Of course it does. People drive more responsibly knowing that their vehicle can be easily identified by a license plate. Registration also means your vehicle has to pass a safety, which will obviously ensure there are fewer accidents.

Forget the analogy: registering your long gun does little, if anything, in preventing gun crimes. It may aid in the resolution of a crime after it has been committed (although it’s not obvious to me how this can be very commonplace), but it won’t make any real difference in crime prevention.

As long as a gun owner must be licensed in order to own a gun, said owner is already in one or more government and/or police databases. Providing additional information on how many of what kind of guns this person owns really doesn’t seem to add a whole lot. As soon as a person is flagged as being a gun owner, then any sensible police officer will take all necessary precautions when dealing with the owner, regardless of the owner’s gun count (which may or may not be accurate).

FTR, I’m an urban dweller who’s never seen a gun (long or hand) except a) belonging to a police officer, and b) being used by one drug dealer to eliminate another drug dealer when I happened to be minding my own business driving home from work. Since IMO the long gun registry provides little, if any, benefit for the public and little, if any, hardship on the gun owner, I have no real interest in its life or death. But I do find it annoying that people like to market it “as a remedy for urban gun crime and one-off atrocities like the École Polytechnique massacre” as Chris Selley mentions in his critique at http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/27/chris-selleys-full-pundit-the-national-shark-fin-registry-%E2%80%94-coming-soon/.

BTW, another “interesting” experience I’ve had with guns is hearing the gun shots of a gangster assassin killing another gangster 1/2 block from where I live during a time in the evening when my kids could have been out and about. Needless to say the registry was totally irrelevant to that incident as well.

In short, it’s my opinion that the long gun registry was an attempt by the government of the day to appear to be doing something about gun crime, while actually doing very, very little. It was a lazy approach to gun crime that did nothing to make urban dwellers like myself any safer, but provided cover for the government. And, sadly, the government of the day couldn’t even do this competently, and ended up spending $2 billion to set it up.

Actually many of them store the guns at the shooting range.  I am sure they are used to this rule as it has been in place for decades.

You have to notify the police whenever your car leaves your property do you?

Apparently the police do check the long gun registry before going to a domestic call to see if anyone in the residence has a gun registered…I do not know if they count on that information however, I am sure they approach all homes as though the person does have a lethal weapon (just in case).

I expect so, yes.  However, I would wager that when they see there’s a gun in the place, they place a higher priority on that case than on the same case without a registered gun.

In a world with limited police resources.. that’s important.

Apparently the police do check the long gun registry before going to a domestic call to see if anyone in the residence has a gun registered…I do not know if they count on that information however, I am sure they approach all homes as though the person does have a lethal weapon (just in case).

Really? From 20 feet away? Hell of a throw with that axe.
“as easily” has a specific meaning.

No, the officer knocked on the door.  The man with the axe came out swinging. The officer backed down the stairs, tripped, hit his head on the cement and went unconcious..his partner shot the man with the axe who was going to kill the dead officer.

Well listen that guy with the axe just about did in the police officer as easily as if he had been carrying a gun….they had to shoot him anyway.

“I’m surprised the Calgary Police haven’t retrieved any at all”

Seriously?!  I already told you the registry hasn’t been used to solve any crimes.  If it were, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police would be shouting the numbers and figures until they were blue in the face.

Honestly, what do you think the registry is?  Law abiding people don’t commit crimes. 

2% of firearms deaths are police shootings.

3% are accidental.  

The rest are legitimate homicides.

The majority of homicides involve spouses shooting each other and gang violence.

For youth intervention programs and support programs for battered spouses, that $1 Billion would have been mighty useful.

But it doesn’t matter to the majority of commentators here that the money was and is foolishly spent and that registry doesn’t do anything productive.  It is all about fighting a culture war.

You know, I did THINK that my DNA example was a hyperbolic exaggeration. An extreme rhetorical device used to illustrate my point (well, not MY point per se, but the point of view from which the Tories view this issue). However, elsewhere in the thread Thwim is asking me RIGHT NOW what exactly I find so heinous about a national DNA database? To quote Thwim “Hell, I wonder why we don’t get DNA and fingerprint samples from everybody at birth already.”

So, apparently, my scary sci fi movie, totally “out of scale” hyperbolic example of the extreme, crazy, distopian possibilities that this kind of database might one day lead to is being met with calls of “Hey, that’s a pretty good idea!”

Sorry, don’t know about the case. Do you have a summation?I’m guessing from the gist of your post that the DA falsified evidence somehow?

This question of yours makes me think of those boys who played Lacrosse at Duke University and got accused by a very ambitious DA of raping an exotic dancer.  What would he have done if he would have had samples of their DNA and finger prints on file?  We would all like to believe that the police and justice system are on the side of justice but it isn’t necessarily so.

If even they don’t remember where it is, I somehow doubt they’d be getting arrested for it because the odds of anybody else finding out about it are pretty small as well, yes?

I mean, I can understand the concern, but it seems like we’re really reaching for theoretical anecdotes of where things might go wrong without considering the odds of it actually happening.

