Canada

Captain Ed says maybe so, at least in Canada, and he has a convincing argument.  The Liberal government, recently ousted, had imposed a national registry of firearms upon the country.  The RCMP (Canada's national law enforcement body) were tasked with creating and maintaining that registry, but they were not given sufficient funding for the task.  Instead, other law enforcement operations had to be shortchanged in order to operate the registry.  This had the obvious consequence of ensuring that the registry itself was very poorly run, and the less obvious consequence of diverting the RCMP from other enforcement activities -- such as investigating political corruption.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Canadian government fell in large part due to long-standing internal corruption, particularly the AdScam scandal.  It's useful to remember that everything has unintended consequences, even when those consequences are only visible as opportunity costs.  When you keep law enforcement busy doing paperwork to keep track of honest citizens who own guns, they aren't doing the legwork necessary to track down criminals who abuse them.

For example, there are a lot of people at the BATFE whose time would be better spent issuing parking tickets. 

There were Canadian elections recently.  The party that has ruled for years lost to a Conservative coalition, and some representatives are talking about closing the Canadian firearms registry. 

Money quotes:

The Conservatives have called the registry a waste of taxpayers money that targets duck hunters rather than criminals.  There are no cost estimates on campaign promises such as defending victims' rights and improving gun safety.

The sooner, the better, I say.

I received an email recently from a Canadian (Ontario, since it's likely to matter) with a problem: he's been charged with firearms offenses relating to possession of an unregistered firearm and careless storage of same (the firearms were stolen from him in a breakin).  He's looking to make a political issue of it and probably wouldn't mind some legal help too.  Does anyone have good legal or political contacts in Canada?  I'll pass along good names; email me at matthew@triggerfinger.org or leave a comment. 

Obviously I can't vouch for the truth of the guy's story, but it's sympathetic when taken at face value.

Y'know, the Prime Minister of Canadian has every right to raise the issue with a US official, just like he can raise any other issue he wants.  But if it's not too much trouble, I'd like to request at least one news camera be positioned to record his departure from an unusual angle: the rear.

I want to see Condi's bootmarks on his ass.

It seems that the Canadian government is considering firearms lawsuits against US manufacturers of firearms.  You would think that their expensive boondoggle of a registration system would have taught them the proper lessons.  It seems not.  Thanks to David Hardy at Of Arms and the Law for finding the story; he points out that it might be a good time for US manufacturers to extricate themselves from any Canadian connections.  

The roots of Canada's gun problems are in the United States, and an NDP government would lobby the Americans for better gun control south of the border to improve things in this country, Jack Layton said Thursday.

"What we are focusing on is the increasing evidence that the biggest problem is illegal guns coming in from the U.S.," Layton told reporters. "We're proposing going across the border to the U.S. and actively engaging in lobbying to have gun-control laws in the U.S. strengthened."

Layton said his party does not support the scrapping of the billion-dollar federal gun registry, implemented under the Liberal government.

So, what we have here is a case where Canadians somehow feel justified in trying to influence American laws? Somehow, I just don't think Americans will be interested in the Canadian opinion on the matter. And given how Canada has reacted to the firearm registry, I can't imagine that the Canadians are going to feel much support for this new idea either.

Fans of science fiction, anime, comics and medieval weaponry were wondering yesterday why one of the longest-running and most popular booths at the Canadian Comic Book Expo had disappeared.

"I was kind of looking forward to seeing those guys again," said Gary Loyst, who recalled a display from last year's Expo that featured tables stacked with swords, daggers, maces and war hammers. "I'd never seen weapons like that sold before."

That booth, run by American online weapons company SwordStaff.com, was in Toronto for a fifth year, but the display was shut down by Toronto Police just hours after opening Friday night. Its six operators ? including two Torontonians hired as extra help ? were arrested on multiple counts of possessing and selling prohibited weapons.

Staff Sergeant Richard Murdoch said police responded to a tip from an attendee and found several prohibited weapons for sale, such as throwing stars, one-handed crossbows, belt-buckle knives, push daggers and an easily concealed penknife.

