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by J.L. PerocchioHOW MANY FIREARMS AND OWNERS ARE THERE IN CANADA?
The National Firearms Association's figures are: 7,000,000 Canadian owners with 21,000,000 firearms. The Coalition for Gun Control (CGC) figures are about 2,000,000 owners with 6, 000, 000 firearms. Both figures agree that the average owner has about three firearms (a constant in every country). But who's right?
The CGC figures are based on a telephone poll. Many owners of firearms, jewelry, or other valuables won't admit to an anonymous voice on the phone that they keep valuables in their homes.
The NFA figures are calculated using three different methods:
1. There were 1,221,179 registered restricted firearms in the RCMP FRAS records in Dec. 1993. The unrestricted firearm to "restricted" firearm ratio is at least 20: 1. Conservatively, that means 24,423,580 unrestricted plus 1,221,179 restricted. Allowing for errors in the RCM P's registration system, we strike off 221,179 registered firearms as non-existent, which reduces the total to 21,000,000 firearms with 7,000,000 owners.
2. The government's own estimate in Dec. 1976, published as part of its gun control campaign, was 6,000,000 owners with 18,000,000 firearms. During hearings on the -Campbell bill, officials from the office of the Minister of Justice testified that the long-term average net annual importation of firearms into Canada (imports minus exports) was 190,000 per year. Therefore, adding 190,000 per year to the 18,000,000 of 1976, we get a total of 21,6 1 0,000 by Dec. 1993. Subtract 6 1 0,000 plus one firearm for every firearm manufactured in Canada during those 17 years as an allowance for firearms destroyed, dismantled or worn out -- and you are back at 21,000,000 firearms with 7,000,000 owners.
3. Restricted firearm ownership increased from 861,571 in Dec. 1984 to 1,221,179 in Dec. 93, an increase of (1,221,179 - 861,571) divided by 861,571 = 41.74 per cent in 9 years. Those figures are solid, because they are taken from the Annual Report of the C commissioner of the RCMP. The NFA estimates that the 1976 figure for total firearms owned, I 8,000,000 , increased to 2 1,000,000 by 1993. That represents a "total firearms" increase of only 16.67 per cent in 17 years, which is again quite conservative.
None of the above estimates include any figures for illegally-imported firearms, which are known to have increased sharply each time restrictive, costly, and/or vague legislation had made legal ownership more complicated, more expensive, and/or more risky.
Bill C-68 makes certain knives "prohibited weapons" which can not be imported, bought, sold or traded by anyone. That is clear, but its conditions regarding "prohibited firearms" are far less clear: They are treated like "restricted firearms" under FA s. 12 (6) and 26 (b), or like unrestricted firearms under FA s. 12(2) to (5) and 26(a), but not like "prohibited weapons."
That is curious; the "prohibited firearms" are, when in the hands of someone who is malicious, untrained or incompetent, far more dangerous than the knives selected as "prohibited weapons."
Bill C-68 proposes subdividing "prohibited firearms" into 5 groups, owned by 5 groups of owners [FA s. 12(2) to (6)], who may buy, sell and trade within each group [Fa s. 113(2) (b)]. There are provisions for similar new groups to be established by Order in Council at any time [Fa s. 12(7)], further confusing things.
Each member of the 5 groups is therefore regarded, in law, as a member of a trusted elite, while all other Canadians -- and all future Canadians -will not be trusted in the same way. It is difficult to understand the basis for that discrimination. Does it mean that C68's drafters believe Canadians are degenerating?
The 5 groups of "prohibited firearms" do not include the firearms most commonly used by Canadian violent criminals. If the firearm control provisions were intended to affect crime and criminals, that would obviously not be the situation today.
The fundamental principle of "grandfathering" is bringing The law into disrepute. On the one hand, Parliament is saying that the firearms converted to "prohibited weapon" status (either by Order in Council or by legislation) are so dangerous to society that they must be eliminated. On the other hand, Parliament is saying that those same firearms are so safe in our society that the owners can keep them until they die, and continue to buy, sell and trade them. One of those concepts has to be wrong.
It is often not possible to determine whether a particular firearm is unrestricted, a "restricted weapon," or a "prohibited weapon" simply by examining the firearm. The status of the firearm often depends upon its status in government records on one particular date. The government's own survey ("Review of Firearms Registration, TRI994-9e") proves that those records are grossly inadequate to prove anything in a court of law. Frequently, two identical firearms fall into different status categories; one is a grandfathered "prohibited weapon," and the other is not. It is not possible to distinguish between them by any physical characteristic. One can be bought, sold, traded and owned within the law; the other never can.
In such a scrambled-egg situation, it is becoming steadily more apparent that allowing the government to register firearms has the result that the government then confiscates the firearm or at least gets the owner into trouble due to the government's proven inefficiency at operating the registration system.
Kim Campbell's regime converted many firearms from unrestricted status to "restricted weapon" status, so that the government would know where they were. Almost as soon as they entered the registration system, the Allan Rock regime converted them to "prohibited weapon" status. That has been widely accepted as indicative of the overall scheme of things to come.
The cost of operating within the law has steadily risen, and it is now frequently easier, cheaper and quicker to buy illegal firearms in Canada than it is to buy legal ones. That respect for the law has declined, primarily because of arrogance, ignorance and incompetence of the government officials running the system and drafting revisions to it, is apparent to anyone directly involved.
This ludicrous state of affairs has brought the law into disrepute. it apparent to the meanest wit that the firearms control provisions or the Criminal Code are being used by the Party in power as a way to impose its simplistic social engineering theories upon Canadians.
