Sun News Network on "Broken Trust: Gun Grab at High River," Royal Canadian Mounted Police break into law-abiding citizens' homes to confiscate guns

For those who haven't heard of the gun confiscation that took place in High River, Alberta may be surprised by what happened here.  Did the Canadian government use gun registration records to target people's homes?  This show is presented by Lorne Gunter.

Sun News' Brian Lilley on how gun registration leads to gun confiscation

Of course, in the US we have had a number of cases such as California, Chicago, and New York City (both now and in the past) where gun registration lead to confiscation.  Other obvious cases come from the UK and Australia, and as Lilley points out Canada.

Judge upholds most of New York's new gun control regulations, meanwhile state refuses to release information on the number of guns registered under its new law

Registration of guns has long been a goal of gun control advocates, though it has been a dismal failure where it has been previously tried.  The law is back in the news with a Federal judge upholding most of it as constitutional.  The main part of the reasoning is as follows:

In what could be the first of many court decisions regarding the law, Skretny acknowledged that “so-called ‘assault weapons’ and large-capacity magazines” may be in common use – a legal benchmark for constitutionality. 

But he also suggested the state’s regulation of those weapons and magazines is related to an important governmental interest: public safety. 

“Accordingly, the act does not violate the Second Amendment,” he said. . . .  

“It does not totally disarm New York’s citizens,” he said, “and it does not meaningfully jeopardize their right to self-defense.” . . . 

Skretny upheld those aspects of the law but rejected the law’s prohibition on loading more than seven rounds in those 10-round magazines. 

He also found other aspects of the law, including the regulation of pistols that are automatic weapons, to be unconstitutional. . . .

A copy of the judge's opinion is available here.

As explained in more detail below, although so-called “assault weapons” and large-capacity magazines, as defined in the Safe Act, may — in some fashion — be “in commonuse,” New York has presented considerable evidence that its regulation of these weaponsis substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest.Accordingly, the Act does not violate the Second Amendment in this respect. . . . 

As noted from previous experience, it is hard to believe that gun registration of any types of guns will benefit public safety.  In DC, you had this revelation:

During deposition, D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier even conceded: “It is not clear how firearms’ registration records could be used to ‘prevent’ a crime.” Other than possession offenses, Lanier could not “recall any specific instance where registration records were used to determine who committed a crime.” . . .  

From 2007 to 2013, the police seized 12,000 unregistered firearms. Meanwhile, only 36 registered guns were seized during this same period. Of those 36 guns, only 17 were involved in charges against a registered firearm owner. Of those 17 cases, only two resulted in convictions for a violent crime. Clearly, the good guys with the guns—the ones burdened by gun-control regulations—are not the problem. . . .

Assault weapon and magazine regulations also aren't going to help public safety.

Further, because the SAFE Act’s requirement that ammunition sales be conducted “face-to-face” does not unduly burden interstate commerce, it does not violate the dormant Commerce Clause. . . . 

But there is no discussion of the cost that this provision adds to ammunition purchases.  It is my understanding that on average the cost of going through an FFL to get a background check on ammunition purchases adds $85 to the average purchase, and there are also the time costs involved.  If there is a public safety benefit, it would seem that everyone benefits and then economists would argue that it would make more sense that everyone pay for that benefit.

But under intermediate scrutiny, this Court must give “substantial deference to the predictive judgments of the legislature.” . . .

At least on my reading of this decision, it appears as if the plaintiffs did a relatively poor job of marshaling their evidence.  Chris Koper, the state's expert, has worked on these issues, but it appears that it wasn't made clear that he didn't find a statistically significant benefit from the assault weapons ban or the limit on magazines.  Koper claims that New York's law will have a greater benefit than the federal law simply because it is more restrictive, but Koper never examined state level laws and the only evidence that I know of on this is mine and it contradicts his claim (see here and here).

The judge says Koper argues: "A [large capacity-magazine] is arguably the most functionally important feature of most [assault weapons], many of which have magazines holding 30 or more rounds)."  Any gun that can hold a magazine can hold one of any size. That is true for handguns as well as rifles.  This implies that all semi-automatic guns have the most dangerous feature of so-called "assault weapons."  A magazine, which is basically a metal box with a spring, is trivially easy to make and virtually impossible to stop criminals from obtaining.  Even if someone didn't have access to  The 1994 legislation banned magazines holding more than 10 bullets yet had no effect on crime rates.

Another strange statement from the judge is his reliance on Mother Jones magazine.  I have a long critique of the "research" that the judge relies on here.

The judge seems willing to accept the legislature and the governor's claim that this law advances public safety without requiring any actual evidence that is the actual case.  It seems doubtful that Skretny would have accepted a tax on newspapers based on the legislature's word that they were doing it to ensure that the public was receiving accurate information.  Contrast that with Judge Posner's decision in striking down the Illinois ban on concealed handguns and where he looked through the academic literature very carefully to show that there was no evidence of bad effects of the law.  Obviously, one can't depend on having a Judge Posner who feels comfortable looking through the academic literature.  This is something that the plaintiffs should have done for the judge and it doesn't appear that they did their job here.

