Long gun registry a $2B waste

source: Calgary Sun
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 06:30 PM MDT 
   
With the tabling of legislation to finally scrap the long-gun registry, the Harper government's further directive to destroy all the data is a mammoth victory of the people over Big Brother.

The Liberal governments of both Ontario and Quebec are incensed, of course, and both have expressed intent to toss good money after the $2-billion of Jean Chretien's bad money in order to set up their own back-door long-gun registries.

To inflict such idiocy now in order to appease their urban bases will mean starting from scratch. In other words, it will be a no-go.

Critics keep bringing up the nonsense that police agencies across this country relied heavily on the registry's database when, in fact, it was primarily their police chiefs who advocated its continuance -- but only because their political masters demanded they toe the urban line.

They also claim the police access the registry 17,000 times a day, but don't tell you the registry's database is automatically booted into action basically whenever a driver's licence is routinely inputted.

So don't believe, even for a second, that police use the registry 17,000 times a day looking for guns.

That's fiction.

The cops on the street knew the registry was undependable soon after the Chretien Liberals unleashed it, and that trusting its validity, and letting down one's guard, was a recipe for personal disaster.

The proper response? Assume nothing but the worst.

Critics have to be reminded, as well, that a gun-safety course, a federal firearm's acquisition permit, and a mandatory police background check, are still required in order for someone to purchase a rifle or a shotgun, or to even buy ammunition.

So the cops already have their insight.

In the federal long-gun registry, there is currently information on seven million non-restricted and therefore legal firearms affecting hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Canadians.

Their names have no business being there.

They have done no wrong.

Handguns and restricted firearms -- assault rifles, et cetera -- still have to be registered, as has been the case for 75 years, but, trust us, you will not find one gangbanger's name in that registry.

Criminals don't register their guns, and never have.

They only abuse them.