PUBLICATION: The London Free Press
DATE:
2004.05.21
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Opinion Pages
PAGE:
A12
COLUMN:
Our view
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HALF
MEASURES ON GUN REGISTRY
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The
federal Liberals got it half right yesterday when they announced plans to
toughen gun crime provisions and increase penalties for weapons trafficking,
meanwhile capping long-gun registry costs at $25 million annually.
But
why not admit the registry was a $1-billion mistake, disband it, and add that
$25 million to the initiatives against gun crimes and trafficking?
The
long-gun registry was political from the outset, to appease people rightly
concerned about gun violence. But long guns are used almost exclusively by
farmers for pest control, and by hunters seeking game. When long guns kill or
injure, it is usually by accident. That's an issue of gun safety, not control.
Handguns
are the weapons of choice for criminals, who use them to rob, intimidate and
murder. The reason is simple: They're easily to conceal. They've been registered
in this country for more than 70 years, though they continue to be used in
violent crime.
Someone
contemplating robbery or murder is not going to register a gun and risk leaving
his or her calling card at the crime scene. The penalty for failure to register
is trifling compared to that for murder.
What
Ottawa is finally acknowledging, as evidenced by Deputy Prime Minister Anne
McLellan's announcement in Edmonton yesterday, is that the answer to fighting
gun crime is tougher sentencing and stopping handgun smuggling.
Stiffening
sentencing takes will. Controlling smuggling, given the length of Canada's
borders, requires abundant resources. This is no time for half measures. Get rid
of the registry and devote its funding to the real root of the problem.
Eliminating
fees for registration and the transfer of firearms, also announced by McLellan,
may help to appease long-gun owners. But it's more likely to infuriate those
who have already registered and add to the taxpayers' burden because the fees
were supposed to cover most of the program's cost.
The long-gun registry never infringed on gun owners' rights, as some have argued. It simply won't do the job it was intended to do. It's time to cut taxpayers' losses and end it now.