Police lament loss of gun registry

While police services call the scrapping of the long-gun registry a step in the wrong direction, other organizations couldn't be happier.

Greater Sudbury Police Service deputy chief Al Lekun said his organization has lost a “very valuable investigative tool” that allows officers to do their job more safely and to track firearms. Tools like the long-gun registry allow officers to “investigate or walk into a situation with a little more information at hand.”

The long-gun registry, introduced in 2001 by a then-Liberal government, was put in place in an effort to reduce crime by making every gun traceable. Since its inception, the registry has created a great deal of controversy among Canadians.

It was in October 2011 that the Conservative federal government introduced legislation to scrap the registry, and, on Feb. 15, MPs voted 159-130 in favour of doing just that.

According to the RCMP, which oversees the Canadian Firearms Program and the registry, as of December 2011, there were 2,110,244 non-restricted firearms registered in Ontario, which makes up the largest percentage of the 7,107,807 non-restricted firearms registered in all of Canada.

The registry was being accessed more than 14,000 times a day.

Furthermore, more than 22,000 firearms licences have been refused or revoked by the CFP for public safety reasons, with most revocations due to court orders following a conviction, according to the RCMP.

“Obviously, we are very disappointed that the registry is gone, and that all the data that was collected since its inception will no longer exist,” Lekun said. As part of the legislation, all of the data that was collected through the registry will also be scrapped.

Two issues arise through the cancellation of the registry, he said.

First, gun owners will no longer have to register their unrestricted or restricted firearms, but also what's gone is an entire databank officers used to find out if firearms were indeed registered, or to find out if there are firearms registered to a homeowner prior to arriving on scene for an investigation. When officers located any firearms at a scene, or recovered stolen firearms, they are able to trace those firearms back to the owners.

“We understand and appreciate there are two sides to every story, and we've advocated very strongly for the past three years to retain the registry,” he said. “But, the political will of federal politicians isn't going to lead us in that direction. That is unfortunate, but we will continue to do our job with due diligence, even without this tool, but it's just a little easier to do that job when you have the registry.”

On the other hand, the registry, in effect, “makes every gun owner a criminal,” Roy Polsky, chair of Zone D for the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH), said.

He said his organization is “very pleased” with the government's decision to scrap the registry, and that it was something the OFAH had been fighting for, for a long time.

“If you want to punish someone, punish the criminals, not the people who are following the law,” he said. “(Criminals) don't register their guns, and the entire idea was overblown from the very beginning.”

Responsible gun owners must have a licence to possess and acquire firearms through a Possession and Acquisition Licence (PAL) or a Possession Only Licence (POL) and this information is readily available to officers conducting a background check on a person, Polsky said.

Polsky has been chair of Zone D for the past 13 years. Zone D has about 8,000 members, which make up an 85,000-member strong OFAH. He has been a gun owner since childhood, and said his own family was raised around firearms and learned to respect them.

“Hunters still have to take a firearms safety course, they still have to renew their licences every five years, and firearms still need to be stored safely and locked up,” he said. “The only thing that is changing is there will be no more registry.”

The registry was a waste of money and a waste of resources, he said, but it also created a lot of jobs, “and I wonder what's going to happen with those jobs now that the registry has been cancelled.”

Posted by Arron Pickard