NEWS RELEASE

April 23, 2002                                                                                                   For Immediate Release

RCMP REPORT 132% ERROR RATE IN GUN REGISTRY APPLICATIONS

Justice Dept. document:Risk to public safety is mitigated through licencing – it is not a registration issue.”

 

Ottawa – Today, Garry Breitkreuz, Official Opposition Critic on Firearms and Property Rights, released a damning document the government has been trying to keep secret for the last nine months.  “We had other documents that the gun registry was experiencing a 90 per cent error rate, but now we have the details that show it’s far worse than we thought,” said Breitkreuz.  “In addition to the 90 per cent error rate in applications, the RCMP now tell us that there is also a 42% error rate in the description of the firearms.  The alarm bells should be sounding in the head of every police officer in the country; especially, since the Justice Minister, their chiefs and their union bosses have been promising them since 1994 that the information in the registry would be accurate,” explained Breitkreuz.  “Today, the problem with errors in the gun registry is even worse than it was nine months ago because the Justice Minister ordered a stop to firearms verification to try and meet the arbitrary registration deadline at the end of this year.”

 

“We filed the Access to Information Act request on July 18, 2001, and after three complaints to the Information Commissioner, the RCMP documents were finally delivered to my office on April 17, 2002.  The information in this report shows why the government was trying so hard to keep it from the public, the media and Parliament.  Amazingly, the Justice Department claimed they had no records on this subject.  Ya right,” said Breitkreuz.

 

The RCMP report, File: 01ATIP-322180, documents sixty different types of errors on firearms registration application forms and also provides the following information covering the period from December 1, 1998 to July 18, 2001:

 

“All this time and money is wasted because Statistics Canada homicide and robbery data proves beyond any doubt that registering a gun is a totally useless policy.  Even the Justice Department has admitted that gun registration has nothing to do with public safety,” revealed Breitkreuz.  Page 13 of a Justice Department document dated January 9, 2001 (ATIP File: A-2001-0156) under a section titled: “Risk Assessment,” it states: “Risk to public safety is mitigated through licencing – it is not a registration issue.”

 

“A gun registry is useless - one riddled with errors is even more useless.  Police already have the address of every licenced gun owner in Canada.  How is police or public safety improved by guessing what kind of firearms they own?” asked Breitkreuz.  “The police should be totally disgusted that the Liberals are wasting a hundred million dollars a year on this stupid gun registry when there are so many police and public safety priorities lacking cash.  The police should join our cause to have this useless gun registry scrapped.”

 

Click here for copy of RCMP Report on Errors:

http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/ErrorRate-FirearmsRegistrationSystem.pdf

 

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