Friday, May 18, 2007

What's wrong with the Gun Registry


Jamie Hall of the Edmonton Journal wrote today on page B2 a story about a new NATIONAL BICYCLE REGISTRY. Internet Based, it can be accessed anywhere in Canada.
It's available in both Official Languages. With little or no advertising, it's accumulated some 4000 registrations. The cost is entirely borne by user-fees of $25 per bicycle. That means so far, it's grossed about a hundred thousand dollars for the three sisters from Richmond Hill, Ontario, who started the registry three years ago.

This is something the Federal Government and the Ministry of Injustice need to examine very closely. With their own resources, these sisters have done something that the Federal Liberals and their gun-hating ilk have been unable to achieve with the force of law, a billion of our tax dollars, and thousands of fat and sleek well-paid civil servants: A workable, national registry.

Using the model developed by Kate, Jane and Trish Renwick, the government could hire them for about 175 million dollars. (that's assuming an estimated 7 million gun guns at $25 per firearm). (source: Justice Minister Allan Rock, Standing committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, April 24,1995)

This seems like a good argument for firing the civil service and privatizing the government.

For that kind of money I'd run the damn thing. Just pay me 175 million dollars once; I'd be good for at least twenty years... that is, if I supported the concept of gun control in general. I don't.



What kind of idiot expects criminals to register their guns? Canadian Gun control has failed in it's avowed goal to prevent crime. Hand guns, the weapon of choice in most gun crimes, have been registered and restricted in Canada since the 1930s. Most handguns used by criminals weren't registered any way. All gun control does is inconvenience the law abiding and encourage disarmament of the general population.

Gun control in Canada, as practiced for the last decade, implies eventual disarmament of the population through confiscation. Canada tossed away nearly a thousand years of property rights inherited from Common Law when former communist party member Pierre Trudeau, as a Liberal Prime Minister, foisted a Charter of Rights and Freedoms upon us in 1982 that lacked any reference to the right to own property.

That's right dear reader. In Canada, a man's home is NOT his castle. Instead of protecting your right to security of property, our constitution enshrines (by omission) the State's right to rip you off. Legalized looting, I think, was what Ayn Rand called it. Until now,it seems the courts and legislatures of the land still sort of respect common law property rights, but there is no constitutional bar to prevent the state from passing confiscatory legislation.

The way in which the Federal Liberal Government set up their billion-dollar gun registry in the early 1990s is in part to blame for the poor participation levels it's experienced. Provisions of the legislation that created the firearms registry allow the police to enter any dwelling they suspect may harbor unregistered firearms, Without a warrant or even probable cause. The police may also steal- I mean, confiscate, without compensation, any citizen's firearm. On top of it all, in spite of an absolutely ridiculous overuse of tax-money, (estimated to reach a billion dollars - holy shit!) the law-abiding had to PAY MONEY to obey the law by registering their guns.

I never met a tax-payer yet, who thought they hadn't already paid enough money to the government.

The only way guns can cause crime is if owning one were a crime. It's PEOPLE who cause crimes. If we went back to what I suggested earlier, a simple registration of PEOPLE with guns, should be enough already. The government already had that in the 1980s, with the old Firearms Acquisition certificate.

I don't give a rats ass if the government knows If I'm a gun owner or not. Most gun owners probably feel the same way.

I have friends who are police officers. When Police respond to that most tense of situations, a domestic disturbance, there's no qualitative difference between knowing the occupants have a long-barrel firearm, or just that they have a permit to own firearms.

And if Prime Minister Harper is reading this, yeah, If you fix the law and put up the cash, I'm serious about running it for you. No union contracts. No pension liabilities. Just me, our 175 million tax-dollars, and whoever I hire to set up and run the thing for me.

I'm taking applications at the email address over there at the top right.

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