Expo organizer Aman Gupta said yesterday the weapons were inspected and cleared by Canadian customs agents when they were brought in from the United States last week. "I never expected this," Petkovski said after his appearance yesterday. "They weren't even sharp. It was fans buying swords from their favourite movies and then someone complained ..."

Ooooh! Swords, double-edged knives, nunchakus, and a concealable penknife! Those are so very very very dangerous!

More than a million guns remain unregistered in Canada, 18 months after a registration deadline, a document released by the Canada Firearms Centre confirms. The total number of valid firearm licence holders who still haven't registered a gun stands at a whopping 406,834.

The document, released yesterday, shows 620,000 firearms remain to be re-registered and there are more than 78,000 applications to register or re-register caught in processing or a backlog of the Firearms Information System.

Before anyone should seriously consider supporting a gun registration plan, they should consider what to do when people don't register by the hundreds of thousands. Remember, not registering a gun that you own, in Canada, is a crime. We're talking a massive civil-disobedience effort here. And it's not like you can just arrest the people who show up to protest.

Do you send police out to search the homes of people with valid licenses but without a registration? What do you do when the people catch on -- and shoot back? Because, even in Canada, if you try door-to-door confiscation you are likely to provoke people enough to do that.

Pushing gun confiscation schemes in the US amounts to pushing for civil war. You might be able to convince 51 Senators, 218 Representatives, and 5 Justices, but the people you really have to convince are the people with the guns. And that's just not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

If you can't convince them, and you won't leave them alone, you'll have to kill them. That's what gun prohibition boils down to: killing people who are overwhelmingly law-abiding, honest citizens because they disagree with your social policy.

That's why America was founded a Republic; so that the rights of minorities would be protected from abuse. Because that protection is necessary to peaceful cohabitation.

No one should doubt the consequences of a confiscation policy. Just look at Canada's response to a registration policy: 400,000 people engaging in civil disobedience.

Here in Canada, members of the Canadian Unregistered Firearms Owners Association (CUFOA) have been publicly demonstrating against the Firearms Act for over eighteen months. Various CUFOA members were arrested from time to time, but the government always dropped the charges. They apparently had no stomach for seeing the Firearms Act challenged in court.

Bruce Montague, a CUFOA member and one of the more vocal opponents of the Firearms Act, was arrested while attending a Dryden, Ontario, gun show with his daughter.

That he was arrested is not overly surprising. The Area Firearms Officer knows all about Bruce and does not like him or his flaunting the law so flagrantly.

What is surprising is the way this case has been handled. After all, Bruce had been openly asking the government to charge him for ages. He would have gladly taken Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officers on a tour of his home and showed them where the unregistered firearms were.

Instead they dragged Bruce away to jail, left his 12-year old daughter Katie alone in the Dryden gun show. Donna Montague, Bruce's wife, only found out about the arrest because a friendly vendor called Donna to let her know what had happened, and that Katie was with him. The OPP apparently couldn't be bothered to let anyone know they had abandoned the 12-year old child after arresting her father.

By way of The Smallest Minority comes this horrifying tale of police abuse for a paper crime: failing to register a firearm. Go read the whole thing. There's a legal defense fund for the case, and they could sure use some donations; lawyers are expensive.

I only wish I was joking.  Well, OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit.  Canada has actually outlawed collapsing batons -- ie, easily-carried metal sticks -- for those who are "attending a public meeting", along with a permanent ban on metal batons that "are spring-loaded and have a flexible shaft".  Here's the relevant law:

Section 89 of the Criminal Code states:

(1) Every person commits an offence who, without lawful excuse, carries a weapon, a prohibited device or any ammunition or prohibited ammunition while the person is attending or is on the way to attend a public meeting.

But if you ask the police, without looking it up yourself and already knowing the right answer, they will insist that they are all outlawed, and that the only "lawful excuse" for carrying one is to be a police officer or similarly privileged government official. 

My advice to the original poster: Don't rely on self-defense as a justification for carrying your baton.  You might be able to rely on it as a justification for using it, but not for having it ready to use.  And if you do have it ready to use, the courts may construe that as premeditation, rendering the self-defense justification moot.  That's what they've been doing in the UK, anyway.

