Brian Rahilly of the Dawson College Gun Control Coalition says getting rid of the registry is not in the interest of Canadians. Tony Bernardo of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association says the registry is nothing but an endless sinkhole of money.
And I found Linda Duncan's twin, sort of. First off, let me state that Linda Duncan, NDP MP in Edmonton, is going down to defeat next election. She just supported the gun registry, does she have a tin ear, does she only listen to the lefty university students she used to teach? Does she realize that she represents ALL people in her riding? I don't think so, she likes to slam the oil sands, Alberta's meat and potatoes.
Twins separated at birth? Not quite, she wants ethics and honour, something Duncan has yet to learn. Watch the clip, this is what will sink Duncan. The NDP showed neither ethics nor honour in their gun registry vote. Linda Duncan will be held to account by the voters in her riding, and she will only have herself to blame for getting the boot! Plus, if we boot her now, no gold plated pension for her!
To: Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security
Re: Bill C-391 - Countering Ten Misleading Claims
Executive summary
Bill C-391 is a simple and straightforward bill that proposes to dismantle the long-gun registry for non-restricted long guns, nothing more. Bill C-391 leaves in place the rest of Canada's gun control regime, including the requirement to obtain a licence, the screening of applicants, the requirement to register restricted and prohibited long guns, the need to take and pass the firearms safety course, and the rules on safe storage and transportation of firearms.
The evidence demonstrates that the repeal of the long-gun registry will not reduce public safety in Canada and may even improve it. After a brief review of the arguments, I examine and rebut the key points in the Coalition's letter sent to MPs on October 20, 2009.
The statistics provided here clearly shows that the long-gun registry has not been effective in reducing criminal violence and most especially that it has not saved lives. The multiple murders by shooting that have occurred since the registry was put in place prove that it is a waste of time and money.
Bill C-391 deserves support because the long-gun registry has failed to protect Canadians from gun violence and diverts vital police resources away from more effective efforts. In her report to Parliament, the Auditor General of Canada found that the long-gun registry cost taxpayers at least one billion dollars; later research doubled this estimate. She also noted that the Department had been unable to substantiate whether the long-gun registry had increased public safety or saved lives, which is surely the standard by which any success of the program should be measured.
Every one of the claims made by Ms Cukier made in her October letter to oppose bill C-391 is false or misleading.
In response to the misleading claims made by the Coalition for Gun Control, please consider the following information:
Claim #1: Access to a gun increases the risk of murder.
False: Canadian gun owners are less likely than other Canadians to commit homicide.
Claim #2: Rifles and shotguns are the weapons most likely to be used in domestic homicides.
False: The problem is the murder of family members, not the means of killing. Rifles and shotguns are not the weapons most likely to be used in domestic homicides. Knives are.
Claim #3: Spousal murders with guns have fallen threefold since the law passed, while spousal murders without guns have remained the same.
False: Spousal murders (with and without guns) have slowly been declining since the mid-1970s. There is no empirical support for the claim that the long-gun registry has reduced spousal murders. The long-gun registry was not begun until 2001.
Claim #4: Stronger gun laws have helped reduce gun violence.
False: Ms Cukier's letter begs the question of the effectiveness of gun laws against crime. She is deliberately confuses the date the long-gun registry began with the date the legislation received royal assent.
The rate of homicides committed with a firearm generally declined from the mid-1970s to 2002. This steady, long-term decline has been driven by economic and demographic changes. However, the use of firearms in homicide has increased since 2002.
Claim #5: Firearms stolen from legal owners are a significant source of crime guns. Registration is essential to prevent dangerous individuals from getting guns.
False: All studies of crime guns (or guns used in murders) agree that stolen registered firearms are infrequently involved.
It is the criminal record check, which is part of licensing, and certainly not registration, that stops criminals from getting guns legally. Bill C-391 will not change the current provisions for obtaining a firearms licence. Registration simply refers to the firearm, not the owner.
