Canada’s controversial firearms registry requires all gun owners to be licensed by January 2001, and all firearms registered by January 2003.
However, the registry has experienced huge cost overruns and has negative consequences for all Canadians’ individual freedoms, says a new study by Canada’s Fraser Institute.
Although polls find over 80 percent of Canadians support registering firearms, public opinion shifts when people realise it will cost them, as taxpayers, a significant amount of money, or that it will divert government resources from more desirable programmes. Support drops to 50 percent when respondents are told it might cost $500 million to register firearms; it drops to around 40 percent when the trade-off is a reduction in the number of police officers.
Canada has adopted several increasingly restrictive firearm laws, either restricting access to firearms, or prohibiting and confiscating arbitrary types of ordinary firearms. But there is no evidence they have actually reduced violent crime.
Source: Gary Mauser, Misfire: Firearm Registration in Canada,>Public Policy Sources No. 48, March 2000, Fraser Institute, 4th Floor 1770 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC, V6J 3G7, (604) 688-0221.
For study http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/publications/pps/48/index.html
For more on Gun Control http://www.ncpa.org/pi/crime/crime51.html
