ENFORCING THE LONG-GUN REGISTRY DOES PREVENT CRIME

Enforcing long-gun registry does prevent crime

Why do critics of the long gun registry persistently ignore this simple truth? 
By BEVERLY AKERMAN

 Originally published in The Hill Times, March 29, 2010 

MONTREAL—Does it make sense to assume all shotgun and rifle owners are law-abiding citizens, but that everyone behind the wheel of a car is a drunk? 

Isn't that the message behind the federal Justice Department's recent proposal to institute random roadside breathalyzer tests?  On one hand, the government, hiding behind the skirts of its latest sock puppet, sends Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner to pontificate: "Irrational government policy had to be challenged....The long-gun registry is a massive Liberal policy failure and it needs to end. It makes no sense to force law-abiding individuals with firearms licences to register their long-guns. It makes no sense to believe the registry will prevent a gun crime from taking place."  

On the other hand, it apparently makes perfect sense to assume that all drivers are drunk. 

Memo to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson: if a policy has The Western Standard saying "Harper government wants full-blown police state," you have a problem on your hands—a "Houston-we-have-a-problem"-sized problem.  

Nicholson apparently approves of the random breathalyzer idea, as does Mothers Against Drunk Drivers executive director Andrew Murie. 

Purchasing a gun must magically confer "law-abiding" status through some noble alchemy of lethal weapon possession. Meantime, the latest example of gun mayhem unfolds on our front pages: the sad murder of Ontario Provincial Police Constable Vu Pham, 37, allegedly by 70-year-old Fred Preston, former reeve of the Township of Joly, and lifelong resident of Sundridge, Ont. Const. Pham was a Vietnamese War child survivor and father of three who spent part of his youth in Sundridge. 

Each year, roughly 100,000 Canadian women and children take refuge in domestic violence shelters. How many of them live in homes with rifles or shotguns, remembering some 11 million such guns are in Canadian hands (and that 90 per cent of those hands are male)? How many Canadian women have been threatened with guns? How many of these guns are owned by "law-abiding" gun owners?  

How long does it take to pull a trigger, anyway? 

That's the amount of time it takes for a "law-abiding" gun owner to become a law-breaking one.  Here's how the gun registry helps prevent crimes, including murder (I'm typing slowly so even the dullards among us will understand): knowing who has which guns allows the police to remove them as a preventative measure, should it become necessary.  Why do critics of the long gun registry persistently ignore this simple truth? Enforcing the registry does prevent crime. 

Since its creation, close to 23,000 firearms licenses have been refused or revoked because of just this sort of safety concern.  

For years now, this "tough-on-crime" government has encouraged the flouting of the Firearms Act—still law in our land, despite their efforts to ignore it. They instituted an "amnesty" for those who failed to renew their gun licences and waived or refunded licensing fees, more than $120-million-worth. 

That's far from being tough on crime.  

The Supreme Court has ruled, "The registration provisions cannot be severed from the rest of the act. The licensing provisions require everyone who possesses a gun to be licensed; the registration provisions require all guns to be registered. These portions of the Firearms Act are both tightly linked to Parliament's goal of promoting safety by reducing the misuse of any and all firearms. Both portions are integral and necessary to the operation of the scheme."  

Const. Pham's shooting is a tragedy—for his family, his community, for all of us. Just imagine how much more danger our cops will be in when they pull us over to sample our breath after our gun laws are even further eroded.

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Poll: Gun Registry Repeal Against the Will of the Majority

The publication of a new poll gauging Canadians' views on the long-gun registry proves Candace Hoeppner's so-called Private Member's Bill goes against the views of the majority of Canadians.

The poll, conducted by Leger in December 2009, shows twice as many Canadians want to keep the registry as wish to scrap it (59 versus 27 per cent); in every province but Manitoba and Saskatchewan, more people support the registry than oppose it. The poll also shows women support the gun registry more than men (66 versus 51 per cent), that more people living with gun owners support the registry than oppose it (47 versus 36 per cent) and that a substantial proportion of gun owners (36 per cent) actually support the registry themselves. The gun lobby may be louder and better financed, but even among households with guns in Canada, votes are almost evenly split.

Newspapers have lately been flooded with support for the registry from policing, health and safety organizations, women's and victims groups. But our Conservative government still intends to take the registry out, covering their ears and singing "la-la-la!!" to all the experts.

It's disheartening to watch Mr. Harper play politics with public safety: the Conservatives are the government of ALL Canadians, not just their gun lobby friends. While this coalition tries to convince us that licensing alone is an adequate safeguard, the truth is that licensing only functions with registration as its backup. The Supreme Court even issued a ruling to that effect.

If a gun owner is deemed a danger to himself or others, in the absence of the registry, how would a prohibition order be enforced?

The police MUST be able to easily discover how many and what type of firearms each licensed individual owns: that's the function of the registry. Safe storage regulations become unenforceable if we don't know who owns the particular gun in question. Dismantling the long-gun registry would be a shot to the heart of the Firearms Act, and will undermine public safety.

Gun violence is not just about urban gangs. More guns means higher rates of gun death and injury, and there are more guns in rural areas. Most police officers killed with guns are murdered with rifles and shotguns; suicides with firearms and domestic violence in rural communities seldom make the front page. Rifles and shotguns are the guns most often used in violence against women because they're the firearms most readily available.

For more information, please see a wonderful new website set up to counter the gun lobby's lies, http://truthsandmyths.ca/, supported by such well-known "cults" (according to Garry Breitkreuz) as the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Police Boards, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, the Canadian Paediatric Society, the Canadian Public Health Association, the Quebec Association for Suicide Prevention, etc. etc. etc.