REGISTRY WAY OFF TARGET

THERE'S ONE more lesson to be learned from this week's hostage-taking at Union Station, and it concerns the dismal failure of the federal gun registry.

The lesson is this: criminals in Canada find it easy to get guns. While politicians impose rules and regulations to make life difficult for duck hunters, police are helpless to keep up with the proliferation of illegal guns on our streets.

The gun that Sugston Anthony Brookes fired at his estranged wife Marlene and then used to hold Nicole Regis hostage -- before he was shot dead by a police sniper -- was a sawed-off shotgun. In other words, completely illegal.

Not only that, Brookes was under a 10-year firearms ban as part of his punishment for several counts of assault on his wife and threats against his daughter -- for which he also served more than a month in jail.

But there he was on Front Street, flouting the law and the firearms registry. And, it must be said, right in front of many of the people who tend to support it (and the Liberals) the most -- urban Toronto voters.

By coincidence, on the day of the hostage-taking, the Sun reported the latest statistics unearthed by Saskatchewan Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz, who, through records obtained through the Access to Information Act, has discovered massive non-compliance with the federal gun law.

A Canada Firearms Centre document confirmed more than 400,000 licenced gun owners still haven't registered or re-registered their guns, despite the government's deadline having passed 18 months ago. Breitkreuz says the government's own statistics suggested that more than a million firearms have yet to be registered. (These are legally owned guns we're talking about, by the way. Heaven only knows how many illegal, smuggled and unregistered firearms there are in criminal hands.)

Breitkreuz also noted recently that the feds can't cite any statistics proving that the billion-dollar registry is doing what the Liberals claim it does -- improve public safety.

"If (the Liberals) can't prove the gun registry is working after 10 years and more than a billion dollars spent, then the whole program should be scrapped," he says.

It's that kind of logic -- and the gruesome reality of gun crime on our streets -- that has persuaded former supporters of the registry like our own Police Chief Julian Fantino to call for it to be scrapped. Since all it does is tell police where the law-abiding owners' guns are (if that), it's practically useless. It's not "gun control" at all.

That was as clear as the sound of the sniper's bullet on Wednesday. Question is, was anyone in Ottawa listening?

AND ANOTHER THING ...

GOOD NEWS: Cops from across the country gave Deputy PM Anne McLellan an earful yesterday about lax parole rules and "Club Fed" jails -- and she promised to look into their complaints. Bad news: She hinted she might just shuffle it all off to a parliamentary committee.