zipperhead_cop said:
As for the "lawful gun owners get picked on because they are easy to find" comment by GreyMatter, I disagree. I personally know of many people whose permits expired, or moved without notifying the Registry and didn't get charged or lose their weapons.
And I know of many who were screwed over completely. A firearms owner in the Toronto area suffered a break-in during an absence a year or two ago. It took the thieves almost two days to cut into his safe, which exceeded the minimum requirements by far. His treatment by the police was abysmal. Jonathan Login was hunting groundhog with a .22 near his rural home in the Barrie area a couple of years ago. Somebody spotted him and phoned the OPP to inquire if it was legal to be carrying a gun in the area. The dispatcher merely passed this on as a gun call, rather than providing all of the information available to her. Mr Login was met in his driveway by the OPP and arrested at gunpoint. He was strip-searched in his driveway in front of his family and in full view of passersby. One of his young children suffers from a significant chronic illness and requires hourly medication. The whole family were denied access to their home, even for the purpose of retrieving required medication, until he consented to a search of his home. He was subsequently cleared of all charges and the arresting officers and their detachment (Alliston, I believe) were heavily criticized by the judge for their conduct.
An expired licence does not mean that one can simply renew and carry on. If one's licence expires, all of one's registrations are revoked. For those grandfathered to own certain categories of firearms, that ends that grandfathering and the firearms are stolen by the government with no compensation.
It's not so much the police picking on firearms owners, although there are numerous examples of that happening across the country, but the legislation and many of the bureaucrats running its various organs, and governments at all levels as a whole.
Many of my friends have been police officers, I have worked with RCMP, OPP, and other police forces in my military career in a variety of capacities, and I have flown in two six-month police helicopter trials. While I personally and professionally support police, I no longer trust them because of our current firearms legislation and their duty to enforce it. Millions of other firearms feel the same. Whereas we used to invite police to shoot on our ranges with us and just plain hang out together, that now happens way less than it used to. This legislation and its predecessors has driven a wedge between the recreational firearms community and the police. We do not trust you any more, and that is not good for anybody.
zipperhead_cop said:
However, it is nice when I am en route to a violent domestic to be able to run a quick check and see if I'm going into a firearm equipped home.
So far as my opinion on the registry, I can't see any reason to not be able to find out who owns a gun from its serialized information.
Do you REALLY believe that? REALLY?
A check of the registry will show one of two results for a particular address: there are firearms registered to somebody there or there are not. If it shows that firearms are registered there, this means that either there are legally-owned firearms present, there are no firearms present, and/or there are illegally-owned firearms present. If it shows that there are no firearms registered there, this means that either there are legally-owned firearms present, there are no firearms present, and/or there are illegally-owned firearms present.
Huh? Same thing, either way.
An owner of non-restricted firearms may possess them at home. He may be away on a hunting trip with all of his non-restricted firearms, or travelling to a competition on the other side of the country. He could have lent, rented, or leased any or all of his non-restricted firearms to somebody else with a PAL or POL for an indefinite period, and that person could have lent, rented, or leased them onward ad infinitum. There is no obligation or legal requirement to inform the police of CFC in any transfer of possession, just for a change of ownership. Possession and ownership are not the same thing.
An owner could be visiting the target address, with his firearms, so even if no licensed owner resides at that address and no firearms are registered to any occupant at that address, legally-owned firearms could legally be present and the registry would neither know nor be able to tell you.
And then there are the illegally-owned and unregistered firearms that may or may not be present.
As far as the serial number claim goes, firearms do not necessarily have unique serial numbers similar to VINs (Vehicle Identification Numbers). They were/are applied at the whim of the manufacturer or in accordance with blocks assigned by the purchasing agency in the case of many military or police organisations, and have been frequently duplicated. German military practice, for example, was to assign a simple four- or five-digit serial number, starting at 0001 or 00001 each new year. Each factory did exactly that, so every year a dozen or more factories would stamp "0001" on the first K98K coming off of the line. To uniquely identify each individual weapon of each type, the factory code and year of manufacture has to be considered as well. Only serial numbers on the "frame or receiver" count, as that is what legally constitutes the firearm according to law. Many have them stamped into the barrel, which is an uncontrolled spare part and can be changed without having to notify the CFC, and many completely lack a "frame or receiver". The system can only ignore Cyrillic and Chinese markings. Many older firearms have no serial number at all on any part. The Lieberal government's solution was to issue sticky labels with a Firearms Identification Number - they were oblivious to the existence of such things as cleaning solvents and oil.
