Many of Canada’s gun owners not registering

Many of Canada’s gun owners not registering and it is
placing the gun control folks in a political corner from
which they want to escape.

FYI (copy below):
http://www.canada.com/national/story.asp?id=012BA3EB-80FF-4FF1-8E3C-F05B95BEE090
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*”It is to secure our rights that we resort to *
*government at all.” *
*–Thomas Jefferson to Francois *D’Ivernois, 1795. *
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Liberals give tardy gun owners a break
Government hopes ‘sale’ on licence fee will encourage more
registrations

Tim Naumetz
The Ottawa Citizen

Saturday, January 18, 2003

The federal Justice Department has reintroduced a
bargain-basement firearm registration fee to entice more gun
owners into the program, even though it may be unable to
process the current backlog of registry applications before
a June 30 deadline.

Gun owners now may continue to register all their firearms
for a total fee of only $18, even though the fee for each
gun was to have been $25 after Jan. 1, Canadian Firearms
Centre spokesman David Austin said yesterday.

A previous scheme offering free registration on the
Internet, also discontinued on Jan. 1, may be brought back
as well, Mr. Austin said.

The program’s critics protested vigorously earlier this
month when the Justice Department announced the cut-rate
registration fees would not be available to gun owners who
had not applied to register their guns before Dec. 31 or had
not informed the government of their intention to apply.

While the original deadline for registration of an estimated
7.92 million firearms in Canada was Jan. 1, Justice Minister
Martin Cauchon announced in early December that owners who
had applied to register before the deadline would have until
June 30 to receive their registration certificates. He
later extended the amnesty to gun owners who simply informed
the firearms centre by letter or e-mail that they intended
to apply for registration.

Mr. Cauchon took the measures after it became clear the
firearms centre would be unable to process all registration
applications before Jan. 1. The government froze spending on
the program in early December after Auditor General Sheila
Fraser disclosed costs were expected to balloon over 10
years to $1 billion by 2005.

With an estimated 3.22 firearms per owner and thousands of
owners having more than 10 or 20 firearms, the reduced fee
will cost the government even more money.

Figures released this week suggest that if all gun owners
who have yet to do so apply to register in the next few
months, it will be virtually impossible for the firearms
centre to meet the demand.

As of yesterday, the Justice Department had registered 5.9
million firearms to 1.4 million owners. At the same time,
however, the department reported a total of 1.9 million gun
owners with valid possession licences, possession and
acquisition licences, old firearms acquisition certificates
that were still valid and 5,000 licences for minors.

A 2001 survey done for the Justice Department estimated a
total of 2.46 million firearm owners in Canada.

The figures suggest the Justice Department will likely have
to register at least 1.28 million guns between now and June
30, just to cover the licence holders already in the system.

According to studies done by the government, most licence
holders are likely already to own firearms, even though the
possession and acquisition licence is intended for people
who also want to purchase guns. Previous studies have also
found that people under the age of 30 are less likely to
acquire or own firearms than they were even 10 years ago.

Documents obtained by Canadian Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz
show the government registered firearms for 291,000
individuals over the past three months. The bulk of the
registrations took place before Mr. Cauchon’s spending
freeze.

During the same period, the government registered 1.2
million firearms.

Dave Tomlinson, legal chairman of the National Firearms
Association, said “there isn’t a hope in hell” the
government will be able to register all applications before
the end of the six-month amnesty. Mr. Tomlinson reiterated
the association’s position that the government has
underestimated the total number of firearms in Canada by
several million.