Photo courtesy of the National Post, URL http://nationalpostcomment.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/scattergun.jpg?w=620
As Bill C-19 is slated for an inevitable approval in Parliament due to the Tory majority Harper has achieved in the last federal election, Conservatives are now arguing that firearms registration is in itself a waste of time and resources.
A National Post column today made the point that according to the research of Gary Mauser, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby B.C., the murder rate in Canada had gone down only 1% since the introduction firearms licensing and that in the decade prior to it’s institution it had gone down 9%.
The gist of the argument made is that licensing cannot be considered as a homicide reduction or prevention strategy because hardener criminals and murderers don’t register their guns in the first place.
The article also presents further evidence that the number of murders actually committed with a registered firearm is almost inconsequential to the total number of 7,720 homicides committed between 1997 and 2009. Out of this total, only 151 were committed by a person with a licensed gun.
Despite this evidence, one can find several weaknesses in the conservative argument to scrap firearms registration completely. The first is the idea that people whom register firearms in the first place do not originally intend to commit a crime, and if they just so happen to commit one down the road, then the process of prosecuting them is that much more expedited since they can clearly be identified as the owners of a murder weapon. Second, according to the data showing that approx. 151 homicides were committed with registered firearms, one can say that because of the registry we have now an additional 151 murderers behind bars. Murderers whose apprehension and prosecution went probably much faster due to the registry versus if they had non-registered weapons.
Finally, to account for the previous drop in the homicide rate of 9% before the introduction of the firearms registry, one cannot say that it’s due to the introduction of this kind of regulation that the drop in homicides has slowed down. That somehow the registry has in fact had a detrimental effect on the homicide rate.
This is what conservatives seem to be insinuating, that perhaps no regulation of any kind on firearms will have a positive effect on the homicide rate.
Unfortunately. the Conservative logic is false. There could have been any number of other factors, such as better policing, more funding for crime prevention strategies, people being less violent in general, rehabilitative sentencing versus more punishment for lesser crimes, etc. that could have effect the significant drop in the homicide rate in the decade prior to the introduction of the registry.
So until it can be conclusively proven that gun regulation is in fact detrimental to policing and has a negative effect on the crime rate, in particular homicide, in Canada, conservatives need to shut their traps and stop pushing their ideological agenda on the rest of Canadians, in particular the liberals in Ontario.
For more information on the Conservative argument against firearms regulation and on Bill C-19, see the following article in the National Post http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/25/lorne-gunter-gun-licences-should-go-the-way-of-the-registry/