The registry tells you nothing useful at all, cannot, and never will be able to.
If a check of an address shows nothing, do you relax more when you go in, or maintain the same level of caution?
At the ranges within a home, is a gun-wielding crazy any more dangerous than a knife-wielding one? Not from what I've heard, from many, many coppers.
And that's not even accounting for the horrendous error rate within it. Registering firearms accurately is virtually impossible no matter how much effort and money is thrown at the problem.
None of the claimed reasons for maintaining an incomplete and inaccurate registry make any sense when examined logically and thoroughly. They wouldn't even if the abomination was complete and accurate, either.
A licensing system will tell you if a resident is a lawful firearms owner, and that is far simpler than a registry. It still doesn't tell you where any given licence-holder happens to be, though - just like a driver's licence cannot tell you where its holder is at any given moment.
I used to support licensing of firearms owners, but no longer do for a variety of reasons.
There are currently about 186,000 people in this country currently under firearms prohibitions or who have had licences denied or revoked. The system makes no attempt to track them. It focusses, instead, upon almost three million licenced owners and a further two to four million otherwise law-abiding citizens who, for whatever reason, chose not to comply. None of these people are a threat, including the paper criminals, yet the proven threats are not tracked. They are exempt from the system, and invisible to it. They do not have to report a change of address or open their homes to warrantless searches or face jail time as we do. They can acquire firearms far more easily and quickly than any of us can, and frequently do. I've read so many articles in newspapers over the last few years wherein it was reported that the murderer, robber, or rapist was armed with a firearm despite a prohibition order.
A far simpler, cheaper, and more effective solution would be a firearms-prohibited persons registry combined with a certificate of competency similar to the old Firearms Acquisition Certificate for prospective owners. Instead of "inspections" (the Firearms Act's term for a warrantless search of the residence of a law-abiding firearms owner) of honest citizens' homes, "inspections" can be made at the homes of people prohibited from possessing firearms. I'd bet real money that might have more of an effect on crime as well as officer safety than the current abortion - which is zero at best.
zipperhead_cop said:
I'm sure when a gun owners home gets broken in to they appreciate getting their weapons back when a bad guy gets caught with it.
We know of no cases where a firearm was returned to its rightful owner under such circumstances. Usually, the owner is charged regardless of the measures taken to secure his firearms and has his collection seized and put on public display, and his name and address splashed all over the newspapers. A central registry is not required in order to return other forms of stolen property either. This is an enormously expensive method of even trying to do so. Occasionally, owners have been successful at getting their property returned to them, usually in damaged condition thanks to lack of care by the police, through lengthy and expensive court action following an unjustified seizure.
As I said earlier, none of the stated/claimed reasons for blowing huge sums of money on a registry make any sense when thoroughly examined. The only remaining (and unstated) reason is to facilitate mass confiscation. That is not paranoia. It has occurred in many other countries, and it has occurred here on several occasions. The pattern is to move previously non-restricted firearms into the restricted category and require them to be registered. At some later date, some of those are then declared prohibited. Sometimes these firearms are confiscated outright with no compensation, and sometimes owners are grandfathered. As those owners cannot pass these firearms on to their children and, as there is a steadily reduced market as the grandfathered pool ages and dies, they cannot sell them, their value has essentially been reduced to zero and ultimate confiscation is assured. There is no justification for any of this. Theft is theft, whether done through government whim backed up by police, or non-uniformed thugs acting for themselves. The personal violation is exactly the same.
