Conservative government playing with guns

On Saturday, that's how Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner labelled [2] the gun registry during her address at the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters Annual General Meeting.

Bill C-391, Hoeppners private member's bill to abolish the long gun registry, was spared the axe of prorogation and is currently sitting in committee. However, just as debate is set to resume, front line law enforcement professionals are coming forward and voicing unwavering support for the program.
The positive reviews put forward echo those contained in the RCMP's 2008 Firearms Commissioner's Report; The very report which then-public safety minister Peter Van Loan purposely suppressed [3] for seven weeks last fall, releasing it only after the initial vote on Bill C-391 had allowed it to pass to second reading.

The actions of the Conservative government in their effort to kill the long gun registry, reveal an unsettling pattern; The belief, by the Conservatives, that their ideology is superior to the knowledge from front line officers who's lives are dedicated to protecting the safety and well being of the public.

Toews began with the requisite PMO talking point, that "the RCMP and other police forces have better things to do than to harass hunters and trappers and farmers for not registering their long guns." For good measure, he added that it's a "waste of taxpayers money."

Minister Toews was informed by Clark of the increasing number of law enforcement members supporting the registry, "most recently the second in command of the RCMP [5] this week said that he thought that the regestry should stay, and its a very good idea, and it's a very useful tool for front line police officers."
Toews brushed aside that notion, stating that the RCMP's second in command was "expressing a personal opinion, a personal opinion that's not shared by front line police officers. The actual police officers that I meet who go into the doors of houses where suspected criminals are don't rely on the gun registry to determine whether or not a criminal has a fire arm, in fact that would be foolish on their part."

Toews was shown data regarding the long gun registry, which Clark received from 'senior government officials':

From 1998 - 2008, 14 of the 16 police shootings were committed with long guns;
In 2008 alone, 1 in 5 gun homicides was committed with long guns, half of all gun homicides in rural areas were committed with long guns, and
of the 23,000 firearms seized by police, more than 18,000 were long gun seizures.

Perhaps the most telling piece of information was that police said they used the registry 10,000 times every day.

Still, Toews refused to budge. "That's not what I hear from police officers. In fact the automatic use of the registry, isn't something the police are going out, doing deliberately, checking the registry. It's something that pops up automatically on their screen. But the point is that police officers don't rely on the registry when they're walking up to a car to see whether or not a person possibly has a firearm, that would be negligent on their part."

Clark, somewhat taken aback at Toews insistence, reminded him that it's the "law and order crowd (who) are saying pretty clearly that they want this registry to remain."

Toews responded by paraphrasing his earlier talking points, which prompted the following awkward exchange:

Clark: "Well it's an interesting struggle isn't it? For who speaks more for the law and order community? Whether it's you, or whether it's a lot of the police officers. The Canadian chiefs of police are in support of it."

Immediately following the interview, Clark spoke with Greg Getty [6], superintendent of the Toronto police guns and gangs task force.

When asked if he was in support of the long gun registry, Getty was unequivocal in his answer. "I personally support it without question, as does the Toronto police service, as do all of the canadian chiefs through the CACP, as well as the Canadian police association, and Toronto police association, who DO represent the officers who DO go through those doors the minister (Toews) is speaking of."

Getty continued to counter the claims Toews had made earlier, telling Clark that "in circumstances where were attending address where there's domestic conflicts, persons inside that residence that we may be going to, it's not only a matter of the officers' safety to have that information prior to attending, but also a matter of community safety...for not only the other residents within that dwelling, but within that immediate area as well."

Getty also noted that 23% of all domestic homicides in Canada committed with long guns, and a majority of police killed in Canada are killed at the hands of a long gun.

Clark then addressed assertions made by Toews regarding front line officers' desire to abolish the registry, asking Getty if "from a front line police perspective, can you understand why some police officers would be in favour of getting rid of it?"

"None whatsoever," stated Getty. "A lot of the rhetoric around the abolition of the long gun registry is the cost, that 'law enforcement has better things to do than make criminals out of farmers and legal gun owners'. I believe in responsible and legal gun ownership. In fact, in Toronto we've just recovered, with Project Safe City in regards to improperly registered, improperly licensed firearms, we've recovered 1600 firearms since March of last year, and we've laid no criminal charges in regards to those. We have not made criminals out of any of those people." Getty added that "there's much confusion in regards to the long gun registry because of the amnesty that keeps getting cycled through government."

