PUBLICATION:              National Post

DATE:                         2004.01.07

EDITION:                    National

SECTION:                  Comment

PAGE:                         A14

BYLINE:                     Claire Hoy

SOURCE:                   National Post

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Gangsters (duh) don't register guns

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Sometime this year, Canada's taxpayers will have paid the princely sum of $1-billion for something that was originally supposed to cost $2-million -- our national gun registry -- arguably the poorest return on an investment in our long history of government boondoggles.

In December, 2002, when the registry was only two-thirds of the way to its current total, Auditor-General Sheila Fraser described it as the worst cost overrun her office had ever seen.

Now that, dear hearts, is saying something.

As Canadian Alliance firearms critic Garry Breitkreuz of Saskatchewan revealed in November, the Liberals awarded a $300-million contract to an outside computer firm to clean up the registry's database -- the same database they'd already wasted $227-million on since 1995.

How many police officers could have been hired with that money? How much real crime could have been reduced as a result?

If this extraordinary spending on a gun registry was having a positive impact on crime, then even the most fiscally conservative among us might agree that it is money, if not well spent, at least not completely wasted.

But alas, that is not the case.

Look at the recent spate of gun deaths in Toronto, and the subsequent plea by Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino, for an inquiry into the justice system -- which finds thugs with previous gun-related crimes quickly back out onto the streets to shoot again -- to appreciate what a tragic waste of money it is.

Toronto police estimate that about half, or 28, of Toronto's 2003 homicides are linked to gangs, which usually means drugs. Gang members -- duh -- don't register their guns.

Canada has had a handgun registry for decades, but it -- like the billion-dollar-boondoggle mandating the registration of long guns -- is essentially useless. Those intent upon using their guns for criminal purposes don't register their guns. Those who kill in a fit of passion, still kill, whether their guns are registered or not.

And despite the spending on this ill-conceived registry, the number of homicides in Toronto -- still extremely low, as they are in all Canadian cities, by world standards -- has remained steady during the past two decades.

That billion dollars has had no real impact upon crime, but it has had a considerable impact upon law-abiding gun owners and ordinary taxpayers.

What has changed during the life of our gun registry is the rate of homicide clearance, i.e. the number of homicides resulting in arrests. In Toronto, for example, the arrest rate in homicides has plummeted from 82.8% in 1995 to 52.3% in 2003.

That's because so many of the shootings are gang-related, and gang members are not about to co-operate with the police, any more than they are about to register their weapons.

It has become almost automatic in reporting on fatal shootings to say how many people witnessed the slayings and how few of them -- usually none -- are willing to tell the police what they saw.

This is not just a Toronto reality. In the weekend shooting death in Vancouver of Rachel Davis, daughter of Gemini-winning Canadian actress Janet Wright --after Davis had come to the aid of a man being kicked by gang members -- police have discovered there were many witnesses at the Gastown area nightclub but, so far, none are providing much detail in what appears to be a gang-related dispute.

In Calgary, Al Koenig, president of the Calgary Police Association, told the National Post this past weekend that, "... our position on this [the gun registry] is very firm. We do not support it and we will be fighting against it. The police and the public are still at risk ... Despite the money spent, it should be scrapped."

This writer does not own a gun, and never has. The last time I fired one was as a high school cadet in the 1950s -- when cadet training was mandatory -- and I have no interest in repeating that experience.

But millions of law-abiding Canadians do own guns. They hunt and target shoot, and generally go about their business doing no harm to anyone. Even before the current registry, they were subjected to stringent rules -- and I think, valid ones -- in order to qualify for gun ownership.

The system actually worked rather well before the Liberals decided to "fix" it. Their cure for a problem which didn't exist has created a disease, i.e. a fiscal nightmare, while wasting precious resources which could have been used to fight the bad guys instead of harassing the good guys.

Even by Liberal standards -- and to use an appropriate analogy -- the gun registry is a dog that won't hunt.