EDITORIAL: Gun control - The great deception

Toronto Sun
September 15, 2006

The gun registry didn’t stop Kimveer Gill from carrying out his shooting spree at Montreal’s Dawson College. The three weapons he used were all legally registered, according to sources. And even if they hadn’t been, so what? All that would have shown is that criminals don’t usually register their guns.

The real issue here — despite calls from all the usual suspects to revive our near-extinct gun registry in the wake of this tragedy — is that the registry isn’t designed to prevent random, violent gun crime. That includes these latest shootings in Montreal and innumerable ones in recent years in Toronto.

Canadians were despicably misled by the previous Liberal government when it set up the registry in the mid-1990s and blew $2 billion on it, after claiming it would cost $2 million net.

The Grits pretended the long-gun registry (handguns have had to be registered since 1934) would help prevent a repeat of the 1989 Montreal massacre in which 14 women died.

This was nonsense. Gun registries don’t deter such crimes.

Click here to read this excellent editorial in its entirety.