[blue]that it won't work..this will remove it.[/blue]

MAY 14, 2002 THE STARPHOENIX (SASKATOON)
Grit's gun registry joke beginning to hurt

Les MacPherson

The StarPhoenix
It was funny when the gun-control geniuses in Ottawa registered a hair dryer as a firearm.
It was funny when they registered an electric soldering gun as a firearm.
It was not so funny when they registered three pump-action shotguns and a 9-mm pistol to Canada's most infamous gangster.
That would be Maurice "Mom" Boucher, the Montreal biker boss who was put away last week for ordering the murders of two prison guards. Boucher was leader of the Montreal-based Hells Angels chapter blamed for Quebec's bloody
biker wars. His organization was the primary target of Ottawa's new anti-gang legislation.
Boucher has all the credentials you'd expect of an infamous gangster. His criminal record includes a three-year term in prison for armed robbery and two years for sexual assault. In 1995, he was convicted on a firearms charge
after police found an unregistered handgun tucked into his belt. He served six months and was still on parole for that offence when a police wiretap recorded him advising another biker to beat a mutual enemy with a baseball
bat. The murder charges for which he was eventually convicted had been pending since 1998. On top of all this, he was purportedly running the country's most dangerous criminal organization.
Even so, it came out during Boucher's latest trial that when Quebec police raided his home in the spring of 2000, they found the aforementioned shotguns and pistol, all duly registered by federal firearms authorities.
That they hadn't registered Boucher's blow dryer and soldering gun is to their slight credit.
With Boucher's record and his national notoriety, you'd think he'd be the
last guy to qualify for a firearms licence. There is no more recognizable criminal in the country. How could he pass the requisite security check?
What is the point of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a gun registry that accredits a gangster facing murder charges?
No explanation has been forthcoming. Justice Minister Martin Cauchon, minister irresponsible for the gun registry, refuses to answer opposition questions about Boucher's licence. To do so, the minister explained, would
violate Boucher's privacy rights.
It is a sad day for Canada when the federal justice minister hides behind the privacy rights of a murdering gangster. Sad, but typical.
By any objective measure, the Liberal gun registry is a disaster. It can't identify a notorious gangster. It can't distinguish a blow dryer from a Beretta. Still, the governing Liberals insist that the registry is working
as promised to make Canadians safer.
The evidence says otherwise. It cries out otherwise. We were told, for example, that the registry would cost about $85 million, total. The actual cost is $690 million, so far. Costs are continuing to add up at the rate of
about $100 million a year. For that kind of money, you'd think someone would at least read the applications.

Meanwhile, the registry has simply lost track of tens of thousands of applications from harmless duck hunters. They are now vulnerable to criminal charges for failing to comply. You have to look back to the old Soviet Union
to find bureaucratic bungling on this scale.
We were told that police personnel would not be diverted to the gun registry. But 161 RCMP personnel have since been so diverted. What are the odds that not a one among them has ever heard of Mom Boucher?
We were told that gun registration would not deter legitimate gun owners.
But the regulatory cost of owning a hunting rifle is now up to $279. And sales of migratory game bird hunting licences are down by a third after nine years of Liberal gun control. It's as if they set out to out to eradicate
hunting. That might explain why duck hunters have to register while sex
criminals do not.
We were told that gun registry would be secure. And so it is, if you're Mom Boucher. Otherwise, security has been problematic. RCMP computers containing gun registration information have been breached more than 200 times. The
information could help criminals identify homes where they could steal guns.

The error-riddled registry is of less use to police. They don't trust it. They don't even use it. That's why Quebec provincial police didn't know about Boucher's legally registered guns until they actually found them. In
this case, as in most others, the registry might as well not exist.
The same cannot be said of the hundreds of millions of wasted dollars. That
money could have been spent on cancer research or twinning dangerous highways. Instead, we get cynical Liberal lies and criminals with licensed
guns.
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going up. Incase anyone needs a good laugh.[V]