Gun registration leads to gun confiscation

By Dean Rieck

Gun control advocates see gun registration as a benign and commonsense means to create a safer society. Pro-gun advocates see gun registration as a nefarious and senseless infringement on Second Amendment rights that invariably leads to confiscation.

Who is right? We are.

Gun registration has always been a back door to gun confiscation. Just look at what our neighbors to the north did recently.

According to CTV News Toronto, Toronto police have spent months knocking on doors and seizing guns from gun owners. Yes, you read that right. Police have been going door-to-door taking guns from ordinary citizens on the pretense that these citizens are not storing their guns properly or that they are not in compliance with a registration scheme.

From the article:

The latest crime prevention project by Toronto police took aim at registered gun owners who opted to give up their firearms.

Police have seized about 400 guns since March after knocking on the doors of registered firearm owners.

Many of these owners had their guns stashed in the closet or in a drawer though a condition of their registration mandates that all firearms are securely stored.

Police did not lay any charges but seized hundreds of weapons.

"I think we've created a safer situation," said Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair. "This is very much an anti-violence measure. This is very much intended to prevent crime and make our city safer."

An anti-violence measure? What violence are police talking about? Certainly not violence by the people who had their guns confiscated. These people had a gun in their home to protect themselves from violence, not to cause violence. Are police afraid that these gun owners might cause violence against burglars and rapists? Did they consider that they are actually making the city safer for true criminals by eliminating the only practical means of self-defense victims have?

The police chief claims that " ... 30 per cent of guns taken off the streets from criminals have been stolen from registered gun owners." Really? If that's so, how will taking guns from peaceful people prevent guns from getting into the hands of criminals? Will 400 fewer guns in homes affect criminals in any way?

The fact is, true criminals have endless sources for guns. If they can't find them in one place, they'll get them in another. This gun seizure was nothing but a PR stunt to create the illusion that police are doing something about crime.

The police chief also says that there have been "259 people shot in 2009" to date. But who were those people getting shot? I'd like to see those statistics in more details, because I'll bet they resemble U.S. shooting statistics which show that victims tend to be other criminals. And even if we assume that shooters are only shooting innocent people, how will taking guns from law-abiding citizens prevent this? Since criminals can gets guns anyway, doesn't gun confiscation merely create more helpless targets?

This is an old story. It happens around the world and has even happened in the United States. It is the reason that those who support gun rights should never forget that gun registration serves only one purpose: to create an easy means of gun confiscation and violation of the basic human right of self-defense.