NUMBER
OF GUNS REGISTERED
WHO
IS RIGHT – THE CANADIAN FIREARMS CENTRE OR THE RCMP?
By
Garry Breitkreuz, MP – February 22, 2002
1.
On March 10, 2001, the Department of Justice posted on the
Canadian Firearms Centre website their last set of statistics on the number of
firearms licences issued and the number of firearms registered in a document
titled: Making a Difference: The Firearms Act.
Under the section Summary of Key
Statistics they reported:
Number of Restricted Weapons
=
1,150,000 Source:
RCMP 1999 Annual Report
Number of New Firearms Registered
= 650,000
Firearms in the system
= 1,800,000
Registration Applications in Process
= 216,000
2.
In response to a request made under the Access to Information Act,
the RCMP (File: 01ATIP-51743 dated December 17, 2001) provided up-to-date
statistics on the number guns registered.
In these documents, the RCMP reported: “As
of November 22, 2001 there were a total of 1,431,731 distinct firearms
registered since December 1998.”
WHO
IS RIGHT – THE CANADIAN FIREARMS CENTRE OR THE RCMP?
If
they are both right, where did 584,269 registered guns go between March 10, 2001
and November 22, 2001?