So how successful has New York's new gun control law been in getting people to register their so-called "assault weapons"?  One need look no further than New York City or California (in 2013 and 1999) to see how these registration rules are used to confiscate guns.  We might never know because according to the Albany Times Union: "Gov. Andrew Cuomo's NY SAFE Act gun control law is a state secret."

. . . The Times Union recently asked how many assault-weapon owners have registered their weapons to date. 

The answer came in the form of a little-known clause tucked into the law that says the information is confidential: "State Police cannot release information related to the registration of assault weapons including the number of assault weapons registered." . . .  

Officials pointed to a section in the SAFE Act that says, "Records assembled or collected for purposes of inclusion in such (a) database shall not be subject to disclosure." 

Advocacy groups — including those that supported the gun control measure and those that took no stance — said they disagree keeping SAFE Act data secret. . . . 

The secrecy has also upset SAFE Act opponents, some of whom had earlier sought a registration total and had been denied. 

"We don't care about names or addresses (of registrants). We just want totals," said George Rogero, who heads the Orange County NY Shooters group and runs a blog on Second Amendment issues. . . . 

Gun rights advocates say they are interested in tallying registrations, in part, because with many local sheriffs opposed to the SAFE Act, they believe that only a handful of those with the grandfathered weapons will bother to register. 

No one knows how many assault-style weapons are in New York state. Shortly after the law was passed, State Police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico estimated that there could be hundreds of thousands. Others have said 1 million isn't an unrealistic number. . . .

Letters from the New York State Police refusing requests cite a section of the SAFE Act that reads: "RECORDS ASSEMBLED OR COLLECTED FOR PURPOSES OF INCLUSION IN THE DATABASE CREATED PURSUANT TO SECTION 400.02 OF THIS CHAPTER SHALL NOT BE SUBJECT TO DISCLOSURE PURSUANT TO ARTICLE SIX OF THE PUBLIC OFFICERS LAW."

But that section bans the disclosure of personal information about registrants and license holders, such as names, addresses and specifics about guns owned, not on the number of registrations conducted. The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle has this quote on Cuomo's interpretation of the law.

Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, said the position by State Police is inconsistent with the law.

"If we're talking about statistics only, not the actual records that were assembled or collected, in my opinion they're public," Freeman said. "I don't know why they would be reluctant."

It looks like the real reason for this unwillingness to supply information is for the simple reason that people aren't complying with the law.  New York gun owners vowed to defy Governor Andrew Cuomo's pet law. Many county sheriffs in the state say they won't enforce it. Some county governments not only call for the law's repeal, but refuse to even let their official seals be associated with its implementation.  A similar problem arose in Canada when it had its gun registration program.  

According to WHAM-TV Channel 13 News, the law has resulted in 1,146 people being charged with felonies.

Nearly a year after passage of the state's new gun law, dealer sales of AR-15 semi-automatic rifles have ended in New York and arrest data show more than 1,000 gun possession charges in New York City were boosted from misdemeanors to felonies. Meanwhile, 59 people have been charged statewide with misdemeanors for possessing large-capacity magazines or having more than seven bullets loaded in a magazine. Both were outlawed by the law passed last January following the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. A report from the Division of Criminal Justice Services shows only one person charged with the illegal sale or transfer of a gun defined as an assault weapon as of mid-December. The new law tightened that definition to include AR-15s. Owners may keep their older weapons but must register them by April 15.

People waiting in long lines to register guns in Connecticut with only one week left before new laws go into effect

This rule will impose big costs on gun owners and produce no new safety benefits.  From WFSB-TV Channel 3 in Hartford, CT:

There are only five more days until the new gun laws go into effect for our state, that means a dash to register assault weapons or high capacity magazines.
A long line of people stood outside of the Public Safety Building in Middletown all day Thursday to register firearms.
Specifically, anything the state considers an assault weapon or a high capacity magazine must be registered before Jan. 1, 2014.
"If they were trying to make them illegal, I'd have a real issue, but if they want to just know where they are, that's fine with me," said Charles Gillette, who was registering magazines.
"I understand why they're doing it, but I don't think it's constitutional," said Scott Boccio, who was registering guns. . . .
None of the people Eyewitness News spoke with thinks this is going to reduce gun violence. They believe it's only hurting law abiding citizens.
"If people are going to do things illegally, they're not going to be here registering their gun," said Jared Krajewski, who was registering guns. . . .

Gun registrations used to confiscate guns in New York City

This is the reason that many gun owners fear registrations.  From Fox News:

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is sending out letters telling gun owners to turn over their rifles and shotguns — or else face the consequences. 

New York City’s ban on rifles and shotguns that hold more than five rounds is now being enforced, according to a letter the NYPD is sending out to targeted city gun owners. . . .

