Our local member of Parliament has subjected your readers with arguments against the gun registry with holes so big one could drive a Mack truck through.
He joins his fellow Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz who recently tried to scare Canadians by claiming that the RCMP were just itching to storm the home of anyone who had not re-registered their expired license. Rathgeber asks the silly question as to ‘how many law-abiding citizens with properly registered long guns have been taken down forcefully by police because the long-gun registry indicated there were weapons in a home?’
I served for six years on the St. Albert RCMP policing committee, which is a form of police commission and I can attest to the fact that when the police receive a call on a domestic dispute of any kind, the registry was checked and if firearms were known to be present, extra precautions were taken. Of course the RCMP take special precautions with respect to any domestic dispute but there was a special protocol when I served on the committee when it was known that guns were present and my recent call to the RCMP has confirmed this. I never heard of anyone being ‘taken down’ as Rathgeber states.
Rathgeber also states that most crimes are committed with stolen weapons, an important reason for owners to register weapons. Several years ago I listed a rural home that contained several weapons properly stored with the ammunition in a separate hidden storage area. The owner was an advocate of registration because his neighbour, who would not register his firearms had guns stolen and this placed two rifles and a shotgun out in the criminal community with little hope of tracking the guns back to the original owner even if the guns were taken in an arrest. Rural RCMP are some of the strongest supporters of the gun registry because they often pull vehicles over for traffic violations and if guns are present in the vehicle, it gives them quick access to the registration. The RCMP will also tell you that stolen guns in rural areas are of great concern when the firearms were not registered because there is no hope of relating the guns in the possession of a criminal back to where they were stolen and when other charges could be laid.
Rathgeber says that no one can prove the gun registry has saved lives. I would suggest that there are many families where members are alive today because the police have been able to intervene and use proved protocols to calm down possible shooters because the police were aware that guns were in the home. The national YWCA, the nation’s oldest and largest women’s organization, is a strong supporter of the gun registry and has reported that long guns are the most common type of firearm used in spousal homicides, a statistic confirmed by police. Over the past 10 years, spousal homicides with long guns have decreased while other homicides have not, a fact that the YWCA attribute to the gun registry.
I find that it is interesting that Prime Minister Stephen Harper does not have the courage to make the upcoming bill to kill the registry a government bill and risk an election and is instead using Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner’s private member’s bill to do his dirty work.
The Liberal Party is prepared to bring in an alternative bill in due course to make some amendments to make the registry more workable and surely all MPs should support the registry and get prepared to bring in recommendations for improving the registry.
Bob Russell, St. Albert
