Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced during his campaign stop in Welland, Ontario that a re-elected Conservative government will end the long-gun registry. He claims the long-gun registry to be a waste of money and that the Conservatives stand with hunters and farmers.
If we have no issues with car registrations, if we can legislate that drivers and boaters prove that they can handle their vehicles and insist they carry insurance, why should we have a problem asking gun owners to register their firearms?
Statistics does not support the suggestion that the gun registry does not save lives. By 2004, 69 per cent of suicides, homicides and accidental deaths in Canada involved long guns, a drop from 72 per cent of firearm deaths in 2001. And according to a report by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, the 2007 rate of murders with rifles and shotguns was 78% lower than in 1991, before gun control legislation.
One only need to read Wendy Cukier’s paper Firearms Regulation: Canada in the International Context to see the real dangers of firearms and the economic price of gun deaths and injuries.
Maybe some of the women who have lost their lives at the hands of their spouses/partners before gun control would be alive today because the background checks triggered by the registry meant their spouses/partners would have been refused a license. In fact, from 2006-2009, 1500 Canadians, that’s 39% of refused licenses, were refused because they were deemed a risk to others. The program revoked another 6,093 licences in the same period as a result of continuous screening, court orders and complaints to its public safety line.
That is the where the Registry is working.
So the real issue is not about the gun owners, if they are responsible or how they store their guns. It’s not about saving $2 billion dollars that has already been spent. It most certainly not about urban versus rural.
It’s about protecting the women and children who may be at risk and who live with guns in their homes.
Originally, gun registration was supported by an alliance of 350 groups, including Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Public Health Association, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, the Canadian Trauma Association, the YWCA of Canada, CAVEAT and Victims of Violence International.
The United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Commission passed a resolution encouraging all countries that have not done so to strengthen their domestic gun controls since weak controls in one country can affect security in others.
In November 2009, the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Club (BPW) of Canada, a member of the International Federation of BPW clubs, submitted a report to the committee for Public Safety and National Security on the issues of Bill C391 and Gun Control. The report can be viewed in full online at: Submission on Bill C391 by BPW Canada
The issue of the Gun Registry is supported by our many resolutions over the past 79 years on the issue of prevention of violence against women and children, which is a concern to Canadian society as a whole.
Prime Minister Harper says the those that support the long-gun registry just don’t get it. It seems that Prime Minister Harper doesn’t get it. Why would Prime Minister Harper weigh women and children’s lives and safety against an inconvenience for hunters and other gun owners?