Law Enforcement needs to approach any "unknown" situation with extreme caution and be prepared for the worst.
If they are looking to the registry to make an absolute determination whether someone is armed and actually alter their approach to a situation based on it, they are potentially putting their lives and the lives of others in jeopardy…..

A database simply WILL NOT provide those answers or any added level of safety. Possession of firearms is dynamic and changes by the minute, by both criminals and law-abiding citizens alike. A database does nothing in determining if someone is armed.

Let's not forget, the same drunken person can inflict serious injury and even death with a common kitchen knife if he/she is so inclined.

Let's put the responsibility on the individuals and make the punishment fit the crime, not on society as a whole…..

a farmer
a registered gun owner
a believer in self defence

Sounds effective to me. With fewer guns overall the harder and more expensive it is for the bad
guys to get them – they still get ‘em for sure – but it’s less than it would be otherwise. The basic stats are simple – the higher the rate of gun ownership, the higher the gun death rate. USA has 35 % of households with guns and in 1999 about 10 gun deaths per year per 100K folks. At the same time Canada had 17% of households with guns, and about 2 gun deaths per yr per 100K folks. Other country’s stats bear this out. It’s a direct correlation – fewer guns = fewer gun deaths.

The gun registry will never be reliable and only a fool would trust their life to it. The reasons for this statement are irrefutable. Millions of firearms are missing from the registry by the Liberal government’s own admission. There are many errors in the registry, also admitted. Criminal sourced firearms which are about 98% of all firearms involved in crime are not registered. So for two billion dollars we have a registry that has not solved one crime or made society safer. What the Liberals did do though was to attack private property and demonise legal firearms owners in the Liberals quest for urban votes. Shame on them and those that pimp their propaganda.

Many Canadians now recognise, along with police at every level and service, that the universal gun registry has failed to deliver any of the promised results. Worse still the Liberal Party has chosen to represent only urban constituents on this issue. That two billion dollars could have been better spent in other areas especially in this time of fiscal crisis. How can we trust political parties that only promote more of failed programs as their offering for the future? We certainly don’t want to follow the U.K. and other failed programs. Look at the British situation for yourself and see how failed programs result in lies and deception. It happened there and we see a similar trend here with the Liberals and their approach to gun control.

All of this could have been written about but it would not have served this articles conclusions.

Ya Right,
According to the RCMP -Firearm program website: Firearm licences revoked by year.
2005- 2,233- 2006- 2,093- 2007- 1701-2008 – 1800

The majority of these people probably had their firearms registered and later had their firearm licence revoked because some of them were deemed to be a threat to public saftey. “NOTE: Reasons why firearms licences revoked include: a history of violence, mental illness, potential risk to himself/herself or others, unsafe firearm use and storage, drug offences, and providing false information.”

These people who had their firearm licence revoked and owned firearms must now legally transfer their firearms. If the firearms are not registered how would the authorities know how many firearms these people need to legally transfer? If the firearms aren’t registered these people if they want can sell them to anybody and it would be extremly difficult to trace the firearm back to the original owner. A registration certificate identifies a firearm and links the firearm to its owner to provide a means of tracking the firearm.

From the RCMP websit:
Registration helps police trace firearms and combat the illegal movement of firearms
To break up organized networks involved in the illegal movement of firearms, it is necessary to have a traceable commodity. Previously, police had to search manually through thousands of retail records to find the source of any non-restricted firearms recovered at crime scenes. The computerized, centralized CFIS makes it much easier for police to trace and locate the last known owner of these firearms. If firearms are identified as stolen, knowing the source of the firearm will give the police a valuable starting point for their investigation and identify possible patterns of theft from firearm shipments or dealers.

Licensing and Registration
The law assists police in taking preventive measures such as removing guns from domestic violence situations. The licensing system reduces the chances that those who are a threat to themselves or others will get access to firearms. The fully integrated databases ensure that when an incident occurs involving a licensed gun owner, authorities are alerted and may take action to remove the firearms and/or revoke the licence. Without a firearm registry, the police would have to take the word of the occupant whether firearms are present.

Boy, those guys are sure busy!

Face it. There is an automatic hit on the registry for any type of police inquiry no matter how mundane. Why do police at all levels and services condemn the long gun registry if it is so useful? This author does not claim it has solved any crimes. Nor can they. No thinking policeman would stake his life on a gun registry that is incomplete and fraught with errors. The Liberals never could explain the millions of missing firearms that were not registered.