Fast forward to Sunday, when Toews returned to CTV [7] to answer further questions regarding the registry. On Question Period, Craig Oliver began by reiterating how senior law enforcement were coming forward in support of the registry as "an important tool in the interests of law enforcement and the safety of policemen." Oliver went on to say that the "Police Chiefs of Canada want this registry and their officers are telling us they are using it hundreds of times a day especially before they go into any domestic situation, and it only takes a few seconds to know whether there might be a firearm in that home."

Toews disagreed, arguing he'd "never heard a police officer say they rely on the long gun firearms registry or any registry before they go into a house to determine...and are assured that there is not firearm in the house that would be careless of a police officer, I've never heard a police officer say that they would check the registry, if there's no gun on the registry, they approach the house as if there was no firearm there. That would be careless. You approach every house as if there were a firearm. The registry does nothing to add to that."

The issue of the long gun registry, and the opposing view of the Conservative government versus the leading members of law enforcement, is more than a difference of opinion; It's about the safety of those who put their lives on the line, and security of the general public.

Police officers, the RCMP, EMS, firefighters, and other front line workers aren't interested in the politics of the issue; they're concerned about the possibility of losing a key resource which they rely on to effectively do their job. The Conservatives may claim to be the party of 'law and order', but the authority on the matter clearly lies with the actual law and order professionals.

It's obvious the Tories have no interest [8] in what front line officers have to say; that they are intent on killing the long gun registry at all costs. So it's now up to the members of the opposition to pay attention to the RCMP and the Chiefs of Police, listen to their views on the effectiveness of the long gun registry, and pay them the respect they have earned.

Comments

Submitted by TwainShallMeet on March 22, 2010 - 11:18am.

Thanks Alheli, as always an insightful Blog. The Cons are in over their heads on many issues but are Totally out to lunch on this one. And you are right of course when you say that the opinions of others mean little or nothing to them. Thanks, ttsm

Submitted by ACSial on March 22, 2010 - 4:54pm.

Your article neglects to mention why the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police really supports the Registry. Gun Registry IT contractor CGI 'sponsors' their conventions (in the past, Taser International was a sponsor). This is a serious conflict-of-interest issue. Another point is that the RCMP administers the Registry, meaning that its termination would idle some of the RCMP's staff and lead to budget cuts. Your article is also misleading, in that it implies that 'frontline officers' support the Registry: actually, the opposite tends to be true, with many police officers' associations regarding the Registry and its data as a costly and worthless misallocation of resources. Julian Fantino--currently head of the OPP--has himself stated that the Registry has not been effective. Police assume that a firearm is present, Registry 'hits', or not. The '10,000 hits a day' figure is utterly bogus: the Registry is automatically accessed by police computers for everything from noise complaints to fender-benders. All licensed owners of firearms (millions) are 'in the system'. However, there is no registry for people forbidden from owning firearms (mere tens of thousands), something that would be far more useful to police.

The Registry and firearms licensing never really produced tangible results--there has never been a shooting thwarted, nor a conviction made, based on its data. According to customs records, millions of legally-acquired (under the old FAC system) firearms have never been registered, nor their owners licensed. Of the guns (including 'long guns') seized, the vast majority were smuggled in from the U.S., Asia and elsewhere (something armed border guards would help prevent, BTW), with the odd stolen gun among them. One frightening aspect of the registry is its vulnerability to criminal access. There have been numerous break and enters, and thefts of guns, suspected to be the work of organised crime using information gleaned from the registry. The actual database itself is a joke, with cases of stolen firearms being fenced, resold and re-registered three times without the Canadian Firearms Centre/RCMP being the wiser.

