks as though nearly two-thirds of
Kanesatake gun owners have complied with the Liberals' firearms law is that the
postal codes that include the reserve also include a lot of non-native
communities. The much larger non-native population is complying (sort of) and
that is skewing the results for the reserve.
The
neighbouring Mohawk reserves of Kahnawake and Akwesasne have compliance rates of
just five per cent and one per cent, respectively. It is naive to believe
Kanesatake would be remarkably higher.
If
you believe that gun control will lead to less gun crime, the compliance rates
on these three Mohawk reserves have to trouble you enormously. Among the three
of them, these reserves are responsible for half or more of the smuggled
cigarettes and liquor entering the country. Significant percentages of smuggled
guns, illegal drugs and illegal migrants are brought in through these three that
straddle the Ontario-Quebec-U.S. border.
Thanks
to politically correct customs regulations, aboriginal Canadians are seldom
forced to declare their goods at border crossings or be subjected to searches of
their vehicles. Thus many Mohawks maintain lucrative smuggling businesses,
bringing in tens of thousands of contraband a month and on-shipping it to biker
gangs and other organized criminals who resell it across the country. If gun
control means crime control, these Mohawks are the first people the Liberals
should target. Instead, they will be the last.
Overall,
"although there appears to be pockets of high licence compliance among
aboriginal communities ... there is an apparent general pattern of
low-to-moderate compliance across the country." Try low to non-existent.
Despite
millions spent on "First Nations outreach" and special, lenient
licensing requirements for natives, few have licences and even fewer have
registered their guns. Very likely no more than 15 per cent of natives have a
federal firearms licence, and probably far fewer than that. Ottawa has hired
dozens of aboriginal licensing counsellors, sent them out across the country to
cajole aboriginals into registering themselves and their guns, and even made the
licensing test for aboriginals almost unfailable (the test for non-natives is
usually 50 written questions, for aboriginals it is a dozen oral questions for
which coaching is allowed).
Chiefs
can vouch for elders, too, thereby exempting them from having to take a test at
all. Despite all these bend-over-backwards incentives for aboriginal gun owners,
35 per cent of reserves in B.C. refused to participate with the outreach
efforts, 52 per cent in Alberta, 46 per cent in Saskatchewan and 60 per cent in
Manitoba. Aboriginal gun ownership and use is, not surprisingly, almost three
times higher than non-aboriginal, and yet aboriginals are almost completely
ignoring the registry.
Let's
see the Grits find the silver lining in that.