PUBLICATION:
Times
Colonist (Victoria)
DATE:
2004.05.20
EDITION: Final
SECTION:
Comment
PAGE:
A14
SOURCE:
Times Colonist
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Pursue
criminals, not gun owners: Firearms registry needs a drastic overhaul, with a
new focus on weapons used in offences
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One
of the first things Paul Martin did after taking office in December was to order
his associate Defence minister, Albina Guarnieri, out on a reconnaissance
mission to gauge the public mood on the gun control registry.
Last
month she submitted her recommendations for salvaging whatever it can from what
has become an extravagantly wasteful, useless program. Cabinet ministers,
though, like deer caught in the headlights, don't know which way to jump, or
whether to jump anywhere before the election is called.
Guarnieri's
recommendations are said to include reducing or eliminating user fees which can
amount to as much as $80, extending the five-year renewal period to 10 years
from the current five, removing criminal penalties for those -- particularly
hunters, farmers, fishermen and aboriginals who use long guns -- who fail to
register, cutting the bureaucracy in the New Brunswick firearms centre, and
turning the whole mess over to the Mounties.
This
exercise, undertaken for the purpose of reducing crime involving weapons and
helping police track those weapons down, is costing taxpayers about $113 million
a year. Its anticipated $2 million price tag has risen about 500 times so far
and by 2010 will reach an Olympian $2 billion, according to the government's own
estimates.
Meanwhile,
many gun-owners are refusing to register, despite successive extensions to
deadlines; some people have registered things like electric drills; and a former
sergeant-at-arms in the Alberta legislature has succeeded, after months of
trying, in being arrested for defying the law.
Meanwhile,
there continue to be reports of people receiving registration forms for the
wrong, or non-existent guns, and a paucity of court cases, if any, where the
usefulness of the registry has been demonstrated, though police chiefs
stubbornly insist it's a good thing.
The
way it's set up now, it's a bad thing. It seems to assume gun-owners are
potential terrorists; it turns citizens into criminals, not for causing harm,
but for failing to fill out forms. As Guarnieri herself acknowledges, it has to
be changed to recognize "the realities of this country."
There
are some who would argue that the realities demand the registry be scrapped and
the money that is left be diverted to real crime-fighting. But so much money has
gone into this program -- including what was spent on consultant's reports and
however much was wasted through awarding untendered contracts a la Adscam --
that we should be able to salvage something.
Turning
the registry over to the RCMP would make sense, since the force already operates
a DNA and criminal information data base. Removing criminal penalties for
failing to fill out forms is an obvious improvement.
But
one of Guarnieri's reported suggestions is to increase penalties for those
committing crimes involving guns, and confiscating weapons from owners who even
threaten to use them in domestic disputes. This should have been the focus from
the start, and shouldn't be hard to sell in an election campaign.
Cabinet should stop dithering and act before the election campaign starter's gun goes off.