The moment the State assumes the power to dictate a safe-storage method for your firearms, they have the power to demand you store your firearms in a state facility outside your home.  And they will make that demand eventually.  Remember, it's not just about sporting purposes, hunting, or collectors.  It's about owning the proper tools for self-defense, in a manner that makes them readily accessible for such use.

Hat tip to No Quarters.

A Conservative government would scrap the federal gun registry and divert the savings to hire 200 more Mounties and pay for a sex-offender registry. Leader Stephen Harper said Tuesday nixing the registry would save between $25 million and $100 million a year in maintenance costs.

Remember when the gun registry would only cost $2 million? Good luck, guys -- maybe you can bring Canada back from the brink.

The Martin government is letting slip tantalizing hints that it might do something about Canada's $1-billion gun registry. We are told that this has nothing to do with the election expected on June 28. Still, we can't help but note that if there were a political dimension to this, we would be seeing just what we are seeing now: acknowledgement of a problem but no specifics of a solution. Any precise step might cost votes.

Something certainly has to be done about the registry. The government's own estimates show that the cost of this thing, first estimated at $2 million, will reach $1 billion by next year and could climb past $2 billion within the next few years. To date, about 7 million firearms have been registered, leaving an estimated 1 million unaccounted for.

Ignoring the election-year issue (campaign promises are rarely fulfilled), it's obvious to me that Canada has wasted a lot of time and money trying create a list of the people in their country using their guns properly. It seems to me that it would be much more productive to try to come up with a list of people using their guns improperly. However, this sort of promise could, if believed, sway a lot of people.

The federal firearms office said yesterday it had "no knowledge and no records" of a mystery $150,000 "firearms" communications contract that is the subject of fraud charges against sponsorship program head Chuck Guité and Montreal ad executive Jean Brault.

It is the second suspicious sponsorship contract to be tied to the controversial gun control program. Another $330,000 advertising contract ? previously criticized by the federal auditor-general ? is also the subject of fraud charges laid yesterday.

The RCMP, in announcing six counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud against Guité and Brault, allege the two men "defrauded the federal government for $150,000 within the ambit of a contract with respect to the surveillance of interest groups and with respect to the registration of firearms."

Gee, Canada's firearm registration program is broken. No surprise there. But what's this about surveillance of interest groups?!

Prime Minister Jean Chrýtien is expected to lay down the law to his caucus Wednesday, warning that next week's controversial vote requesting more money for the embattled gun registry will be a vote of confidence. His edict is part of a vigorous lobbying effort to ensure the request for another $59-million in funding is approved and the gun registry remains intact. His warning means that any government MP voting against the estimates request could face disciplinary action, including being removed from caucus.

Gee, there's such widespread support for this gun control scheme..

Suspending or dismantling Canada's controversial gun registry would be irresponsible, despite massive cost overruns, the head of the Canadian Police Association said on Tuesday. "It would be irresponsible to suspend or abandon any element of this program, now that it is starting to deliver the intended results," the association's executive officer, David Griffin, told a news conference in Ottawa. The association represents 28,000 rank-and-file police officers across Canada.

I'm sure anyone who has been following this issue is as puzzled as I am concerning the "results" mentioned. I have yet to hear a single report describing the Canadian registry as anything less than a complete disaster.

Political activist David Barbarash expects to have computers and other property that was seized from him by police last year returned now that legal proceedings have been dropped. The Crown recently filed a notice of abandonment in B.C. Supreme Court concerning Barbarash, a former Animal Liberation Front spokesperson. Police raided his Courtenay home last July 30 and seized two laptop computers, 50 computer discs and about 100 videotapes. He expects to have his property returned within a week.

Good luck. Once they have your stuff, it doesn't come back.

Recently, several Canadian judges have ruled that simple possession of marijuana is no longer a crime. What has caused this turn of events? Why it's medical marijuana. It seems that Canadian judges find it unconstitutional for marijuana to be legal as medicine and then force the sick to resort to the black market for their medicine. In the US, nine states have passed laws allowing the medical use of marijuana but only California allows patient access to their medicine without resorting to the black market. Sure in all nine states, patients can grow their own medicine (and wait four months for harvest), except buying and selling the seeds are illegal in eight of them. And if the patient or their caregiver buys seeds from Canada or other countries selling them, they violate another law if they ask the US Postal Service to deliver them.

