PUBLICATION:
Times
Colonist (Victoria)
DATE:
2004.08.26
EDITION:
Final
SECTION: Comment
PAGE:
A14
SOURCE:
Times Colonist
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Gun
registry is still a failure
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More
than 18 months after the deadline, Canada's controversial billion-dollar gun
registry can claim a success rate of less than 70 per cent -- or a failure rate,
if you'd prefer, of more than 30 per cent.
One
wonders when the government will put this dog out of its misery.
The
numbers tell the tale. The government says that a total of 1,561,329 people have
received their gun registration certificates, with 6.9 million firearms
registered. Another 406,834 people with gun possession licences have failed to
register their long guns, and 316,837 gun owners have failed to register or
dispose of their handguns.
Conservative
MP Garry Breitkreuz,
who obtained the figures under the Access to Information Act, says the Liberal
government should not try to claim the registry is a success when it is missing
so many guns.
He's
right. This registry has been a mistake from the start. Costs have spiralled to
unbelievable levels -- the promised $2-million price tag zoomed to a billion
dollars, and the registry is costing us $113 million more each year.
All
it's done so far is put several thousand honest Canadians on the wrong side of
the law. It's done nothing to curb the use of guns by criminals, because
criminals aren't stupid enough to tell anyone what they've got.
We've
asked this before, and we'll ask it again: When will the government pull the
plug?