Gun registration an expensive failure

While U.S. gun control advocates push the Obama administration to enact more stringent gun control measures and want to use the California ammunition registry as a blueprint for getting all guns registered, Canadian officials are having a tough time justifying their registry and may move away from it.

"It was a stupid idea in the first place and a ridiculous waste of money on an ongoing basis," said Canadian Taxpayers Federation director Kevin Gaudet of the 14-year registry scheme which reportedly costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain.

Opponents also point out that the expensive registry has had no effect on firearms deaths as noted in this recent letter to the editor submitted to the Winnipeg Free Press.

The homicide rate had fallen impressively before 2001, but has remained relatively stable since. In 1991, the homicide rate was 2.7 per 100,000; in 1996, the homicide rate was down to 2.1; and by 2000, it had slid to 1.8. By 2005, the rate had risen to 2.0.

Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, believes the registry should remain in place because it helps "enhance accountability and reduce the risk of weapons being misused or winding up in the wrong hands," despite the fact that it has failed to do either.

Instead, this waste of taxpayer dollars has been so full of errors and omissions it can't even be relied upon in court. Canada isn't the only country to be experiencing this problem, a recent article from Australia reported a Southern Australia computer glitch resulted in over twenty thousand firearms being reported as active in the registry when in fact they had already been destroyed. They, too, report little effectiveness of their registry and note that there are millions of unregistered guns in Australia.

Gun registries don't work and cannot be made to work. A criminal who is already barred from firearms ownership is not going to go down to his local police station to register his gun. A stolen gun used in a crime is only going to trace back to the last lawful owner, which will do nothing to solve the crime. Especially since stolen guns are almost always reported stolen anyway so the police already know who legally owned it last.

They are nothing more than a way to infringe upon the rights of law abiding gun owners while paving the road towards eventual confiscation. While Canada takes a long hard look at repealing their gun registry, we must be vigilant that one is not forced down our throats here. We already waste enough money on faulty government programs and don't need to add another.