**UPDATED**
It’s something most Canadians don’t know or don’t understand—or if you’re liberal, it’s yet another bunch of facts that you missed while your had your index fingers in your ears and you were going “la la la I can’t hear you…”.
Canada has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world. The differences in gun ownership ratio between Canada and the U.S. is not as huge as some would like to think. I once wrote in a column:
In actual fact, gun ownership is high in Canada with per capita gun ownership at about one gun for every four to five Canadians. Of course that doesn’t include the arsenal in “Canada’s military”, which if you add that, or at least the ones that still work, amounts to… well OK roughly the same.
Canada has had a gun registry for handguns in this country for 60 years. All handguns have been required to be registered since 1942 as a measure against fear of enemy subversion. Today, I’m more concerned about Liberal government subversion but I digress.
The hideously embarrassing boondoggle that the Liberals created, the controversial and extremely suspicious TWO BILLION-DOLLAR gun registry that the Liberals created a few years ago, which was budgeted to cost $5 million and is now under investigation by the Auditor-General like so much of the Liberal Government is, was only to include the hitherto unincluded “long guns”. Liberals are so inclusive!
Full implementation of the registry isn’t even complete yet, years after photocopying the registration form for a BILLION DOLLARS. They delayed it again just last month. Canadian Press quoted deputy Conservative Party leader Peter MacKay:
“It’s another example of the ineffective, overly bureaucratic nightmare that is the gun registry,” MacKay said from Halifax.
“The government continues with this simultaneous face-saving, rear-end-covering exercise of trying to justify a very cumbersome, useless system.”
MacKay, a former Crown prosecutor, insisted the government backed off because police forces would have ignored the registration demand.
“They’ve got far more important things to do.”
A reader, Ross. M., sent this in. The long Stats Canada report that it was based on is here.
Joel, isn’t it interesting…since 2001 2/3 of homicides were committed with a handgun, last year 65% of homicides were committed with a handgun. As you know, handguns have been required to be registered for over 60 years. The homicide rate in Canada has been in decline for years, and the decline started before the Gun Registry fiasco. Now, after a billion or more dollars, the homicide rate with firearms is going up, especially with the firearm of choice for the criminal, the handgun. What a farce the gun registry is, what a waste of money that could be better spent on law enforcement issues that would make a difference..ie police…
Here’s the annoying-to-liberals graphic:
HOMICIDE RATE, 1961-2004
Rate per 10,000 population
UPDATE (Oct 6 3:20 PM PDT):
Here’s a link to some excellect articles written by Conservative Party MP Garry Breitkreuz, who is the Party’s firearms critic:
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