Claim #6: Firearms pose more problems in smaller cities where there are more gun owners.
False: Homicide is a particularly acute problem in large cities where ironically there are fewer legal gun owners.
Claim #7: The registry is an essential tool for police when taking preventative action and when enforcing prohibition orders to remove firearms from dangerous individuals.
False: The long-gun registry does not contain information on a gun's location. The registry only contains descriptive information about the registered guns.
Rank and file police members do not find the registry useful. In approaching dangerous situations, the police must assume there is a weapon.
Claim #8: The gun registry is consulted by police 10,000 times a day and provides important information.
False: Almost all of the "inquiries" are routinely generated by traffic stops or firearm sales and are not specifically requested; nor do police often find them useful. Almost all of these inquiries involve licensing, not the long-gun registry.
Claim #9: Polls show Canadians believe the gun registry should not be dismantled.
False: Two recent polls show that the public does not support the long-gun registry. This is consistent with at least 11 earlier polls, all of which have clearly demonstrated that the Canadian public has no faith in the long-gun registry or its ability to increase public safety.
Claim #10: Stronger gun laws have helped reduce gun-related death, injury, violence and suicide.
False. No properly designed study has been able to show that gun laws have been responsible for reducing criminal violence rates or suicide rates in any country in the world.
More police officers and better technologies are more effective routes to improving public safety.
In sum, the test of any governmental program should be whether it meets its goals. In this case, the long-gun registry has failed. It has failed to save lives. It has failed to reduce murder, suicide or aggravated assault rates. The long-gun registry continues to cost Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars each year. This money could be better spent on other more useful law enforcement measures, or be directed towards a number of other key priorities for Canadians such as health care.
OTTAWA–Gun-control advocates say they are horrified and fearful that Canada's long-gun firearms registry is on the verge this week of being scrapped because the Conservatives may have enough support from the opposition to kill it.
Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, says her organization has been monitoring the progress of a Conservative private member's bill to abolish the registry and is now bracing for it to clear an important vote in the Commons on Wednesday.I would provide a link to Coalition for Gun Control, but I find it a creepy, still living in the 80's, blame everyone but the criminal site. You can find it for yourselves if you feel compelled to go there. It's about as enjoyable and biased as Rabble.
In his advice, Mr. Graves could hardly have been more blunt. “I told them that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin.”
OTTAWA - The minority Conservative government is in full opposition mode over a Liberal MP's private member's bill that would allow immigrant seniors to qualify for Old Age Security after spending only three years in the country.
Under her proposal, Ms. Dhalla said, immigrant seniors who have lived in the country for three years would qualify only for partial OAS benefits of $38.77 a month -- nowhere near the maximum payment of $516.96 a month collected by native or foreign-born residents who have lived here for 40 years.
Drawing on research conducted by the Library of Parliament, Ms. Dhalla estimates 32,000 immigrant seniors would benefit if her proposal was implemented, for a total cost of $300-million a year (BUT COULD NOT SAY HOW SHE REACHED THE NUMBER?? Nope they only say that about Ms. Finley).
Ms. Finley put the cost at $700 million, but could not say how she reached the number.
StewK, Wednesday, Sep 30, 2009
The math in this article is odd. Ms. Dhalla says that the cash outlay is about 38$/month, yet she also says that the cost for 32,000 people is 300Million$. The latter comes out to about 10,000$ per year by her next estimate (a long way from 38$/month). The conservatives have come up with double the liberal estimate. As a senior tax payer, I'm fed up with all these politicians who cannot do basic math.
Ms. Finley's department said later in a statement the $700-million is based on a 2008 estimate by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions that cutting the qualifying period to three years would add 93,421 beneficiaries to the OAS rolls. Of those, 85,449 would qualify for the Guaranteed Income Supplement for Canada's poorest seniors, as well as a top-up for pensioners who do not receive the full OAS pension.