Aside from the kickbacks to the CACP by CGI, the Chretien Liberal regime enacted the Firearms Act as a porkbarrel for other Liberal corporate donors, like Honeywell. The NDP and Bloc have supported it, since it is a make-work programme for unionised civil servants. However, the Liberals refused to arm Canada's border guards, stating that it was 'too costly'. The Liberals actually cut funding for breast cancer research--a disease that kills tens of thousands of Canadian women annually--putting the savings into the Firearms Centre. Hundreds of millions of dollars disappeared into the Registry without accounting, including (in one year) $13.5M in 'travel expenses'. Coalition For Gun Control maven Wendy Cukier is still under investigation, by the RCMP, for illegally receiving over $300,000 in grant money from the then-Justice Minister Alain Rock--something that could actually lead to criminal charges. (Her recent book has also been panned for, among other things, making up figures and even fictitious models of firearms.) Elderly Torontonians have been subject to warrantless searches for firearms, due to lapsed licenses; however, the courts have tossed out charges of known gangsters caught with illegal firearms (e.g., Marlon Davidson). The sooner this disaster comes to an end, the better.

Submitted by TwainShallMeet on March 22, 2010 - 5:32pm.

to ACsial: Who ( or Which ) said, among a lot of other things: "There has never been a shooting thwarted." What does that mean? There is no way in the world that anyone could know that there has Never been a shooting thwarted. The authorities, will tell you otherwise!

The next time you are trying to sound convincing, leave out the illusion of your Omnipresent Grapevine in action. "What's that, the sound of no gunfire?"

The gun registry is necessary, and useful. Everyone but the Government and Its followers say so, and I am sure you cannot prove that they have spent any real amount of time trying to find out what more reasonable and less gullible Canadians think.

p.s. I am, though, proud of the author of this blog for letting you drag it here and drop it.

Submitted by Eupraxsopher on March 22, 2010 - 7:00pm.

So what DO the front-line officers say about the gun registry?

Here's what 900 Canadian Police Officers of all ranks think.

Submitted by TwainShallMeet on March 22, 2010 - 8:26pm.

Eupraxopher: I will gladly post this site all over the internet. What you failed to mention here ( or rembered not too!) is that it is written by now CPC MP Garry Breitkreuza and the gun registry has been one of his pet peeves which he was already ranting about:... see... (February 21, 2000) back then, it read: "REFORM MP Launches Legislative Initiative To Replace The Firearms Act. February 16, 2000 ...... I could not bring myself to post any more of it here, but I will return After I have done some more research on Mr. BreitKreuza and his claims that Cops agree with him about the Long gun Registry. We both know that that is bullshite, but I at least will research it further. I expect that You will not!

At any rate, a Quick Google search would let anyone with half a brain ( that's guys like Garry here) would see this for what it is worth. But again thanks for the link . It will be useful. The site has been updated recently to include more recent "2010" CPC Talking points, but he and you have learned very little since 2001, and not one of you has spoken to a Cop in this Country, to say so is a lie.

Have a great Day!

Submitted by paraplegic on March 22, 2010 - 8:28pm.

The only meaningful measures when it comes to "gun control", are the criminal background checks and spousal permissions tied to licensing. Oddly enough, all of those same public safety benefits were present in the former Firearms Acquisition Regime (FAC) put in place by the Campbell conservatives. The Liberal's Canadian Firearms Act (CFA) has been a disaster from the outset.

Registration is simply a misguided attempt at disarming the population over a generation or so, and is social re-engineering at its worst.

In a perfect world, the CFA would be repealed in its entirety, and Canada could simply revert to the FAC regime which was affordable, effective, respected Charter rights, and the jurisdictions of the provinces. More important than any of that, the previous reegulatory had the consent of the governed. The CFA has none of the above.

Submitted by ACSial on March 22, 2010 - 8:42pm.

TwainShallMeet,

Since 1935, there has been a requirment to register handguns. These were paper records kept by the RCMP, which were supposed to be transfered to the CGI, Honeywell, et al. CFC database (this may-or-may-not have happened--nobody can, or will say). Not once in the history of that database has the registration of handguns provided useful information, leading to an arrest, or conviction. In 1977, following a school shooting, the Firearms Acquisition Certificate system (a police-issued background check) was introduced. Rather than 'register' these FACs, the police threw the data away, indicative of what police departments thought of the 'value' of gun registration. The Progressive Conservative government, reacting to the Gamil Gharbi (AKA, 'Marc Lepine'--son of a violent misogynist) mass murder, brought in further controls, including 'safe storage' and spousal 'permission'. Later came the Chretien Firearms Act, with licensing and registration. The firearms licensing and long-gun registration systems have similarilly failed to produce either convictions, or stop homocides (two tragic examples are the Mayerthorpe and Vu Pham shootings).

