Junius explains that gun-registry math
By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 0 Comments
The Globe and Mail has finally explained where a Toronto Chief of Police and dozens of gullible journalists and politicians got the idea that the national firearms registry costs $4 million a year. I’ve watched this figure get repeated countless times over the past month or so, and every single time I kept returning with furrowed brow to the Treasury Board estimates, which put the combined operating and transfers cost of firearms registration at $22 million, just to the RCMP, for 2010-11. (The overall cost for registries and licensing infrastructure comes to $78 million.)
That’s not counting the costs to other federal agencies—most especially the cost to Corrections Canada, estimated loosely at $10 million for fiscal ’08-’09. Certainly the commentators who were soiling themselves over the PBO’s estimates for penological costs of Conservative law-and-order measures wouldn’t want to just ignore the money spent on keeping gun-registry offenders locked up longer, would they? Including the cost in registrant time and effort would drive the figure higher still; surely the Globe is bound to be giving the program a break in only revising the cost upward by a factor of 16½.
If the Globe is right, it seems only a bit of sloppily written verbiage in the new report on the registry—interpreted by dissimulators with badges, and faithfully broadcast by writers with poor financial instincts—could possibly have led anyone to believe the gun registry is a bargain. (The Firearms Centre in Miramichi has 240 federal employees, guys! $4 million wouldn’t cover 12 weeks of payroll expenses, right?) And maybe I’m just some Western flake, but in retrospect it does seem as though the propagation of $4 million figure was possible only because the RCMP played undisguised politics with the report, dawdling over a “translation” (a tactic that the Conservatives somehow ended up taking most of the blame for) and making sure to pass it around to friendly, gullible media outlets in a timely way before the vote on C-391. All of which, now, can serve only the electoral interests of the Conservatives themselves—keeping alive the hated totem and allowing them to exploit the real financial numbers in their search for a Commons majority.
[UPDATE, 10:22 am: Or not. The Citizen's board smacks down the Globe this morning, and the Globe seems to have mis-identified the source of the figure within the report—the actual source being a reference to another report to the RCMP by a government IT consultancy, Pleiad Canada. So could we have that document, or is it already too late to bother?]
-
A phony gun battle
By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 7:35 AM - 0 Comments
Killing the long-gun registry won’t be the folly critics suggest. But it won’t be the liberation gun owners may be hoping for either.
JONATHAN HAYWARD/CP
If he had his way, John Hipwell would spend more time selling guns, and less filling out paperwork. His store in Virden, Man., Wolverine Supplies, sells everything from deer rifles to semi-automatic handguns—a trade that requires him to wade through import permits, sales records and registration certificates on a daily basis. So when Candice Hoeppner, the Conservative MP from a neighbouring constituency, drafted a private member’s bill that would relieve one small part of his burden, Hipwell cheered. Canada’s long-gun registry has been “a waste of time and money,” he says, and Hoeppner’s proposal to shut it down would make life easier for merchants like him. As for concerns about public safety, Hipwell dismisses them with a wave. “The bottom line is that anyone wishing to acquire a firearm is going to have to get a possession and acquisition licence,” he says. “He’s going to get checked.”
It is the least publicized aspect of legislation that has resurrected a stubbornly undead issue, and one worth considering as the bill faces a crucial vote in the Commons next week. Yes, Bill C-391 would be a death sentence for laws requiring gun owners to register every single one of their hunting rifles and shotguns. But if they pass into law, Hoeppner’s amendments will leave the other, arguably more onerous, component of the Canadian Firearms Program intact—namely, the licensing regime through which the government assembles personal information on gun owners themselves.
-
A wasteful, ineffective, important tool to promote public safety
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 9:11 AM - 0 Comments
The RCMP’s evaluation of the Canadian Firearms Program—which you didn’t need to see because the Public Safety Minister’s office had already told you what you needed to know—is officially released today. Canadian Press had an early look and the CBC posted a leaked copy. The following from the report’s findings.
Firearms registration is a critical component of the entire firearms program. The program, as a whole, is an important tool for law enforcement. It also serves to increase the accountability of firearms owners for their firearms, by linking registered firearms to licensees. An acceptable level of compliance toward long gun registration is essential for improving the Registry’s utility as a tool to promote public safety … Canadians are receiving value for their tax dollars from the CFP. Overall, the Canadian Firearms Program is cost-effective in reducing firearms-related crime and promoting public safety through universal licensing of firearms owners and registration of firearms in Canada.
Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, sponsor of Bill C-391, was quick with a response, proclaiming in an release last evening that “the RCMP report supports what I’ve been saying all along – that the long-gun registry is wasteful and ineffective.”
-
Recalling how police use the gun registry, and how very, very often
By John Geddes - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 6:43 PM - 164 Comments
Last spring, just after Prime Minister Stephen Harper revived scrapping the gun registry as a Conservative priority, I tried to find out how useful the registry is to police.
What I found out then seems relevant right now given this evening’s vote in the House to get rid of the federal system for keeping track of who owns rifles and shotguns.
