Michael Mays, Sgt. Ret’d: A flawed waste of time and money
Date: Sep 22, 2006 3:14 PM
PUBLICATION: The Toronto Star
DATE: 2006.09.21
EDITION: ONT
SECTION: Letter
PAGE: A25
BYLINE:
WORD COUNT: 237

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A flawed waste of time and money

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Canada’s gun laws must be tougher Editorial, Sept. 18.

Though the chiefs of police may endorse it, as a working police officer
in Toronto for 33 years, I found the long gun registry terribly flawed
and a waste of time, energy and money. It needs to be dismantled, not
strengthened.

For the last six years, I worked the streets of the Jane-Finch area, so
I’ve attended my share of weapons calls. Not once did I ever seek or
rely on information from the gun registry. It was irrelevant. Your
statement that it is used 5,000 times a day by police is misleading. A
check of the registry is done automatically every time an officer is
dispatched to an address, wanted or not.

From its inception, I was advised not to depend on it to make decisions.
It is outdated, inaccurate and completely unreliable. To make a decision
at a call based on registry information would be foolish at best and
deadly at worst.

Gun free zones would ensure only criminals have guns and central
repositories would only ensure a greater haul when they are broken into.
Perhaps, if there are more officers walking the streets or the courts
were not so backlogged that plea bargaining has become a necessity, gun
crime might be detected early and punished appropriately. The $2 billion
from the gun registry would have gone a long way in making that happen.

Michael Mays, Sgt. Ret’d,
Barrie, Ont.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !