PUBLICATION:          Calgary Herald

DATE:                         2005.03.14

EDITION:                    Final

SECTION:                  The Editorial Page

PAGE:                         A10

SOURCE:                   Calgary Herald

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Illegal weapons don't get registered: RCMP murders underscore futility of tracking guns

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In the wake of the Mayerthorpe murders, the Conservatives are justified in questioning the effectiveness of the Liberals' firearms registry.

But, they always were. They never needed James Roszko -- who in 2000 had been barred from owning firearms -- to demonstrate the registry's futility. In fact, registry or not, Roszko's illegal weapon would have claimed those four RCMP officers. Everybody, including the Liberals, knew from the start criminals would be able to acquire guns, and obviously would ignore the registry.

Yet, the Liberals pressed on to assuage a constituency that saw registration as the only response to Marc Lepine's 1989 shooting rampage. (The Montreal Massacre left 14 young women dead at the Ecole Polytechnique.)

Then-Justice minister Allan Rock said, "The link between gun control and public security is well-established." He promised a registry would "make it more difficult for street criminals to arm themselves," allow police to "nip crimes in the bud . . . curb the growing problem of the 'off-the-books' traffic in firearms," and even "deal with the scourge of domestic violence."

And, in a tasteless red herring, he used the Oklahoma City bombing to suggest a registry would alert Ottawa if Canadian militias were stockpiling weapons. (There were and are no Canadian militia groups and, if Oklahoma was the template, a more helpful registry would track sales of fertilizer and diesel fuel.) The Liberals also claimed the registry would be self-financing. As Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz reports, Ottawa is into this program for $2 billion, when related off-the-books enforcement and compliance costs incurred by other departments are included.

In return, Canada received a flawed and incomplete registry. It has lost track of thousands of gun owners who did register their weapons. Worse, as Breitkreuz pointedly remarks, "once a person is prohibited from owning firearms or has had their federal firearm licence revoked, they are no longer tracked." Persons, that is, such as Roszko.

We don't expect this government to acknowledge the registry's shortcomings, or the indiscernible difference it has made to crime statistics. (Although its denials make difficult reading this week: "Enhanced screening has kept firearms out of the hands of those who should not have them," boasted a government report in October. Quite.)

What they should concede however, is that even a perfectly functioning registry cannot prevent a repetition of the kind of event used to legitimize it in the first place -- a multiple shooting by a deranged individual.  That would clear the way to reconsidering priorities.

Licensing gun owners has merit, but the best value for the next billion security dollars is not in refining a database of the guns least likely to be criminally used. Take the money, hire more policemen, and help provincial solicitors-general do their job.

That won't stop another Mayerthorpe, either, but it would recognize what public security is truly linked with -- the determination of government to uphold its laws, and punish crime in the hope of deterring it.