Nova Scotia has joined three other provinces in saying it won't enforce the rules surrounding the federal gun registry.Justice Minister Jamie Muir said on Tuesday that he will tell the province's prosecutors to forward to their federal counterparts all charges against people who haven't registered their rifles or shotguns.

The grace period for registering firearms officially ended July 1, but that hasn't stopped some gun owners from disobeying the rules as a matter of principle. Risking a heavy fine or even jail time, Ottawa resident Kingsley Beattie has registered all but one of his guns as his way of protesting against the federal firearms registry.

The N.W.T.'s justice minister says aboriginal hunters in the territory shouldn't be worried about Canada's new gun laws while out shooting this fall.

'The RCMP has agreed not to prosecute anyone'? Roger Allen Roger Allen says he's been told the RCMP don't plan to charge anyone using unregistered firearms for hunting purposes.

If you aren't going to enforce a law, either repeal it or refuse to pass the damn thing in the first place. Selective prosecution just dilutes respect for the law in general.

A group representing Canada's songwriters will ask the Supreme Court of Canada to force Internet service providers to pay them royalties for the millions of digital music files downloaded each year by Canadians.

The case has broad ramifications for the Internet industry in Canada, legal experts say.

"This is the big case for the Internet. This will set the position on how we are going to treat Internet service providers, whether they are going to be seen as people who are responsible in some way for content that goes through their services," said Mark Perry, a professor of law and a professor of computer science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont.

Unfortunately, the legislature can be lobbied to impose fees on the most convenient middleman, rather than finding a sensible solution that doesn't have implicit support for media monopolies. You see, if "major record labels" (or content providers of any stripe) can convince governments that everyone using the Internet owes them some form of copyright fee to offset piracy, it becomes impossible to boycott those who collect the fee (because they are charging everyone), impossible to launch a competing content provider (because the existing ones are supported by universal fees), and much more difficult to incite outrage (because consumers aren't aware of the fees charged to the middlemen).

Apparantly, someone thinks Canada's gun registry is actually working...

Quoted By most standards, Canada's gun-control program is a success: More than 2 million firearm owners (90 per cent) are now licensed and almost 7 million firearms (85 per cent) are registered. More than 9,000 people have been denied firearm licences under the new program.

OK, let's see here. 2 million firearm owners registered, with a totally made up 90%. That leaves 10% "known" unregistered firearm owners -- about 200,000 people. And how many unregistered firearms? 7 million registered, estimated 85% coverage... leaving about 1 million unregistered firearms. This is after 2 years and at least two missed deadlines. The people who haven't registered by now aren't going to. And the criminals never were going to, and their ranks are probably not counted in those official estimates.

All this at a cost of nearly $1 billion (Canadian), which is at least a 5x cost overrun from estimates of 200 million. And given the hideous mess the system was in for the first couple years, who knows how accurate those records are?

But this is a success because 9,000 people have been denied firearm licenses under the new program? Hmm. 2 million owners and not even 10,000 denials. How do you know those who had their applications denied did not simply go and acquire one of the 1 million unregistered firearms? That's right -- you don't. In fact, you don't even know that their firearms were collected and taken away. They just don't have the legal piece of paper that says the gun is registered.

Personally, though, I don't consider any program a success just because it signs people up. There needs to be a measurable effect on the problems you're trying to solve -- in this case, crime rates.

Quoted Police officers use the system more than 1,500 times a day and report many cases where the system has allowed them to remove guns from people who were a risk to themselves or others. Canada's laws do not prevent people from using firearms responsibly, but they do increase accountability.

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is straight out of Minority Report. Canada's police agencies have officially implemented the doctrine of precrime. If you look at a police officer the wrong way, or spit on a Mounties' mount, then they'll take your guns away and count it a crime prevented and a success of the program.

Would it be impolite to ask what has happened to Canada's crime rates? Any change? Hmm?