This is why universal registration is so alarming, and why approximately half of all firearms owners in this country refused to comply: the government can only take what it knows about, and it will only dare to attempt universal confiscation if all firearms are in the system. The kind of mass non-compliance that we have seen virtually guarantees that no such thing will happen for at least many years to come.
I do not want the government to know what I own. I don't trust it.
zipperhead_cop said:
FYI, we don't need stronger penalties for firearm offences. They are pretty harsh now. What we need are judges that are willing to give them out (or even abide by the mandatory minimum sentences) and that would be a nice start.
On that we completely agree. A criminal in jail can harm nobody, and his guns, knives, and poisons become irrelevant.
Punish the crooked, and let the honest citizen actually enjoy the rights and freedoms that he/she thinks that he/she has and should have.
zipperhead_cop said:
Also IMO there is no reason for the general population to be permitted to carry concealed weapons.
Nor is there any reason NOT to.
There is only one reason required in a truly free society to own or do anything, up to the point where it infringes upon the rights of others: "because I want to". You don't have to do so if you do not wish to, but nobody should be telling anybody who is not a threat and who demonstrates competency what they can and cannot do so long as they present no danger to others.
In the case of concealed carry, the standard suggested by the NFA is the same standard applied to the RCMP: if a citizen meets the same standard of firearms competency and is screened to the same level as an RCMP member, then an ATC should be issued.
If that standard is adequate for the RCMP, who are nothing more than citizens with training and special clothes when it comes right down to it, then it is adequate for John Q Public. If it's not good enough for John Q Public, then it's not really good enough for the RCMP either.
zipperhead_cop said:
Again, nothing against the legit gun owners.
Nothing against cops, either. You are, however, an agent of the government. I have learned not to trust the latter, and unfortunately that therefore extends to the former, ie you, in certain matters.
zipperhead_cop said:
But imagine a situation where bad guy sees legit gun owner with a piece strapped to his hip. He waits until buddy goes to the parking lot, smashes him over the head from behind with a bottle and steals his piece. Now I have yet another gun on the street to worry about.
Which is one of the beauties of CONCEALED carry - "bad guy" cannot tell whose head to smash.
The other beauty is that "bad guy" doesn't know whom he can murder, rob, or rape with impunity either. This is why, even only with the average 2-3% of eligible US citizens carrying concealed, violent confrontational crime drops when jurisdictions allow concealed carry. Anybody could be a threat to the criminal, not just the handful of special citizens in uniform who can be easily avoided.
And you have more than enough guns "on the street" (I'm really tired of that cliche) anyway. A couple more, presuming that this would happen, would not really make a difference. The vast majority of handguns recovered in crimes have never been registered.
It's simple supply and demand. Supply is awfully hard to choke off. We haven't done it with drugs, which are consumable and smell interesting to trained dogs, and we'll never do it with guns that last forever with a minimum of care and smell like any other lump of metal. Demand can be reduced: jail violent criminals and drug traffickers for lengthy periods.
It's the CROOKS "on the street" on whom we should be focussing, and not inanimate objects and honest folk.
zipperhead_cop said:
If your day to day life is so off the rails that you need a gun to defend yourself, perhaps review your life choices or apply for one through the existing laws (ACT III as mentioned).
My life circumstances, beyond the fact that I own a variety of property and a small amount of money and credit cards that may be attractive to robbers, have a wife and daughter, and may at some point happen to be in a place where a crime might be committed regardless of what I do, are immaterial. I don't have open vats of gasoline scattered about my house, yet I have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and insurance against fire and other perils. I also wear and/or use a variety of other forms of protective equipment when appropriate, and carry life insurance.
A firearm is merely another form of protective equipment - or else why do you carry one?
And if YOU can carry one, why, given the same training and screening, can I not?
Do you not trust your fellow citizen? Why not, deep down?
The answer to that says more about you than it does me. Examine your prejudices, please.
What other equipment commonly used by police should we not be trusted with?
Cars? Far more complex a piece of machinery than a simple firearm, and far more deadly "on the street" in the "wrong hands" (another tired cliche), yet the peasantry are permitted to own as many as they want and can afford and use them in public with no more than basic and usually sensible rules.
