To the editor:
Will the Liberals ever let go of their ill-conceived gun registry?
The reasoning behind the first “registry” attempt was incomprehensible, as is this one.
The first time, the Liberal government tried to place almost identical registry and ownership requirements on hunting rifles as had been in place for decades on hand guns. Considering that hand guns account for the vast majority of firearm related crime, what is the point in subjecting hunting rifles to the same registry when it apparently didn’t work for hand guns?
The reasoning defies all logic.
Also, that first attempt was “estimated” to cost $100 million and at last count it had cost taxpayers over $2 billion, and we’re still counting!
In their 2015 election platform, the Liberals promised not to re-introduce their gun registry. Instead, they have introduced bill C-71. On the surface, C-71 appears to do something about fully automatic assault type weapons, which, by the way, have been long since banned in Canada.
In the fine print they include semi-automatic hunting rifles as “assault type weapons” and ban them too.
They quote 1,500 of these assault type weapons have been banned in the new registry. In actual fact it is 1,500 different makes and models of essentially the same thing, semi-automatic hunting rifles. There are, by the way, many more identical rifles not mentioned. I guess the number 1,500 was considered sensational enough to fool the taxpayers so they stopped there.
The estimated cost of this “new” registry is a paltry $250 million. By the same margin of error as the first time around that translates to $5 billion, more or less.
On a personal level, it’s a non-issue for me. I am retired and my hunting activities are few and far between.
That said, it irks me to see useless legislation such as this taking up mountains of tax dollars that are needed almost everywhere you look.
The “gun control” advocates I have debated with typically don’t hunt, farm, hike or even leave the city and see no need for anyone to own a firearm of any kind simply because they don’t. Any initiative to lessen gun violence in Canada needs to address how to stop the flow of unregistered guns of any type coming across our borders.
Until we get a grip on that, anything else only limits firearm possession to the criminals.
The shameless use of the tragic mass shooting in Nova Scotia as an excuse to promote this Liberal initiative is unconscionable. The firearms used in this shooting spree were unregistered handguns and rifles that were purchased illegally or taken from the police officer who was fooled by the perpetrator’s disguise as a policeman.
Andrew Kendrick,
Lumby