Criminals do not register firearms. The statistical chance of being shot with a registered firearm is probably less than 2% going by published crime stats and it shrinks to a fraction of 1% if we consider handguns? The obvious conclusion is the registry is expensive without demonstrable gains to public safety. What it does do though is put the burden on law abiding Canadians and limit their historic cultural rights for no good reason. Anti-gun rhetoric is soft on any real science and like this article is easily countered.. What Canadians don’t need is more of an expensive failed program. We also need more honesty in our media. The facts are readily available so it is all the more disturbing when we read an article that has an obvious political bias while at the same time telling half-truths. Shame on Macleans!

And it is life-threateningly stupid to imagine that the ABSENCE of information in that quick query means something else again. The very fact that criminals will not be registering their guns means that any cop approaching a situation, reassured that the database clears that address, needs retraining pronto.

Most, if not all, shooting sprees take place in state-mandated “gun free zones”. This is why you don’t see many mass murders at NRA conventions, gun shows, or police stations.

http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/20021210ce.html

December, 2002 Auditor General’s Report

Department of Justice – Costs of Implementing the Canadian Firearms Program

The program became excessively regulatory

10.67 In February 2001, the Department told the Government it had wanted to focus on the minority of firearms owners that posed a high risk while minimizing the impact on the overwhelming majority of law-abiding owners. However, the Department concluded that this did not happen. Rather, it stated that the Program’s focus had changed from high risk firearms owners to excessive regulation and enforcement of controls over all owners and their firearms. The Department concluded that, as a result, the Program had become overly complex and very costly to deliver, and that it had become difficult for owners to comply with the Program.

10.68 The Department said the excessive regulation had occurred because some of its Program partners believed that

* the use of firearms is in itself a “questionable activity” that required strong controls, and
* there should be a zero-tolerance attitude toward non-compliance with the Firearms Act.

Blame Wendy, not us.

The other misleading part of this article is that no changes are planned to the Canadian Firearms Registry as inferred in this article, only the Long Gun Registry portion of it. Another misleading part of this article is the domestic dispute analogy. A police officer under the proposed changes will still know if a person residing at a residence has been issued a Possession and Acquisition Licence (PAL) which is the only way one can legally acquire a long gun. So the officer will know when answering a domestic dispute that there is a possibility that firearms may be in play which is exactly what the officer needs to know. What type of long gun it may be is really immaterial. Would the police officers react differently if it the rifle in question were a 1948 .303 Enfield than they would if it were a Remington 410? The answer is no.

The last misleading part of this article is the omission of the fact that the Long Gun Registry launched by the Liberals was supposed to cost $88M (later increased to $119M) to set up and then be financially self sustaining. To date it has cost over $2B (Yes BILLION) and continues to bleed money at a rate $125M per year. This does not include the estimated $1B in additional costs to other agencies that resulted from it (from the AG Report). After this huge investment we have a registry that is hopelessly ineffective. It just does not work and never has. This fact alone puts the lives of police officers at risk everyday.

As a former law enforcement officer I can tell you that we just don’t trust the system when we are dealing with long guns and always approach a situation assuming that there are weapons involved until we can ascertain that they are not. We do that because we know that the Long Gun Registry is a joke. We don’t need any statistics to tell us that because we just relate our own personnel experience to it. For instance, as a police officer I always want to comply with the law, even if I disagree with it. So I have been trying to register two long guns now since the registry opened in mid 1990s with no success. I keep getting letters from them asking me to re-new but they have weapons listed on them that are not mine and never were. I fill out the paperwork with the corrected info only to receive another letter months later asking for the same thing.