An interesting example of Canadian-style gun control in the U.S. is in the City of New York. The city's laws (Sullivan Act, &c.), dating back to 1911, are very similar to current Canadian ones. NYC has a much higher crime rate than Vermont, where the only 'gun control' is a ban on carrying firearms into schools. Chicago and (until this last year) D.C. absolutely ban handguns, but have appallingly-high gun crime rates. Even in Canada, permits to carry handguns are issued to civilians. Examples include the Securicor, Brinks and other armoured car guards you see delivering money to ATMs. (According to G4-Securicor, Britain, where cash-in-transit guards don't carry guns, has more robberies than all countries combined.) Handgun Authorizations To Carry are also issued to trappers, geologists and the like, for protection in wilderness areas. Additionally, there is something called an ATC Type-3--a very-rarely issued permit, allowing civilians to carry concealed handguns: there are only around a dozen in Ontario alone, mostly issued to well-conected people.

Submitted by Eupraxsopher on March 22, 2010 - 8:44pm.

@TwainShallMeet:

Every quote on that list names a Police Officer, the Officer's rank and station. They're real opinions: get over it.

Submitted by a_picazo on March 23, 2010 - 7:23am.

Thank you for your feedback!

ACSial, did you click on the hyperlinks in my entry?

Particularly these two:

Greg Getty

RCMP [5]

What I find interesting, is the only officers coming forward are in full support of the registry. For the purported hundreds of officers wanting to kill the registry, a single active duty member has yet to come forward and say so publicly.

Submitted by ruralvoice on March 23, 2010 - 2:09pm.

Front line police officers are only allowed to make public statements through their police department spokesperson, who is usually a politically appointed lacky who says what he is told to say by his superiors. The do not, generally, operate on fact.

For those who are interested in facts, it might be a good idea to check out the comparison of violent deaths and injuries by common kitchen knives. It would be about as effective to try to put a registry in place for these implements of destruction as it has been with long guns. The only major difference is that even little kids have access to the knives by pulling a kitchen chair over to the cutlery drawer.

As a retired peace officer I can assure you that the average front line peace officer has no faith in the incomplete and innacurate information regarding what firearms are or are not present at the site of a call. Each call is made with the assumption that there is quite possibly a firearm or firearms present. The many queries to the firearm registry are made as a byproduct of a routine call for information on a person or address of interest by the responding officer and officers just checking vehicle licence plates in a parking lot.

Submitted by Eupraxsopher on March 23, 2010 - 3:02pm.

I've been informed that Randy Kuntz of the Edmonton Police Service did his own survey. He asked Constables, Sergeants, Detectives, and Staff Sergeant officers across the country 'Do you support the firearms registry?'

The result:

2281 for scrapping the registry (92%)
208 for keeping it (8%)

Submitted by Eupraxsopher on March 23, 2010 - 3:32pm.

@a_picazo:

Your link to Deputy RCMP commissioner Bill Sweeney's statement is unsurprising. Given that Sweeney has served on the privately-funded Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police' Crime Prevention Committee, it follows that he will toe the party line on this one.

The CACP is a private organization which accepts donations from at least one of the Firearms Registry contractors and is affiliated with the Coalition for Gun Control and IANSA, an international multi-billion dollar gun control organization funded by George Soros, the Rockefeller foundation, the Ford foundation and several governments. By Director Rebecca Peters' own admission, IANSA's goal is to completely eliminate civilian firearms ownership, leaving firearms exclusively at the command of politicians and criminals who disobey the bans.

https://www.cacp.ca/media/committees/efiles/10/373/annual_report_2007-20...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IANSA [21]

http://www.examiner.com/x-18149-SelfDefense-Examiner~y2009m8d16-An-Afric... [22]

This debate it not a home-grown Canadian one, but one front of an international organisation's ill-considered political ideology and world vision. It has much more to do with power and ideology-based sociological engineering than with crime or domestic violence, let alone a rational, evidence-based and optimized system for public firearms safety in Canada. The evidence of this resides in the hundred thousand left homeless in Uganda and Kenya after UN-backed disarmament campaigns. The evidence also resides in similar gun control legislation emplaced at IANSA's behest in the UK and Australia.