Red herring. We should also abolish all tax law because there is a hypothetical person who might not understand it.

Improper storage of a firearm is a crime whether there’s a registry or not. I don’t follow your argument. If anything, the requirement to register might prompt them to remember where those guns are, and do something to rectify the improper storage so their grandkids don’t shoot themselves playing with it.

Having to notify the police whenever you leave your property with a firearm (to go to another field to hunt or shoot vermin) is pretty difficult and time consuming.

That was just one of the many regulations bound up with the firearms registry.   Aside from regulations, it is also about liability.

Sure, everyone should be responsible anyway, but I don’t see you volunteering to increase the regulations on things you do to increase your own liability.

Oh wait, you think there should be a DNA and fingerprint registry.  Nevermind.

So then you agree that gun registry should be a provincial responsibility, and the feds are right to shut down the LGR! Wow!

As the most uncivil commenter here, I find it hilarious that you talk about civilization as if you’ve ever seen it. Civilized people have lived with guns and without gun registries for a long time. Civilized people are also capable of debate without resorting to childish name calling. A civilized person wouldn’t disregard the concerns of an entire segment of a country, either. I think it’s pretty clear who’s unaware of civilization (hint: it doesn’t mean “Toronto”).

If most people don’t think about guns in their daily lives, why are you so terrified by the idea that some people who do use guns on a regular basis might not register them?

You’re a perfect example of the tyranny of the majority OE. You’d note that “most people” in this country speak English, that doesn’t mean we go around making the French register themselves.

But I guess I’m just yelling at the wall here. I know you’re the most ideologically-driven person in  Canada, and you have no problem contradicting yourself regularly. So, please do continue.

Here’s your gun-culture

Enjoy

Not so tough without your gun eh?  

‘Mouse’ is the operative word here. LOL

Ya, I’m actually not a gun owner. And I won’t waste my time viewing any propaganda from someone like you who clearly has no idea what they’re talking about.

I wouldn’t click a link supplied by you with a ten-foot-mouse.

@Rick_Omen:disqus 

Well I AM a gun owner, not just someone shooting off his mouth on a chatsite.  Bye.

I know you’re trying to recover Rick, but don’t expect me to help you.

I own guns, you do not….so the only thing you can shoot off is your mouth.

This is a blogsite, with comments.

The truth hurts.

Everyone in Canada can download it for free

http://afewtastefulsnaps.net/?p=1365

Hard to sue us all.

Obviously you didn’t read the article

Not even a swing, just a miss.

So you insist that it was going to happen, and was only stopped by enacting a widely-resisted regulatory policy a couple Parliaments ago? ‘Kay.

I will come back with a more reasoned response at some point, but my initial reaction was pretty similar to the reaction I think I’d have to someone saying to me “You obviously think that the idea of the government rounding up all of the nation’s kittens to systematically torture and kill them is some heinous notion, but can you tell me any objective reason why?”

First, I have to stop my head from spinning.  Second, I have to tell everyone who rolled their eyes and said that I was using an extreme, “never going to happen in a million years” example to make my point that (and I’m actually shocked at this myself) apparently my crazy hyperbolic example isn’t so crazy to some people after all.

Then I’ll come back with a more fulsome explanation of why I think that a mandatory national database of the genetic code of every person in the nation is not a good idea.

I’ll still come back with a more reasoned response, but my immediate response to the above is:

1). Oh, good, we ditched the notion of eugenics did we? Excellent. I guess I just missed that moment where the concept of eugenics was erased from human memory, and the potential of it ever being implemented in the future was irrevocably blocked. Did we also eliminate racism and cure cancer while I wasn’t looking? (btw, we somehow missed deleting the Wikipedia entry on eugenics!!!). I also forgot about the well established fact that only corporations can abuse information for evil, and governments are only capable of using information for good. I’m sure the people of China and Iran will be relieved to know that their national DNA databases will only be accessed by their governments, and not some heartless corporate power. That, and the fact that the only nefarious thing that one could ever do with a comprehensive database of an entire nation’s DNA is discriminate against some people. It’s comforting to know that developments in biological weaponry have been halted, and will never advance again.

2) Yes, the government is excellent at keeping data secure. Wikileaks never happened. No system has ever been hacked. And there’s no possible, conceivable future reason why any bad actors would ever want to hack in to a database containing nothing more exciting than the genetic code of every person in the nation. There’ll never be any reason for the bad guys to want that data (especially since we’ve wiped the notion of eugenics, and possibly racism, from the collective memory of all of humanity, and no one is making any advances in genetic research, bioweaponry, or anything that could allow someone to do something bad with a vast treasure trove of genetic information collected through force of law from every single person in the country).

3). OK. I don’t really care much about this one.

As I said, I’ll try for a less emotional response once I get over the shock that I’m actually having this discussion with someone, but right now I think that my default position is that the government can have my DNA when they cut a sample of it from my cold dead body.

OK.

How about simply the fact that I draw the line of the things the government can take from me through force of law at my DNA.