http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/12/12/143806.shtml
The Gun Control Experiment � Two More Data
Points
Dr. Michael S. Brown
Thursday, Dec. 12, 2002
Two seemingly unrelated recent events have highlighted fundamental flaws
in the basic model of gun control. They involve the national gun registry
in Canada and a small gun shop in Tacoma, Wash.
Canada's ambitious Firearms Act, a flagship of Liberal Party social
policy, took effect in December of 1998. It required all gun owners to
obtain a personal firearms license and register each gun with the
Canadian Firearms Centre.
Last week, Canadian newspapers were filled with stories portraying the
undertaking as a total disaster. It was originally promised to cost
taxpayers only $2 million, but the bureaucracy has sucked almost a
billion Canadian dollars from strained national coffers. To give American
readers some idea of the size of this debacle, remember that Canada has
roughly one-tenth our population.
The current scandal was triggered when Canadian Auditor General Sheila
Fraser released a report exposing numerous errors and deceptions by those
who ran the program. Even those who favor gun control are horrified by
the astronomical cost overruns and underhanded efforts to prevent
Parliament from discovering the problems.
This is a classic example of what happens when a national government is
hijacked to carry out an ideological agenda. But there is another
important lesson here on the limitations and inaccuracies of a gun
registration system.
According to various reports, many Canadian gun owners were issued
inaccurate or largely blank registration certificates. Many violent
offenders were not listed in the database of restricted persons. In order
to speed up the process and avoid the appearance of failure, thousands of
applications were approved without any background check being performed.
The agency was apparently unable to cope with the incoming applications
even though some say that over 40 percent of Canada's gun owners have not
registered.
The registry is essentially useless and since money was diverted from
other law enforcement priorities, the net effect is a reduction in public
safety.
This developing Canadian scandal has an interesting parallel in Tacoma,
where the infamous D.C. Snipers allegedly obtained the rifle they used in
their killing spree.
Everyone seems to agree that the rifle was sent to the gun shop by the
manufacturer, but it isn't clear how it got into the hands of Muhammad
and Malvo, who were banned from owning guns. Perhaps they simply stole it
or perhaps the shop owner sold it for cash that he kept off the
books.
In any case, the background check and paperwork required by the
much-heralded Brady Act were bypassed. Authorities imply that hundreds of
guns may be unaccounted for in this one shop alone.
These two situations point out the futility of trying to keep guns out of
the hands of criminals by using a registry system. If human beings are
involved, as they must be, there will always be errors, omissions and
fraud. Even if the system could be made foolproof, criminals will always
find easy ways around it, like simply stealing the guns they
need.
It is difficult to understand why the gun control lobby has any standing
at all in public policy discussion. Even the strictest gun prohibition on
the planet has not been effective. Since Britain enacted the final,
absolute ban on handguns and ultra-tight control of long guns in 1997,
the country has experienced its worst wave of gun crime in history. It
would seem that the tighter you make the gun laws, the better criminals
like it. Yet the gun haters, blinded by their obsession, still urge us to
throw good money after bad into their expensive schemes.
The only form of gun control that works is to lock up more criminals who
misuse them. Costly bans, registration and licensing are a scandalous
waste of precious resources.
Dr. Michael S. Brown is an optometrist and member of Doctors for Sensible
Gun Laws,
www.dsgl.org. He may
be contacted at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
References
Parliament kept in dark as gun registry cost exploded
http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=%7B352BF9BA-3E8A-48F2-AC8A-2D2B786BC092%7D
What did taxpayers get for their billion dollars?
http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/whatdidtaxpayersget.htm
Canada sees 43,000 percent overrun on gun
control costs
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/021203/5/qmim.html
_______________________
Scott MacLean
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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