http://reason.com/archives/2006/10/20/deadly-disarmament [23]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6438601/... [24]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#Contention_over_e... [25]

Please note that Rebecca Peters of IANSA founded the Australian gun control group and co-founded the Coalition for Gun Control in Canada (which is also a privately-funded institution). These people have a PETA-like ideological stance, but with governmental and NGO financial backing. Please note that the Aussie crime stats are very similar to Canada, and that the stats of declining violence are deliberately misrepresented in the same way by Aussie gun control groups. I leave it to you to discover how much deeper the rabbit hole goes and will stop on the fairly neutral ground of Wikipedia.

Good luck in discovering truth in your investigation of reasoned viewpoints.

Submitted by ACSial on March 23, 2010 - 5:51pm.

Many members of the Conservative Party are less-than pleased with the party's stance on the issue. This is mostly over the matter of the FAC vs. licensing system. As that article again points out, there is no database for persons prohibited from owning firearms. Actually, neither the FAC, nor PAL systems was worth the money. A better system is the Instant Criminal Background Check used in the U.S. This could also be used, for example, by schools and the like, to screen out volunteers and employees who are sex offenders. (A criminal background check costs about $60.00 and takes weeks, leading schools, daycares and seniors' centres to skimp and end up hiring convicts.)

Another area that needs improvement is the immigration system. CSIS has estimated that only 10% of legal permanent immigrants (not 'temporary' work, or visitors' visas) are screened for criminality and terrorism. Cutting the current immigration level to 10% of its current rate would also pay dividends in environmental terms (halting urban sprawl, loss of farmland and escalating freshwater consumption). Tightening deportation rules would have gotten criminals like Mohamed Said Jama and Jackie Tran. The problems of Jane & Finch's gangs are well known (e.g. the Jane Creba shooting); here in Calgary, the Fresh Off the Boat/FOB-Killers, African Mafia, Chinese Triads and even MS-13 are becoming major problems, which gun control is not addressing. Women's groups worrying about domestic violence could also turn their attention to the appalling rates of domestic violence and murder in Canada's growing Muslim and South Asian communities. (A horrible scandal, after the Aqsa Parvez incident, was the refusal of many 'feminists' to admit that honour killings exist in Canada.)

The Firearms Act is a joke. Compare this article [27] in the (Liberal) Toronto Star with this one [28] to see how the legal system in Canada treats the law-abiding, vs. criminals, on the issue of firearms. Now, Alberta and B.C. have banned body armour for civilians, except for 'legitimate' uses, like guarding malls from unarmed shoplifters. Women carrying pepper spray to defend against rapists face five years in jail for carrying a 'prohibited weapon', but rapists get conditional sentences. Somebody carrying a gag of money for an armoured car company gets to carry a handgun on the job, but not for defending themselves and their families off-duty. As I mentioned, dozens of Canadian civilians--mostly prosecutors, ex-politicians and other well-connected folks--have ATC-3s, for self defense. Canadian law protects property, well-connected people and criminals--not ordinary people.

The Firearms Act was a form of social engineering, intended to gradually disarm Canadians. The comparisons to Hitler are, sadly, apt, as the vehemently anti-hunting Fuhrer touted the same public-safety advantages of firearms registration as Chretien. It was also a two billion-dollar porkbarrel for corporate political and police donors, as well as a pointless make-work programme. Like Alberta's disastrous privatisation of the Registries (which are now largely owned by organised crime), C-68 was an ideologically-motivated failiure that should be reversed.

Submitted by Jerry West on March 26, 2010 - 10:40pm.

Alheli wrote:

Would these same officers tell us that warrantless search and seizure and wire taps were a good tool in fighting crime. If so, should we follow their lead in that, too?

I have worked in law enforcement. I know police officers actually on the front line, not supervisors and bureaucrats. Many that I know in the field think that laws like this are a waste of time and effort.

The fact that the registry is used x number of times does not justify it, either. Use does not mean that it is really useful. Any tool that you hand an investigator will get used with the faint hope that it might turn something up. The question, though, is the tool worth the cost. Logic tells us the current gun control system is not. There could be a much better one that focused on users rather than on tools.