DATE:
2002.12.15
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Comment
PAGE:
C4
SOURCE:
BY PETER WORTHINGTON
COLUMN:
Write Stuff
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REGISTRY
A BOONDOGGLE FROM THE WORD GO
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Auditor
General Sheila Fraser mostly blames the fiasco of ballooning costs of gun
registration on the government for withholding details from Parliament, but also
on MPs for not checking spending programs more diligently.
While her skepticism of the government is valid, she's a bit off base
regarding Parliament and gun registration.
If
the Commons and the public had paid even minimum attention to Garry Breitkreuz,
the Canadian Alliance MP for Saskatchewan's Yorkton-Melville riding, they'd have
known virtually everything Fraser discovered in her audit - including the
$1-billion over-spending.
Since
the day firearms registration was introduced in 1995, Breitkreuz has been on top
of events and issued warning after warning on the waste, costs and basic
foolishness of the whole program, which will not appreciably curb violence or
gun crimes.
No
one knows more about the subject or has been a more adamant critic than
Breitkreuz - not because he's a gun nut, but because the whole program has been
an unmitigated, costly disaster from the start, when its original cost was
estimated at $2 million - $119 million to implement, $117 million from
registration revenues. Breitkreuz's
research is mostly from open sources, so if he could document abuses, other MPs
could too.
Reality
is, the government cares not a whit if the gun registry works, it just wants it
implemented. Without Fraser's
intervention, there was no end in sight for spending. One billion dollars was
only the start, with no qualitative effects on reducing gun crimes. That's not
opinion, that's fact.
Ostensibly,
reducing violence is the motivating factor in gun registration, which some
critics see as leading toward confiscation, as in Britain and Australia.
Consider: last year there were 554 homicides in Canada - 31% of victims
shot, 31% stabbed, 22% beaten to death. "Trying
to register all the firearms in Canada doesn't make any more sense than trying
to register all the knives and baseball bats," says Brietkreuz.
HANDGUNS
EASY TO FIND
In
gun killings, 64% were committed with handguns - which the RCMP has been
registering since 1934. In fact, handgun homicides have jumped from 49.8% in
1991 to 64.3% in 2001, indicating that acquiring illegal handguns is no problem
for those who want to use them. One need look no further than the Jamaican gang
shootings in Toronto recently - some provoked by little more than an insult - to
realize how easy it is to acquire handguns. In Jamaica, gang and political
shootings are almost a cultural quirk.
Registration
of hunting rifles and shotguns becomes mandatory on Jan. 1. Homicides from long
guns have decreased from 38% in 1991 to 26.9% in 2001.
Breitkreuz
has turned up another oddity about homicides in Canada last year: 65% of accused
killers had a criminal record, as did 51% of their victims. Most from both
groups, perpetrators and victims, had convictions for violent crimes.
These
statistics indicate a preponderance of gang or criminal killings. Also, most
killers and their victims had consumed alcohol and/or drugs at the time of the
murders. More evidence that gun registration is irrelevant in curbing violence,
which is a social malaise.
Of
the estimated 3.3 million gun owners in Canada, 1.4 million had failed to
register by this October, meaning most will automatically become criminals on
Jan. 1. This figure of gun owners
is almost certainly inaccurate. In the mid-1970s, Statistics Canada reckoned
there were some 16 million guns in Canada. Today, the government claims there
are only 7.9 million guns, 4.5 million of which have already been registered.
Who's kidding whom? What happened to the vanished 8.1 million firearms?
More boondoggle.
Breitkreuz
notes that if the $1 billion wasted on gun registration had been spent to
alleviate the critical shortage of MRI machines (Magnetic Resonance Imaging),
Canada would have proportionately as many as the U.S.
As
it is, people have to wait months, even in Toronto, for an MRI appointment -
often in the wee hours of the morning. Right now there are 110 MRI machines in
Canada - 2.5 per million of population, while in the U.S. there are 8.1 MRI
machines per million people. To match America, we should have at least 254 MRI
machines which cost about $4.2 million each to buy, install and operate.
The money Canada has already spent (wasted) on gun registration could
have purchased over 200 MRI machines, and made those agonizing waits by patients
a mere memory.
Forty
years ago, Canada's homicide rate involving firearms was roughly what it is
today, even though homicides in general have dropped to 1.3 per 100,000 of
population compared to 1.8 per 100,000 at a time when long guns didn't have to
be registered.
In other words, the whole gun registration ploy is as unnecessary as it is wasteful, and always has been. Instead of registering all firearms, it might be more useful to keep track of those who use illegal guns to commit crimes and kill people.