LEGISLATION
The theory apparently is that progressive firearms control, tending toward complete elimination of all privately-owned firearms, has beneficial effects for the society. Evidence that the theory is true ranges from scanty to nil. Evidence that it reduces violent crime, suicides, or homicides proves that it does not. They all tend to rise after a wave of firearms control.
On the other hand, there is a great deal of well-researched scientific evidence that the theory is false. The office of the Minister of Justice was castigated by the Auditor General in his 1993 Report for failing to evaluate the evidence and proceeding on the basis of unsubstantiated theory. That was ignored.
It has not escaped the notice of the recreation firearms community that the few safeguards in place today are severely eroded or totally destroyed by Bill C-68. For example, the requirement to place Orders in Council before each House of Parliament for 30 sitting days has been neatly destroyed by the combination of FA s. 112(6) and CC s. 1 17.15. The objective-determination ("a kind not commonly used in Canada for hunting or sporting purposes") protection offered to hunters for their firearms by the current CC s. 84(l) "prohibited weapon" (e) has been replaced by the Minister's opinion ("in the opinion of the Governor in Council... is reasonable for use in Canada...").
If Bill C-68 passes, the Minister has carte blanche to convert any and all firearms to "prohibited firearm" status; to revoke their registration certificated under FA s. 121(2) (b); and thereby to force their confiscation as "prohibited firearms."
Three govemment documents were used in producing this paper. "Background Information on Firearms Control" (BI) was issued by the Department of Justice, and "Review of Firearms Registration TRI994-9e" (TR) was "funded by the Research Section, Department of Justice Canada"
BI says (p4) "There are an estimated 7 million firearms in Canada" and "There are 1.2 million restricted weapons registered in Canada." So there are 5.8 million firearms to be registered.
TR says, in Table 1, that it costs the federal government $38.56 to issue one registration certificate, and, in Table 2, that adding local government costs brings that to an average public cost of $82.69 per registration certificate issued.
TR also recommends using the Quebec system nationwide (p xv), which would increase the cost from $82.69 to $104.02 (Table 2).
AP shows (p 24) the new plastic card with individualized printing, magnetic stripe and bar code that will replace today's simple paper registration certificate. The necessary changes to the system include new computer hardware and a new nationwide oneuser custom computer program, to handle all firearms imports, registrations, transfers, exports, and searches. The system will give the location of every firearm in Canada at all times.
Minister of Justice Allan Rock has admitted that issuing a registration certificate under the new system will cost more than it now does under the obsolescent system. Let's be generous; let's say it will only cost $100 per certificate.
5.8 million firearms to be registered at $100 each is $580 million. Add the cost of re-issuing new type registrations for 1.2 million currently registered firearms, and you're over $600 million -- not including the costs of new computer hardware, software, or debugging the new comprehensive one-user system.
TR says (p xi) "FRAS (RCMP Firearms Registration Administration Section conducts approximately 100 traces per year... According to FRAS personnel, most tracing requests do not produce a positive trace." So, a maximum of 49 traces per year succeed.
In 1993, some 83,913 registration certificated were issued at an average cost of $82.69; total cost, $6,938,765.97; divide that by 49 (maximum!) successful traces: We pay $141,607.47 for each successful trace enough to add 5 new police officers for a year.
The firearms registration system is touted as necessary in order to allow the police to trace firearms. From the government's own figures, the police make surprisingly little use of it, and it fails more often than it succeeds.
Why is it so little used? Well, to solve a crime through the system these things are necessary: The police must find the firearm. The police must link the firearm to a particular crime. The criminal must be the registered owner of the firearm. The criminal must still reside at the address given on the registration. That is a very unlikely chain.
TR also says (p ix), "RCMP... staff have estimated that a significant number of records in the RWRS (Restricted Weapons Registration System) database contain information which is entered in non-standard form, or is stale or incorrect... retrieving information from the database requires multiple queries to address all the various combinations and permutation of firearms descriptors, with no real assurance that all possibilities have been included.
The theory of firearms registration is that 7 data fields describe a particular firearm as one of a group sharing those 7 characteristics. The one more data field "the serial number" uniquely identifies the particular firearm. "MAKE" and "MODEL" are the two most important data fields in that set of seven.
TR gives an example of the difficulties caused by the lack of any standard for data field entries (p I 1); "The unedited "MAKE" field contains 22,100 different entries; most with several variations. For example the make DRULOV (DRUZATNA LOVENA) has been entered in 31 different variants."
This has led to embarrassment in the past, as in the Anderson criminal trial. The Crown entered a sworn statement ftom the head FRAS saying, "I have made a careful examination and search of (the RWRS) records and have been unable to find any record of a valid registration certificate (for the firearm in this case)."
The defence entered a photocopy of the registration certificate, supplied by FRAS from their files, certified as a "true copy." Both documents were signed by the same officer on the same day.One wonders why anyone would want to hugely expand such a mess.
The only rational explanation seems to come from Minister of Justice Kim Campbell's 1991 Orders in Council which "converted" unrestricted firearms to "restricted weapon" status. That has been followed by Minister of Justice Allan Rock's 1994 Orders in Council, "converting" the same firearms to "prohibited weapon" status. They are to be confiscated without compensation by the government. The system is useful for confiscating property where no crime is proven or even alleged, without government expense.
Fortunately, the arrogance, ignorance and incompetence of the two Ministers' advisers have embarrassed two federal governments. Their "converting" Orders in Council are invalid for improper enactment, according to the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench.