PUBLICATION:              The Toronto Sun 

DATE:                          2004.01.25

EDITION:                      Final 

SECTION:                     Comment 

PAGE:                          C3 

BYLINE:                        LINDA WILLIAMSON 

COLUMN:                     Second Thoughts 

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MISFIRE! THE GUN REGISTRY ISN'T WORKING, AND CHIEFS LIKE FANTINO KNOW IT

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The death knell for the federal gun registry as we know it is sounding. Not because new PM Paul Martin has promised to "review" it. Not because even an urban female like Belinda Stronach is against it (though that can't hurt).

No, the real clue the registry is a bald-faced failure and is on its last legs, it seems to me, lies in the last-ditch efforts of its supporters to defend it.

Over the past two weeks, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has mounted a new campaign urging Martin not to scrap the registry. President Edgar MacLeod, who heads the regional police service in Cape Breton, calls the $1-billion long gun registry a valuable tool for police, and insists dismantling it would be "a step backwards."

Well, perhaps it would, but so what?

A step backwards from the astronomical waste of the registry could only be a good thing. A step backwards from the wrong-headed thinking that tough controls on farmers' rifles and shotguns somehow curb crime might actually be a step forward, if you follow me.

But back to MacLeod. In a lengthy piece published in another newspaper earlier this month, he argued it protects front-line cops - because it tells them when they enter a house, for example, if there's a registered gun inside.

"We just recently had a case where an individual made threats to staff at Children's Aid," MacLeod told The Canadian Press last week. "Because of the system, we knew he had firearms and were able to obtain a warrant to seize them."

All well and good. But what if the man had bought an illegal, unregistered, smuggled gun off the street? Cops would have had no idea. Such are the limits of the registry.

"In Winnipeg, the gun used in a gang-related murder investigation led police back to a local gun collector," MacLeod writes in his newspaper piece. The "collection" turned out to be 400 weapons, he says, "including five unregistered handguns and several rifles."

A Winnipeg Sun report on that murder case, from June 2002, said police seized 19 rifles, 20 handguns and a host of other weapons, including a crossbow, machete, sword, etc. The alleged murder weapon had gone missing two years earlier and was never reported by the owner.

Now, even the most ardent gun enthusiasts would agree the owner deserved to be charged. Anyone who doesn't notice and/or doesn't report a missing gun isn't a responsible gun owner. Ditto for anyone who keeps unregistered handguns (our registry for those, remember, goes back to the 1930s).

Still, he's not the one who committed murder. But MacLeod doesn't address our lack of tough sentences for the bad guys who steal guns and use them in crime.

He does, however, point to - what else - the declining firearm murder rate as a sign "we are moving in the right direction." Firearm "incidents," including domestic violence and suicide, are at a 30-year low, he points out.

Again, all well and good. But crediting the registry for this is a stretch. Truth is, homicides are down overall, due to everything from an aging population to better medical care (meaning fewer crime victims die).

True, only 26% of all homicides in 2002 were committed with guns, according to Statistics Canada. But what registry proponents like MacLeod fail to note is that two-thirds of those were committed with handguns - which are supposed to be registered. Also, gang-related murders are rarely committed with long guns.

More importantly, despite the overall figures, gun crime is up sharply in big cities like Toronto - which is why Police Chief Julian Fantino no longer supports the gun registry, regardless of the CACP's stance. He sees it as a wasteful distraction from the resources needed to get smuggled and stolen guns off the streets. As he's said repeatedly over the past year, the bad guys who need to be locked away and severely punished are the ones using the guns in crime, not legitimate gun owners.

Hey, in a perfect world, MacLeod's vision of a benign, preventive gun registry that keeps firearms out of the hands of crazy people and criminals might work. But Fantino's grim experience exposes all that wishful thinking. He has rightly targeted our lax justice system, which lets gun criminals off too easily, as the real problem - something with which most Canadians, regardless of where they stand on "gun control" can surely agree.

MacLeod and his organization mean well, but they need to wake up and smell the boondoggle. When even they can't make a convincing case for the gun registry, it's doomed.