Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The Liberal Globe and Mail In Favor of Scrapping the Long Gun Registry

Who would have known.  One of the Liberal cheerleader papers comes out IN FAVOR of killing the long gun registry.  They even go as far as exposing the cost of the registry that supporters of the long gun registry say.  Supporters say it costs just $4 million a year, not so.  The Globe and Mail reports the real cost and they admit it hasn't saved any lives either.
Proponents of the federal gun registry claim the annual cost is just $4-million, which sounds suspiciously like the $2-million cost promised when the registry was born 15 years ago.
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It’s not so. The source of this estimate of $4-million appears to be a badly written line in the RCMP’s 2010 evaluation of the Canadian Firearms Program: “ . . . the gun registration portion of the CFP has been determined, by independent sources, in terms of cost savings to the CFP, at a range of $1.195-$3.65 million for the initial year, and subsequent years will range from $1.57-$4.03 million. . ..” (Emphasis added.) The key phrase is cost savings. The RCMP, which took lead responsibility for the program in 2006, claims it is doing so more efficiently than its predecessors. Elsewhere in the report the RCMP puts the annual net cost of the Canadian Firearms Program for 2010-11 at $66.4-million.
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Is it vital to public safety? The registry did not stop James Roszko of Alberta from killing four Mounties in 2005, with his arsenal of three unregistered guns and one registered (but not to him) gun. It did not stop Kimveer Gill of Montreal from his deadly rampage at Dawson College in 2006. It did not stop Fred Preston, 70, from killing an Ontario Provincial Police officer, Vu Pham, in March, with a registered weapon. And it does not stop drug gangs in urban Canada from obtaining and using their weapons of choice – the vast majority not registered.
So there you have it. A little late but none the less the Liberal Globe and Mail wants to it gone along with the majority of Canadians.  Makes you wonder why all this whipping going on by Iffy and Jackie.  Those opposition MPs who have betrayed their constituents will pay at the polls come next election.

Could it be a prelude to a coalition of the losers like Lowell Green is speculating this morning on his program?  Is this a warm up?  It remains to be seen but I kinda think so.  The coalition never really died. It's always been there but under the radar.  I think the PM and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty are right.  It will either be a Conservative majority or coalition of the losers that we'll have to choose next election.