FIREARMS FACTS UPDATE
FIREARMS
COMMISSIONER BILL BAKER ADMITS: 176,000 PERSONS
PROHIBITED FROM OWNING GUNS "NO LONGER EFFECTIVELY COVERED BY FIREARMS
ACT."
GARRY
BREITKREUZ, MP: "YES BUT THAT'S WHY I ASKED THE MINISTER, WHERE'S THE LOGIC?”
EXCERPT FROM MINUTES OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON
JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS - NOVEMBER 24, 2004
QUESTION
BY GARRY BREITKREUZ, MP: Two questions as quickly as I can. The RCMP tell us there are
approximately 176,000 criminals who have been prohibited from owning firearms by
the courts and there's another 37,000 dangerous persons who have restraining
orders against them. Why are these persons, who have been proven to be
dangerous, not required to report their change of address to police or even open
up their homes to firearms inspection, but completely innocent licensed gun
owners are required to? There's just no logic to that, Madam Minister.
I'm wondering if you could answer that. The second question I have, again,
documents have been provided to my office by the government indicating that less
than half the guns in Canada are registered. More than 300,000 owners who
previously registered handguns without a firearms licence, there's more than
400,000 firearms licensed owners who haven't registered a gun, more than 300,000
registered handgun owners who still have to re-register their handguns. There's
five million guns that still have to be verified and this is according to the
Police Association's demands of 1999. I could go on, Madam Minister, but there's
a huge void there. You've given the impression that this thing is up and
running, it's not.
RESPONSE
BY THE HON. ANNE McLELLAN: It is indeed up and running. [BUT NOT FULLY
IMPLEMENTED! – See link below] Systems
I suppose can always be improved and that is our goal day after day.
Mr. Baker, do you want to answer some of those specific questions?
RESPONSE
BY FIREARMS COMMISSIONER BILL BAKER: Yes, Minister. On
the change of address, if someone is prohibited from having a firearm in the
country they are no longer effectively covered by the Firearms Act. The
Firearms Act only deals with people who own, possess and use firearms.
GARRY BREITKREUZ: Yes but that's why I asked the
Minister, where's the logic?
BILL
BAKER:
In terms of firearms officers, they would have no authority to collect
information from somebody who is not a client of the program.
There's been a longstanding argument as to how many firearms there are in
the country. There are different estimates and I accept that. When we report on
compliance we report, as you know, on a study that was conducted about three
years ago by the government that estimated the number of firearms in the country
to be about 7.9 million.
GARRY
BREITKREUZ:
Yes, but that was a telephone survey. If you go to the import and export
numbers it's over 16.5 million.
BILL
BAKER:
We've never been able to ascertain a 16 million figure. We have just around 7
million firearms in the system right now. There are some licence holders who do
not have firearms registered to their name, but there's nothing requiring a
licence holder to have a firearm registered their name. A couple could have a
licence, but the firearms are all registered to the husband in that particular
relationship, or they applied for a licence and they have disposed of the
firearm, or whatever. Through the renewals that we are just starting to get into
this year, we'll get a better handle on the exact number of outstanding cases.
Finally on the guns to be verified, you're absolutely right. When all of the
firearms were initially registered not all the firearms were verified at that
point in time. However, all of them are being verified on transfer. That is the
way in which we will increasingly ensure the accuracy of the database is as high
as it can possibly be.
------------------------------------
LIBERAL
RESPONSE TO Q-18 - GUN REGISTRY WILL NOT BE
FULLY
IMPLEMENTED UNTIL DECEMBER 31, 2007
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/Article472.htm
LIBERAL
RESPONSE TO Q-17 - PRIVATIZATION OF GUN REGISTRY UNDER REVIEW