Gun registry deadline passes

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-07-01 01:47pm

What makes them sure it will stop gun violence

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2003-07-01 02:36pm

Ontario Attorney General Norm Sterling has called the registry a waste of time and money.

"The best thing for the federal government would be take its loss and scrap this useless exercise," he has said.

how the heck did this grow from 2 million to a billion? geez you guys make us look good.

Happy Canada Day

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-07-01 04:14pm

Col. Crackpot wrote:how the heck did this grow from 2 million to a billion? geez you guys make us look good. Happy Canada Day

We are all wondering the same thing,thats what happened when we let lawyers run a country.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-07-01 05:03pm

Now now that's only 50,000% over budget. Perhaps fining a few hundred thousand law-abiding citizens will recoup some of those costs. Of course all the legal hassle will cost even more.

I'd oppose gun registry in America on the massive cost alone.

The Albino Raven · Post by **The Albino Raven** » 2003-07-01 09:14pm

But hey, lets not have no method of keeping track of who own which guns, so if someone wants to kill someone else, the odds of the weapon being found are almost none. Yeah, I like the sound of that.

The Albino Raven · Post by **The Albino Raven** » 2003-07-01 09:15pm

correction to above post...
let's have no method

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-07-01 09:29pm

Here`s a hypothetical question,imagine they go big brother and each time someone get killed with a certain type of gun,would they go see everyone who have that specific model to see if that weapon has been used to commit the murder?

Perinquus · Post by **Perinquus** » 2003-07-01 11:55pm

Fremen_Muhadib wrote:But hey, lets not have no method of keeping track of who own which guns, so if someone wants to kill someone else, the odds of the weapon being found are almost none. Yeah, I like the sound of that.

In the first place, there is no such registry in the United States now, and the odds of police finding the murder weapon are not "almost none" as indicated by the significant number of cases in which the murder weapon is found.

And furthermore, clearly you haven't the slightest concept of how impossible it would be to track down particular weapons via such a registry, even if one existed.

Let's say you find a man who has been shot, and they dig the bullet out to find it is of 45 caliber. Okay, that narrows it down to .45 colt, .45 Winchester Magnum, .454 Casull, .45 ACP. and will soon include .45 Glock (as distinct from .45 ACP guns, which they already make). Also, we shouldn't completely overlook obsolete calibers like .45 Schofield, and .455 Eley either. There are tens of millions of guns in all these calibers in this country. In any given locality there are likely to be thousands. BUt I rant you, most of these calibers are comparatively uncommon, and the vast majority of .45s are .45ACPs. Even if the bullet is complete enough after you dig it out of the body to identify is as definitely a .45 ACP instead of any of the other .45s out there, .45 ACP is one of the most popular pistol cartridges in this country. Chambering it are about a dozen brands of 1911 (government model) pistols, a couple of types of Smith & Wesson autos, and a couple few Smith & Wesson revolvers, as well as autoloaders from Beretta, Glock, Sig/Sauer, Taurus, Ruger, Heckler & Koch, and several other makers besides.

I repeat, we are talking about an incredibly huge number and variety of guns here, and this is just dealing with guns in a single caliber out of hundreds. How do you propose to round up all the various .45s out there and have them tested? Will the police go around to all the thousands of houses where a .45 ACP gun is registered and take them in for ballistics tests? If so, who will enforce all the other laws out there while they are tied up doing this? I don't know about you, but I would rather the police spend their limited man hours catching drug dealers, and armed robbers, and so on that pestering law abiding citizens about their guns in order to solve a single case. (Bear in mind, this would become a neverending job, since this massive effort would have to be repeated each and every time there is a murder.) Of course, you could always double the size of your police force, but the cost of the extra salary money will be passed on to you in the form of higher taxes.

And then who will keep track of all these guns? The police property and evidence staff will have to be increased about a hundredfold in order to handle the massive volumes of guns coming in for testing. And you'll also have to hire a few people to deal with the irate citizens who never get their guns back because of the inevitable losing of some of them in the bureaucratic shuffle. Look forward to another increase in your taxes to pay the extra civil servants who will be needed to staff the bureau tasked with all this.

And let's not forget the forensics lab itself. Most police labs are staffed by a handful of technicians, which will be wholly inadequate to deal with hundreds of guns flooding into their lab for testing on each case. You'll have to hire more of them too, which means still another increase in taxes.

As of 2000, the cost of implementing this registration in Canada had exceeded $350 million and the job of registering the 6 to 10 million long guns in Canada had barely started. Only about 300,000 firearms had been registered, and there was a backlog of over 80,000 registration applications. (This applies to long guns, handguns had already been registered since 1934). The U.S. has about ten times the population of Canada, and a commensurately higher number of firearms. Are you prepared to shell out all this extra money?

Oh, and let's not overlook the fact that better than 90% of the time, this effort will be totally wasted in any case, since less than 10% of murders in this country are committed with weapons that were purchased legally. In 1986 New Zealand abandoned firearms registration after requests from the police force, who found that the information was generally inaccurate, error-ridden, and could not help the police in solving crimes. It was simply a waste of their time and resources.

Even if such a national registry existed in this country, it would be so huge as to be almost useless. The police will just have to rely on the methods they have been using up to now - canvassing neighborhoods for witnesses, checking into known associates of victims, looking for people with motives to murder the victim, checking the forensic evidence (of which firearms evidence is only one part), etc. etc. etc.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2003-07-02 11:48pm

so if someone wants to kill someone else, the odds of the weapon being found are almost none.

Man oh man, are you a godsend, you just gave me a great idea! Maybe we should invent a group of people, special police officers, that investigate these sort of things! We can call them "forensics officers"! Of course, they won't be able to find out anything about ANY criminal case unless we keep tabs on EVER EXACT DETAIL of the lives of EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the planet...

Oh wait...

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2003-07-03 07:44pm

Oy...

This isn't good. As history has shown, gun registration is almost ALWAYS indicative of a widespread firearms ban or something equally as restrictive.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-07-03 08:34pm

Thirty seconds and a wire brush can defeat ballistics testing. It ruins the gun, but you'd be dumping it anyway.

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-07-03 08:39pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:Thirty seconds and a wire brush can defeat ballistics testing. It ruins the gun, but you'd be dumping it anyway.

We`ll know who to suspect when a murder is commited,and we can`t match the bullet with the gun.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2003-07-04 01:05am

Thirty seconds and a wire brush can defeat ballistics testing.

Dear lord! Oh my god! You're right! Oh, woe is we, for there is NO OTHER POSSIBLE WAY of linking someone to a crime! Oh horrors, horrors, for we, as a society, are doomed, since the ONLY WAY to link someone to a crime would be through ballistics testing!!

Oh wait...

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2003-07-05 02:24pm

:pffft:
Insert rude sound here.

If I want to kill someone with a weapon, I'll use a crossbow or long bow (yes, I am a good shot, yes I own 2 crossbows, no long bow) or a sword or a knife.

Why?

Bows: You know how easy it is to make a long bow? All you need is bow-quality string and a branch (okay, and some know-how) and there ya go. After you use it, take off the string, and burn the bow or break it up and toss the parts into the sewer.

Swords: Swords are more fun. Off course, there is the issue of them being hard to use if your target is even remotely competent.

Knifes: Small, concealable.

The current method of gun registration in Canada is a joke. A 2 BILLION dollar joke.

It won't slow criminals down, they will just find other methods of getting them.

It's sad really. That's at least 3 billion dollars the liberals wasted (I recall, but can't remember) another big 1 billion dollar waste. I think it was on a report.

Sad, Sad, Sad.