Calgary Herald Editorial: Wildly missing the target

PUBLICATION: Calgary Herald
DATE: 2004.12.06
EDITION: Final
SECTION: The Editorial Page
PAGE: A10
SOURCE: Calgary Herald

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Wildly missing the target

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Nobody robs a liquor store with an old .303. Instead, criminals tend to
find inconvenient weapons that can’t be stuffed into their baggies. So,
to the police, knowing who owns them doesn’t help much.

On the other hand, police already know who is most likely to make
criminal use of a handgun.

The Liberal government, which now admits the total cost of its National
Firearms Registry will exceed $1.4 billion, continues to evade this
point, possibly in the belief that it can sanitize the registry by
making honest gun owners pay for it. (Revenues are projected to rise
from $16.5 million last year to $36.7 million in fiscal 2006-2007.)

In any case, Ottawa should do a cost-benefit analysis based on the 2003
Statistics Canada Homicide Report.

According to StatsCan, 69 per cent of adults accused of homicide that
year had a criminal record. Meanwhile, half the 548 adult murder victims
also had criminal records, some for murder.

Thus, the bulk of Canadian murders look like the criminal world at war
with itself. (Most of the rest, sadly, is domestic violence.)

What part did long guns play?

Of the 548, only 161 were shot. Of these — criminals or not — 109 were
killed with handguns, but a mere 32 with rifles or shotguns. In fact,
since the registry went live in 1998, a grand total of 284 people have
been murdered in Canada with the long guns which all this money has been
spent to register. Don’t forget, Canada has had a handgun registry since
1934.

It is thus in these 284 cases that the $1.4-billion registry could
provide police with data they would not otherwise have had — if these
rifles and shotguns were registered — but at an average cost of roughly
$4.9 million per case. (In fact, only 15 were, so the cost per case is
astronomical.)

It beggars belief.

In the urban ridings upon which the Liberals depend for their continued
hegemony, the firearms registry may have great political value.

But, as criminal justice expenditure, it is an absurd diversion of funds
and effort.