PUBLICATION:              Calgary Herald

DATE:                         2004.12.06

EDITION:                    Final

SECTION:                  The Editorial Page

PAGE:                         A10

SOURCE:                   Calgary Herald

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Wildly missing the target

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Nobody robs a liquor store with an old .303. Instead, criminals tend to find inconvenient weapons that can't be stuffed into their baggies. So, to the police, knowing who owns them doesn't help much.

On the other hand, police already know who is most likely to make criminal use of a handgun.

The Liberal government, which now admits the total cost of its National Firearms Registry will exceed $1.4 billion, continues to evade this point, possibly in the belief that it can sanitize the registry by making honest gun owners pay for it. (Revenues are projected to rise from $16.5 million last year to $36.7 million in fiscal 2006-2007.)

In any case, Ottawa should do a cost-benefit analysis based on the 2003 Statistics Canada Homicide Report.

According to StatsCan, 69 per cent of adults accused of homicide that year had a criminal record. Meanwhile, half the 548 adult murder victims also had criminal records, some for murder.

Thus, the bulk of Canadian murders look like the criminal world at war with itself. (Most of the rest, sadly, is domestic violence.)

What part did long guns play?

Of the 548, only 161 were shot. Of these -- criminals or not -- 109 were killed with handguns, but a mere 32 with rifles or shotguns. In fact, since the registry went live in 1998, a grand total of 284 people have been murdered in Canada with the long guns which all this money has been spent to register. Don't forget, Canada has had a handgun registry since 1934.

It is thus in these 284 cases that the $1.4-billion registry could provide police with data they would not otherwise have had -- if these rifles and shotguns were registered -- but at an average cost of roughly $4.9 million per case. (In fact, only 15 were, so the cost per case is astronomical.)

It beggars belief.

In the urban ridings upon which the Liberals depend for their continued hegemony, the firearms registry may have great political value.  But, as criminal justice expenditure, it is an absurd diversion of funds and effort.