Quoted Because of the virulent opposition of the gun lobby, the firearms program has been subjected to a burden of proof absent from other public-policy debates. Nevertheless, the facts, when accurately reported, speak for themselves. Firearm death, robbery and injury rates are the lowest they've been for more than 30 years. While it is too early to assess the impact of the licensing and registration system, the results are encouraging, particularly where rifles and shotguns are concerned.

Ah, here we go. Straight out of "How to Lie with Statistics", we have the attempt to redefine terms in a manner that supports your argument. Suddenly, it's not crime that's important: it's firearm death, robbery, and injury rates. When you start taking away firearms, obviously you reduce the rate of firearm-related crime. But what about overall rates? Strangely silent on those.

This journalist at least has the decency to admit that it's too soon to assess the impact of the program... right after implying that the program is responsible for those 30-year lows in firearm crime. Not to be outdone, she immediately follows up by assessing the impact of the program as "encouraging". Impressive intellectual rigor there.

Quoted Public-interest test: Police, public-health officials and groups representing victims of violence continue to support the law. According to the last Environics poll, three-quarters of Canadians continue to support licensing gun owners and registering guns, despite the controversy. In Quebec, the levels of support are the highest in the country - 85 per cent. While it is true only 45 per cent of gun owners support the legislation, 77 per cent of people living with gun owners support it.

Let's rephrase this with something a bit more illustrative. Let's replace the term "gun owners" with "Jews" and the term "gun" with "Torah" (which is, I think, what Christians would call the books of the Old Testament; but I am no expert on Judaism). Go ahead and read the quoted paragraph again, making those substitutions.

If that doesn't make my point clear, nothing will, so you might as well stop reading here.

Quoted Role-of-government test: Governments have a duty to protect their citizens from harm and to regulate dangerous products. The United Nation's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has said countries that fail to protect their citizens adequately from firearms through effective regulation might be failing their obligations under international Human Rights Law.

In Canada, governments may have a "duty" to protect their citizens from harm (they do not in the US), but they certainly don't have the ability. It's unclear if the author hasn't thought it through or just doesn't realize that not everyone lives within 30 seconds of a police station.

As for regulating dangerous products, firearms (when used properly) are remarkably safe... for the user. They tend not to be safe for people on the wrong end of the barrel, but that is, as they say in software development, "A feature, not a bug." In any case, it's hard to equate "firearms safety regulation" with "nationwide registration scheme", because the firearm doesn't get any safer once the government knows it exists.

And claiming that lack of a firearms registration system might run afoul of human rights laws is ... well... laughable. Or would be, if she wasn't serious.

Quoted Value-for-money-test: The introduction of the new program has required significant investment to address gaps identified in the old system. In spite of the rhetoric, two-thirds of the money was spent on screening and licensing gun owners, not on registering guns.

So it's a good value to spend two-thirds of a billion dollars to identify under 10,000 "precrime" suspects? Interesting math there.

Quoted Under the old system, firearm owners required firearms acquisition certificates (FACs) only to acquire firearms, not to own them. Only a third of gun owners had valid FACs and only handguns were registered. Now all firearms owners must be licensed and all firearms registered. Police have immediate, on-line access to information, which is essential to taking preventative action.

Betcha thought I was kidding about the precrime stuff, huh?

Quoted The old system cost approximately $30 million a year to operate. The new system will cost $70 million a year, but public-safety experts maintain it is a good investment. The costs of firearm injuries and deaths have been estimated at $6.6 billion a year, more than $1.5 billion in Quebec alone.

How exactly will either system reduce those costs? Firearm injuries and deaths can be divided into several categories:

1. Accidents
2. Crimes
3. Suicides

Will the criminals stop committing crimes because they would have to register their firearm? Not likely. Will the people who legally own firearms, registered or otherwise, injure themselves at a lower rate now that the government knows they have firearms? Unlikely. Will people who plan on committing suicide balk at registering a gun to do it -- or simply choose another method, perhaps even a gun they have already owned? Doubt it.

So we have a system that costs $70 million per year. Even taking that at face value rather than multiplying it by 5, is it worth that much to buy absolutely no reduction in the $6.6 billion price tag? You would be better off spending the money buying firearms for the poor in high-crime neighborhoods -- then you might actually see a reduction in crime!