Here is what the AG and Senior Police Officers says about the registry:

1. AG Report – Police only use it during major operations and then only 74% say it is effective;
2. AG Report – The program does not collect data to analyze the effectiveness of the gun registry in meeting its stated goal of improving public safety. The Centre does not show how these activities help minimize risks to public safety with evidence-based outcomes such as reduced deaths, injuries and threats from firearms.
3. OPP and former City of T.O Commissioner Julian Fantino is opposed to the gun registry, stating in a press release:
“We have an ongoing gun crisis including firearms-related homicides lately in Toronto, and a law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them. None of the guns we know to have been used were registered, although we believe that more than half of them were smuggled into Canada from the United States. The firearms registry is long on philosophy and short on practical results considering the money could be more effectively used for security against terrorism as well as a host of other public safety initiatives.”
4. Edgar MacLeod, president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police states that:
“while the cost of the registry had become an embarrassment, the program works and provides a valuable service. In a typical domestic violence situation, he says, investigating police officers rely on the registry to determine if guns are present. Onboard computers in police cruisers, or a call to central dispatch, alerts officers to any firearms registered to occupants of the house.” (as I have already stated the elimination of the Long Gun Registry will still allow officers to access the info that they need).
5. John Hicks, an Orillia-area computer consultant, and webmaster for the Canada Firearms Centre, has said that anyone with a home computer could have easily accessed names, addresses and detailed shopping lists (including make, model and serial number) of registered guns belonging to licensed firearms owners. Hicks told the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH) that “During my tenure as the CFC webmaster I duly informed management that the website that interfaced to the firearms registry was flawed. It took some $15 million to develop and I broke inside into it within 30 minutes.” I can tell you that there is a large volume of evidence that shows that these hackers are highly organized and are using the info to steal guns from homes that are later used to commit crimes.
The last problem with the Canadian Long Gun Registry is not in Canada, it is in the U.S. where the mess that our system is in is used by the NRA as an example of why a registry will not work there.

But any police officer worth their badge would not go just on the information from the registry, every police officer across this country (R.C.M.P. O.P.P., City Officers) assume that if they are going into a residence, that there are firearms present. No officer would assume that if the registry states that there are no guns registered then all is good and they don’t have to worry about it.

The problem with gun crime in this country is, that the first thing lawyers do in a firearms related crime is to plea bargan away the firearms charge. If there was an automatic five year sentence for any firearms related crime in this country, then things might change. But since you can get more time for driving drunk than armed robbery, what is the deterent.

Next, our Customs officers should have the hardware to look for illegal importing of firearms into this country and not just be glorified tax collectors. With the majority of hand guns from crime being imported from the states, there are technologies, that can detect the presence of firearm residue.

Lastly, the Gun registry was formed more as a political jesture. At the time of it’s formation, New Bruswick was rumbling about seperation from the country as was Quebec. It is amazing how a few thousand jobs and over three billion dollars will quite that type of talk.

We are giving up are rights for nothing it starts here and where will it end.

First you assume the registry is accurate which it is not. The agents make mistakes and then those mistakes are used against the registrant as evidence.

If I was a officer I would use it, an extra tool.

The point is they do not use it for those reasons.

I will paste the first comment.

Yes, I’m sure that the police chiefs would like to keep the long-gun registry.

They would also like to be able to wiretap your phone, your cell phone, and your email accounts. They would also like to be able to search your home, your place of work, your business, and your person without needing a search warrant. They would also like to be able to arrest you for any whim that comes to them without need of an arrest warrant.

Would all those people here who are advocating for the registry also advocate for all these other tools that the police could use to make their jobs easier?

As far as confiscation is concerned. It is already happening. Shortly after registration started, some guns were reclassifed and banned. Now they had lists of every owner and began confiscating them.

Everything they have told you inorder to sell the long-gun registry to the public has been a lie.

Time to end this lie, and support Senate Bill S-5 to get rid of the registry, once and for all.

Maybe a knife registry next as suggested already, it’s laughable and it was put forward already after the decapitating incident near Portage la Prairie.

How about the costs?

four thousand million dollars………..that is allot of money……and it will keep going up and you will not be safer……..just more scared……..like in the US……lock your doors……watch the media……..

The handguns used in most crimes are smuggled from the US and are not our own. Maybe the smugglers will register their weapons.

All I need to do is watch Dziekanski and his execution and the lies that followed by the RCMP all documented by the media. We trust these liars! The Crown knowing the RCMP officers lied in their statements perjured themselves on the stand will not lay charges. We want to give more power to these idiots. I shed no tears for them anymore as the few have tarnished the entire organization.

I am ashamed to be Canadian.

BTW, more people get murdered each year in licensed motor vehicles than by people with guns. Most recent gun crimes are with unregistered hand guns. In Canada, the hand gun registry began in 1892 with full registry of hand guns in 1934 and automatic firearms in 1952.

