It is, actually, one of the scandals surrounding the Liberal party. That and the so-called Sponsership scandal which wasted a heck of a lot of money. The gun registry has been seen to be a big expensive failure. I'd have to look up the numbers, but hereabouts it has come up in the news many times. At any rate, it has cost many millions of dollars and note changed gun violence at all. It is the same now as before and, simply put, the system itself is ridiculous. I recall a few years back someone was able to register their glue-gun - make: Black and Decker; calibre: 120volt. Granted, this might be Canada... and I suppose such a silly error in the system sounds stereotypically Canadian. But nonetheless, the gun registry as it exists is an expensive failure... that is indisputable. The only thing that might be up to question is whether a better system might be more effective.
However, I must say one thing further. I'm not certain on your numbers regarding other countries. I've heard it said quite the opposite in fact: that Britain, after instituting gun control, saw a rise in handgun violence, rather than a decrease. Whether or not it is lower compared to the US is irrelevant. What must be looked at is the pre/post figures. Unfortunately I don't know them myself firsthand, and in that assertion am taking a friend at his word.
See, to say 'this country has this many shootings' and compare it to the US is not a logical assertion to make. There might be other factors involved, including cultural (you might not like racial stereotypes, but certain races are more prone to violence than others... I mean, Germans are considered belligerant not without cause, and I say that as someone with mostly German blood myself.) Just because Japan has a low instance of shootings doesn't mean this is due to gun control at all - perhaps they are more prone to injuring themselves rather than others (I've heard their suicide rate is alarmingly high), which would be a cultural mindset, ie. take it out on oneself before others. No, that is a flawed way to look at gun control stats Lord J. What you really have to do is look at them pre/post in a given country, ie. what were the rates before the institution, and then after. Otherwise you're not working in a closed system. See, for any sort of logical input-output test one must have one changing variable, one responding, and the others fixed. If you change countries as the changing variable you're including a host of extra changing variables that can mess up the response. You have to keep as much constant as possible, ie. eliminate possible cultural factors. The best way of doing this is to keep the country and culture the same, and only change that singular factor of gun control, and then see the outcome.
And, from that perspective, I've heard it said that in fact gun control only has the effect of making gun violence worse. Then again, that was told to me by a friend who is very much in favour of guns, so as much as I respect his opinion, I can't be 100% on it. Nonetheless, it is a statement worth making, and should be investigated from that angle, because simply comparing countries provides misleading data.
Okay, don't blast me for referring to Wiki for the Canadian gun registry, but
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_gun_registryIt essentially says what's been in the papers all along, and the public views on the matters. It's cost us 2 billion dollars, and there still was that school shooting in Montreal not too long ago. If that is not absolute proof of its failure, it sure provides one heck of a crack in its solidity.
And here is for the UK. Again, sorry for the Wiki, but if it's wrong, show me the before/after stats that disprove it. This is just backing up what my friend told me:
In 2005/06 there were 766 offences initially recorded as homicide by the police in England and Wales (including the 52 victims of the 7 July 2005 London bombings),[15] a rate of 1.4 per 100,000 of population. Only 50 (6.6%) were committed with firearms, one being with an air weapon.[16] The homicide rate for London was 2.4 per 100,000 in the same year (1.7 when excluding the 7 July bombings).[17]
By comparison, 5.5 murders per 100,000 of population were reported by police in the United States in 2000, of which 70% involved the use of firearms (75% of which were illegally obtained).[18] New York City, with a population size similar to London and similar firearms laws with almost all firearms prohibited to normal citizens (over 7 million residents), reported 6.9 murders per 100,000 people in 2004.[19]
The rise in UK gun crime is a long term trend that is apparently unaffected by the state of UK firearms legislation. [20] Before the 1997 ban, handguns were only held by 0.1% of the population,[21] and while the number of crimes involving firearms in England and Wales increased from 13,874 in 1998/99 to 24,070 in 2002/03, they remained relatively static at 24,094 in 2003/04, and have since fallen to 21,521 in 2005/06. The latter includes 3,275 crimes involving imitation firearms and 10,437 involving air weapons, compared to 566 and 8,665 respectively in 1998/99.[22] Only those "firearms" positively identified as being imitations or air weapons (e.g. by being recovered by the police or by being fired) are classed as such, so the actual numbers are likely to be significantly higher. In 2005/06, 8,978 of the total of 21,521 firearms crimes (42%) were for criminal damage.[23]
Since 1998 number of people injured by firearms in England and Wales has more than doubled[24] from 2,378 in 1998/99 to 4,001 in 2005/06. "Injury" in this context means by being fired, used a blunt instrument, or as a threat. In 2005/06, 87% of such injuries were defined as "slight," which includes the use of firearms as a threat only. The number of homicides committed with firearms has remained between a range of 46 and 97 for the past decade, standing at 50 in 2005/06 (a fall from 75 the previous year). Between 1998/99 and 2005/06, there have been only two fatal shootings of police officers in England and Wales. Over the same period there were 107 non-fatal shootings of police officers - an average of just 9.7 per year.[25]
If that is correct, then the institution of gun control in the UK has done at best nothing, and at worst made it worse. What is your response to this assertion?