Quoted Efficiency (and effectiveness) test: Concerns about management and efficiency issues have been addressed over the past year. And as important as efficiency is, effectiveness is a critical issue. The preliminary evidence is strong Canada's approach to gun control is contributing to public safety. The rate of homicides involving firearms continues to decline in Canada, from 0.8 per 100,000 in 1989 to 0.48 per 100,000 in 2002. The overall homicide rate has also fallen, from 2.41 per 100,000 in 1989 to 1.85 per 100,000 in 2002 - but not as quickly as the firearms homicide rate.

Here, we have a couple points to make. First, note the switcheroo -- suddenly we're talking about "firearm" rates rather than overall crime rates. It helps make up better numbers, don'tchaknow. Second, the "preliminary evidence" is in regards to a program which you just admitted earlier is "too soon to assess". But you love to assess it when you can handwave the results! And, of course, let's not miss the fact that (in the US at least, and presumably in Canada) the period around 1990 was a very high crime period, and around 2002 was a very low crime period. Assuming Canadian crime rates followed the same trend, what proof do we have that any firearms registration program had any effect whatsoever?

Quoted The most dramatic decline has been in homicides involving rifles and shotguns. In 1989, 218 Canadians were murdered with firearms, compared with 149 in 2002. While murders with handguns have increased slightly (owing largely to problems with smuggled guns), murders with rifles and shotguns have plummeted, from 131 in 1989 to 32 in 2002. In 1989, 74 women were murdered with guns; in 2001 that number was 32.

More statistics, and more ways to lie with them. Note that the absolute numbers of homicides are compared between 1989 and 2002, without regard to changes in population. Note that we're talking about "firearm" homicides. And then we get to the kicker; murders with handguns have increased! Remember, under the "old system" (if I understand correctly), only handguns were registered, and under the new system they added rifles and shotguns. So, even though firearm homicides fell, crimes committed with the type of weapon that was now being registered increased. Crowing about the reduction in rifle and shotgun murders is meaningless when the registration programs for those firearms did not even begin until the end of the sample period.

Oh, and what is with the special line-item for "women"? Are murders of women somehow more evil?

Quoted Affordability test: It's difficult to measure the benefits of prevention programs, until it is too late. More than 1,000 people die every year in Canada as a result of guns, compared with 3,000 killed in automobile crashes. The costs of Canada's firearms program are dwarfed by the money governments invest in trying to keep our highways and roads safe. The government spent almost half a billion dollars to widen a New Brunswick highway after 43 people died over five years. Over the same period, more than 5,000 Canadians were killed with guns. The question is not can we afford to license gun owners and register guns, but can we afford not to.

The missing element in this analysis is what effect licensing gun owners and registering guns will have on the costs being cited. Unfortunately for the author, there is reasonable way to postulate reduced costs from licensing and registration of gun owners and their firearms. Money spent on those programs will have no practical return.

Quoted Wendy Cukier is a professor of information-technology management and of justice studies at Ryerson University in Toronto and co-founder and president of the Coalition for Gun Control.

I'm ashamed to admit that anyone teaching information technology could make such a poorly-reasoned analysis. But I think the other half of her title explains much about this article.

Canada's gun registry does not work, according to Dr. Gary Mauser, a Simon Fraser University professor. He spoke Saturday in Saskatoon at a conference organized by the Canadian Unregistered Firearms Owners Association (CUFOA). "We have spent $2 billion on licensing and registering guns in Canada and it has not decreased violent crime and suicide," Mauser said.

Just one more piece of evidence. You can't affect the behavior of criminals by regulating honest folk -- at least not for the better.

Convicted killer Inderjit Singh Reyat, who admitted Monday to a role in Canada's worst mass murder -- the 1985 Air-India bombing -- could be eligible for day parole by the end of this year. And if he goes to Mission's minimum security Ferndale Institution, as was recommended by B.C.'s Chief Justice Donald Brenner, he could be having private three-day visits with his family within two months. He would also have access to a tennis court, pool table, jogging path, golf course and private room with shower.

I am flabbergasted. FLABBERGASTED. This guy is a repeat terrorist.