My biggest problem is that the government has assumed that gun owners are guilty or are criminals rather than property owners. A car is licensed so they can use the vehicle on public lands but a collector who hangs his property on the wall (without firing pins) is deemed as dangerous and must register his property. Perhaps more crimes would be stopped if all computers, cell phones and iPods had to be registered so the owner can be found.

Why do the RCMP not access the registry in Nunavut? Could it be because almost every household has a long gun of some sort? Could it also be because only a fool would walk along the shore during the fall without a gun, because you are a meal. In may younger days, field surveyors and field geologists carried hand guns in a holster when in the bust, since your two hands were free. No longer, but some company guns are left leaning against a rock. But I also know of people who had polar bears tearing into their tents or have been mauled by a barren land grizzly.

Of course the police access the data base, but the better question is whether it has helped. In Mayerthorpe the Mounties may have checked the data base and felt safe because they had all the registered guns, but criminals don’t usually worry about rules. If the police do not enter a dangerous area and assume that a knife or gun or baseball bat is present, those officers deserve better training.

Many prairie kids shoot rodents or for food. But the registration of a .22 single shot may cost more than the gun and the serial number may have worn off years before. So the politicians in the three cities have made these kids into criminals. I thought our justice system presumed that everyone is law abiding until proven otherwise but the registry assumes that everyone with a gun is a criminal, guilty until proven innocent. Also, the law appears to give law enforcement the right to look for unregistered guns, even on the property of the owner but Section 8 of the Canadian Charter says everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. Canada continues to give away our rights and freedoms, Harper just wants to give one back.

This is really all about more government control. Fact is, criminals will find guns on the black market as, it seems they always do. Right now they are trying to take away the rights of law abiding American citizens to bear arms. This is in violation of their constitutional rights.

I personally don’t like guns, but I know what the real issue here is. It is indeed just more control of the people. Government is becoming a monster and will ultimately become a tyrant if left to their devices unchallenged. If the gun registry succeeds, they will most certainly go for other things as well.

When did you become so socially neutered that you surrendered your ability to defend yourself to strangers? Sorry. That notion is just somewhat funny to me -not in the comical sense, but in that repugnant, morally bankrupt sense reserved for cowardice feebly masked in morality.

You really need to read “Excusing the men who ran away” on this site” He writes about the movie made about Ecole Polytechnique, and men who similarly felt no duty to respond. That’s right. They bravely walked out and left those women to die at the hands of Gamil Gharbi.

Here’s a teaser for you Bob….

+++Whenever I write about this issue, I get a lot of emails from guys scoffing, “Oh, right, Steyn. Like you’d be taking a bullet. You’d be pissing your little girlie panties,” etc. Well, maybe I would. But as the Toronto blogger Kathy Shaidle put it:

“When we say ‘we don’t know what we’d do under the same circumstances,’ we make cowardice the default position.”

I prefer the word passivity—a terrible, corrosive, enervating passivity. Even if I’m wetting my panties, it’s better to have the social norm of the Titanic and fail to live up to it than to have the social norm of the Polytechnique and sink with it. M Villeneuve dedicates his film not just to the 14 women who died that day but also to Sarto Blais, a young man at the Polytechnique who hanged himself eight months later. Consciously or not, the director understands what the heart of this story is: not the choice of one man, deformed and freakish, but the choice of all the others, the nice and normal ones. He shows us the men walking out twice—first, in real time, as it were; later, Rashômon-style, from the point of view of the women, in the final moments of their lives. —

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/14817480/detail.html
Armed guard stopped shooter in church

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting
armed students stopped shooter in school

orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-loc-pharmacy-robber-killed-040109,0,550904.story
This last week, news in Florida disclosed that an armed pharmacist stooped an armed robber in store

I could go on and on with fact to match your fiction and conjecture. Its easier to do than you could possibly believe, because for EVERY state that has opened up concealed carry laws and repealed duty to retreat statutes, there has been a massive downturn in crime.

Only if all 60,000 were working the streets.

How many of those 60K are working in administration, as pilots, undercover, Captains, etc.

I would bet that the average street cop is doing CPIC checks which automatically hit the gun registry computers, about 50 times per day (12 hour shift. = 4 per hour).