By Michael Taube, The Ottawa Citizen December 12, 2011






With Bill C-19 swiftly moving through Parliament, the federal long-gun registry has almost fired its last shot. Many Canadians will be pleased to see this wasteful, ineffective, billion-dollar boondoggle shut down. I’m one of them.

From the very beginning, the gun registry epitomized everything that was bad about the Canadian political process. It was originally supposed to cost taxpayers $2 million, and registration fees would cover other expenses. The whole thing ballooned out of control due to massive cost overruns, and ended up costing billions.

But whether the gun registry cost a couple of million dollars or a couple of billion dollars, not a single cent should have ever been spent on this ridiculous venture. It was a prime example of government inefficiency, and quickly became a bureaucratic nightmare. It attacked the individual rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens. And it accomplished absolutely nothing.

Yes, you read that right: nothing.

The nonsense that gun control apologists have been peddling — from press releases to public rallies — has created momentary diversions, but little else. The gun registry has had no effect on bringing down crime levels, because it wasn’t the useful tool it was purported to be.

Since this is the last time I’ll ever write about the gun registry, please indulge me as I take one final pleasurable swipe at l’enfant terrible, and bid it adieu.

The Canadian Firearms Registry was supposed to register all guns in our country. But there was one major flaw: only law-abiding citizens, such as hunters and gun collectors, would ever willingly register them. These particular individuals don’t pose an immediate threat to the safety and security of our nation. Did you honestly think criminals would pay the $60 fee, renewable every five years, to register their illegal weapons? If so, shame on you. Criminals don’t follow the law, they never intended to register their weapons, and they aren’t going to stop leading a life of crime due to an idiotic government initiative.

One could argue cost overruns and significant hours spent on building, maintaining and enforcing the gun registry helped reduce the ability of law enforcement to deal with our lax immigration laws and remaining terrorist cells, which are two major potential sources of increased numbers of illegal weapons entering our borders. The gun registry had no available mechanism to target illegal weapons. Hence, the police were only holding sheets of data of legally registered long guns, which doesn’t help crack down on violent crime.

There is also the long-standing problem of illegal weapons being smuggled into Canada across the border. As noted in a November 2007 RCMP report, Current Trends in Firearms Trafficking and Smuggling in Canada, the “illicit firearms market is characterized by a wide range of criminal participants, particularly individual entrepreneurs to full-fledged members of criminal organizations. These participants drive the market, either as consumers or, occasionally, through random individual sales to other criminals.” The black market for illegal weapons needs to be stopped dead in its tracks, and the criminal elements need to be rooted out of our society. For that to happen, we need more police to spend more time monitoring this problem — and spend less time worrying about law-abiding Canadians registering their legal weapons.

That’s why Canadians of different regions, backgrounds, and political stripes opposed the gun registry. Contrary to popular belief, this was not a right-wing issue. Yes, conservatives and libertarians led the fight, but in support of property rights and opposition to wasteful government spending. The gun registry interfered in our livelihoods, hobbies, privacy, and individual liberties and personal freedoms. Many other Canadians respected those positions — either early on, or as the evidence mounted against this initiative.

For the record, I’ve never owned a gun or fired one. (I have a couple of standing offers for the latter, and I hope to accomplish this task next year.) Even so, I recognize that the responsibility of owning a gun belongs to the individual, and not the state. I’m sick and tired of gun control advocates concerning themselves over the creation of a “gun culture” in Canada, which supposedly — in their own warped minds — exists in the U.S. I’ve met gun owners across the world, and I’ve found them to be decent, honourable and conventional people. They believe in law and order, the importance of family, safety and security of western democracies, and the freedom of choice to own a gun. I support all of those views, too.

It’s not going to matter for too much longer, however. If things move smoothly, the gun registry should be eliminated before Christmas. The frivolous registry data will be destroyed, as it should be. And we’ll never have to think about this mess again.

Michael Taube, a political analyst and commentator, and former speech writer for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

It will probably be early spring.