PUBLICATION:  National Post

DATE:  2002.11.28

EDITION:  National

SECTION:  Editorials

PAGE:  A23

SOURCE:  National Post Canada 

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Time to ditch the gun registry

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Toronto's recent wave of street murders -- more than 40 since the beginning of 2001 -- debunks the claim that Ottawa's gun registry is making Canadians safer from crime. As the price tag for this colossal bureaucratic mess nears $1-billion, it is clearly time for the federal government to consider shutting it down and redirecting some or all of the resources to real crime-fighting measures.

Nearly all of the Toronto murders have been committed with handguns. Yet handguns have been subject to registration in Canada since 1934. In fact, registration has done nothing to stem the use of handguns in murder: In the past 15 years, the proportion of all firearm murders committed with handguns has nearly doubled in Canada from just over one-third to nearly two-thirds.

Pistols are easily concealed. That makes them the weapon of choice for gang members and drug dealers -- the two groups responsible for most of the Toronto shootings. Smuggling from the United States is the source of most of the handguns used in Canadian murders -- up to 90% according to the Ontario Provincial Police. Even if a national registry could produce information useful in preventing crimes -- or even just solving them -- it would be at a loss to produce it on nine of 10 handguns used in Canadian murders, since those guns would not have been registered in the first place.

Since the registry opened its doors (or at least its database) four years ago this week, overall firearms homicides are up more than 13%. If the rate had instead declined 13%, you can bet the Liberals would have been broadcasting their "success" far and wide. We believe they should be held to account for their "failure" just as vigorously.

While the licensing process for gun owners (as distinct from the process for registering individual guns) was initially turning down more potentially unfit owners than the old Firearms Acquisition Certificates program, the Liberals' haste to boost the number of licensed owners caused them to forgo meaningful background checks on hundreds of thousands of applicants in late 2000 and early 2001. As a result, the rate of refusals and revocations for the new licensing scheme is half that of the old FAC system. How can the new program be making Canada safer if it is turning away only half as many risky owners as the old one?

Finally, the cost of the registry has skyrocketed out of all proportion to the potential benefits, if there were any. By the end of this year, according to Treasury Board reports and budget estimates, the Liberals will have poured $875-million into this sinkhole, with no end in sight and no lives saved. Putting Ottawa's highly skewed priorities on full display, the Department of Justice also expects to spend eight times more on registering duck hunters' shotguns than it will on counterterrorism.

At best the registry is useless, but harmless. But to the extent that it is diverting resources and police officers from real security matters, it is more of a threat to Canadians' safety than no registry at all.