PUBLICATION:
WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
DATE
:
TUE MAY.11,2004
PAGE : A10
CLASS
:
Focus
BYLINE:
Editorial Staff
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Editorial
- A Liberal mess
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The
Liberals in Ottawa are considering a number of ways to dig out from under, or
sidestep responsibility for, the mess they've created trying to register all
long guns in Canada. There is an election in the offing and in rural Canada and
particularly the West (regarded by Liberals as their best hopes to balance the
expected loss of seats in Quebec), the billion-dollar gun control boondoggle is
widely despised as intrusive, unjustified and a colossal waste of money.
One
of the options -- handing the whole mess to the RCMP to administer -- is so
clearly a cynical political ploy as to be approaching the unthinkable, but
obviously not entirely. The government is considering extending the time period
in which people must renew their licences, reducing or eliminating the fees for
gun registration, or dumping the program into the Mounties' lap --even before it
is in place.
The
problem with reducing or eliminating the registration and renewal fees, which
may placate a few gun owners, is it would further entrench program costs, which
have grown from an original estimate of $2 million to $1 billion currently and,
in a few years, is expected to reach $2 billion. The program, touted as a way to
reduce gun-related crime in Canada, was supposed to be self-financing. The
runaway costs of setting up the ill-conceived and mismanaged registry have been
well-documented; to lift the costs from the gun owners means taxpayers will bear
a greater burden. That the government would look to the RCMP to take the
albatross off its shoulders is a transparently political act. Once it is out of
the hands of the bureaucrats in the Solicitor General's department, obscuring
the direct link to a minister, it may be out of the intense gaze of the
opposition.
There
are an estimated one million guns still unregistered in Canada. According to the
law, therefore, there may be one million criminals out there now. Eight
provinces, however, have refused to enforce that provision of the law, making a
mockery of one of the controls trumpeted as leading to a safer world, where
fewer people would die due to gun use.
If
the Liberals were serious about cracking down on the illegal use of guns, they
would stop chasing the elusive national registry system and pursue earlier
reforms to tighten the laws on the use of guns; restrict legal ownership and
make jail sentences mandatory for those caught illegally owning firearms or for
those who use guns in crime. Such a law may be seen as useful and legitimate. It
might bring on side the provincial governments that now object to the law. It
might even find support among hunters, trappers and farmers who have no intent
but to go about their everyday, mundane and harmless businesses.
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NUMBER OF GUNS REGISTERED & UNREGISTERED AS OF JANUARY 8, 2004
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/FirearmsRegistered-2004-01-08.xls