NEWS RELEASE

March 9, 2004                                                                                                  For Immediate Release

WHAT DID CANADIANS GET FOR THEIR BILLION-DOLLAR GUN REGISTRY?

“Liberals still can’t tell us the number of crimes committed with handguns registered to the accused.”

Ottawa – Today, Garry Breitkreuz, Deputy House Leader and Official Opposition Justice Critic for Gun Control, released a startling admission from Statistics Canada.  Despite 70 years of registering handguns and despite spending a billion dollars on a new gun registry, Statistics Canada finally admitted that it can’t provide an answer to Breitkreuz’s simple questions: What are the total number of crimes committed by persons with a registered handgun, and the number of times the handgun was registered to the accused?  “This is outrageous.  How is Parliament ever going to determine if gun registration is worth two billion dollars if the Liberals aren’t even collecting the data to prove whether or not it works?” asked Breitkreuz.

On January 9th, Breitkreuz asked the Library of Parliament for answers to his questions.  Almost immediately Statistics Canada admitted that they couldn’t provide any statistics with respect to ‘all crimes’.  On February 23rd, they also admitted that they were unable to tell if the handguns used in homicides were registered to the accused murderer,” reported Breitkreuz. 

After reviewing the tables provided by Statistics Canada, Breitkreuz asked StatsCan to explain why Table #3 didn’t identify how many of the handguns listed under the “Accused” column were registered to the accused?  On February 23rd, Statistics Canada officials finally admitted to the Library of Parliament researcher:"Owner" is defined as the legal owner of the firearm - the person to whom the firearm is registered or the person to whom the firearm would be registered, if it were registered.  This means that StatsCan was forced to assume who is the owner because they don't know the legal status of the gun. They didn't even ask the police for this information. Why not?” asked Breitkreuz.  “The Liberal government’s gun registry seeks to lay a piece of paper beside every gun in the country.  Could it be that the Liberals don’t collect statistics on the number of crimes committed with registered hand guns because it would prove the folly of this two billion dollar paper-pushing exercise?”

“For ten years, the Liberals have been saying that their billion-dollar gun registry would keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.  But now we learn that the Liberal’s statistics wizards can’t even tell if homicide handguns ‘owned’ by the accused were registered or not,” exclaimed Breitkreuz.  Let’s scrap the gun registry before they waste another billion on this boondoggle!”

On February 17, 2004, officials with Statistics Canada provided three tables showing:

(1)    Victims of Firearms-related Homicides by Type of Firearms, Canada, 1991-2002

(2)    Victims of Homicide Committed by a Handgun, by Registration Status of Handgun, 1997-2002

(3)   Victims of Homicide Committed by a Handgun, by Ownership of Handgun, 1997-2002

NOTE: Click here to view tables:

http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/Firearms(LibraryofParliament)2004-03-04.xls

 

-30-