Canada’s Gun Registration Scheme Continues to Fall Apart

According to this Toronto Globe and Mail article, the province of Newfoundland becomes the latest to refuse to prosecute gun owners who do not register their firearms. Newfoundland follows New Brunswick, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. That’s six of the 13 provences, plus the provence of Nunavut which has a large population of Inuit not legally required to comply with the registry.

When C-68, the law passed requiring registration of all gun owners and all long guns (handguns having been registered since 1934), it was sold on the idea that it would cost C$119 million, but revenues from the registration fees would offset all but C$2 million. When the actual costs were investigated by Canada’s Auditor General in 2002, she found that the projected cost would be in excess of C$1 billion – and she couldn’t be sure of the actual amount because there was a lot of accounting done in an apparent effort to conceal the actual costs. On top of that, the data in the registry is highly suspect, they’ve had severe computer problems, and at a minimum at least 1.6 million shotguns and rifles (of the government estimated 7.9 million) and 200,000 gun owners (of a government estimated 2.3 million) were not registered by the deadline.

But none of this keeps the American gun control groups from proposing that we implement a registration scheme here, where we have an estimated 80,000,000 gun owners and 270,000,000 firearms.

And a Second Amendment.