Gun permits in Massachusetts taking almost five months longer than the law allows

The number of people getting permits has plummeted by over 86% since 1998 in Massachusetts.  But apparently that isn't enough for those administering the program in the state.  From Fox News:

. . . The Gun Owners Action League (GOAL), which represents 16,000 members in Massachusetts and is the official state affiliate of the NRA, reports that many people applying for licenses have been experiencing long delays.  

GOAL Executive Director Jim Wallace said the average time for obtaining a license is currently six months. That leaves many Massachusetts residents waiting much longer than the state law requires.  

According to state law, an applicant will be notified within 40 days of either approval or denial of the license.  

Chapter 140, Section 131 of Massachusetts' General Law states, "The licensing authority shall, within 40 days from the date of application, either approve the application and issue the license or deny the application and notify the applicant of the reason for such denial in writing; provided, however, that no such license shall be issued unless the colonel has certified, in writing, that the information available to him does not indicate that the possession of a firearm or large capacity firearm by the applicant would be in violation of state or federal law."  . . .

John Stossel special “War on the Little Guy” -- Fox News Special, Will Stossel get his gun? Saturday, Fox News, 9 PM EST

You can watch the promo for the special here.  My son Maxim produced this segment.

Canadians taking up owning long guns after the elimination of registration

This seems like a remarkably positive story about owning guns from the CBC, even if it is just for New Brunswick.

Firearms instructors are scrambling to cope with a sudden increase in demand for gun safety courses. 

Enrolment has jumped by more than 20 per cent in the past year as younger hunters and more women head into the woods and to shooting ranges. 

The end of the federal long gun registry also plays a role in the upswing, says firearms instructor Bob Kierstead. He says the creation of the firearms registry by the federal government in 1993 turned  young people away from hunting and the use of guns. 

"The very, very restrictive legislation that came in on firearms in general, and that turned a lot of the young people away from it," said Keirstead. "Too many hoops to jump through and they turned away from it. That was the big thing that we saw." . . .

Chicago ends gun registry, some notes on the debate and what the registry achieved

Something no one addresses is how many crimes have actually been solved as a result of the registry.  When I was in Chicago I couldn't get to the police department to point to a single example where the registry had solved a crime.  From the New York Times:

. . . Chicago’s City Council voted to make the change on Wednesday, modifying the municipal code to comply with a new state law that will make Illinois the last in the nation to allow people to carry concealed weapons in public. While the city’s strict bans on assault weapons and gun dealers remain, the loss of control over its own registry, in effect since 1968, was another setback for gun control proponents — this time in President Obama’s hometown, in a state run by Democrats. 

“This is an ongoing battle and struggle to make sure our laws reflect the safety our residents need,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said at a news conference on Wednesday, expressing disappointment with the “concealed carry” state law. . . . 

the gun registry database in Chicago, which contains more than 8,000 gun owners and about 22,000 firearms . . . . 

In the end, legislators enacted a law that gives full control of gun licensing to the Illinois State Police, abolishing Chicago’s gun registration and firearm permit requirements. Other changes included a block on new assault weapons bans, though Chicago was one of a dozen cities and villages to tighten restrictions during a 10-day grace period. 

Richard A. Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, said Chicago’s gun registry was unnecessary, nothing more than a bureaucratic headache for residents who wanted to protect themselves. . . .

I have no trust in the University of Chicago Crime Lab, but here is a little more detail from the Chicago Tribune.

There are now about 8,650 Chicago firearms permit holders who have registered around 22,000 firearms, according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office. That's compared with the roughly 150,000 Chicago households the University of Chicago Crime Lab estimates currently have guns. . . .

If just 5.8% of households that have guns have them legally in Chicago, how do we make sense of this statement in the New York Times piece?

“There’s no scenario where this makes the jobs of police easier,” said Jens Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, about having to repeal the registry. . . .

Here is another discussion on the recent changes in Chicago's laws.  From the Chicago Tribune:

. . . The latest changes also would eliminate the requirement that guns in a home be locked up or secured with child-safety locks. But remaining in place is a requirement that those steps be taken when someone younger than 18 is in the home, unless the owner is carrying the weapon. 

Vandermyde took issue with that too, saying state law requires those steps only when a child younger than 14 is in the home. He also said state prosecution can occur when the gun is accessed by the minor and great bodily harm or death occurs, while city ordinances allow prosecution just for not securing the weapon. 

Another point of contention, albeit one that is unlikely to come up much in the city, is the distance from a dwelling unit where hunting can take place. In state law, it's 300 feet. In the city, it's 750 feet. 

The city had modified its gun registry three years ago to require that all handgun owners get a permit. That move followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the city's handgun ban, which had in place since 1982. 

Also Monday, the council's Public Safety Committee endorsed a measure that would toughen penalties for the illegal possession of a firearm within 100 feet of transportation facilities. A first offense would carry a minimum $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail. . . . .

Professor supports registration even though there is no evidence that it meets cost-benefit test

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

a professor at Stanford Law School who has studied the effects of gun control on crime, said such a law, if passed, would have little immediate impact on crime. 

"I still like the idea of the knowledge you could get from the registry," Donohue said. "But whether it is a cost-effective, immediate crime solver, I am still a little dubious." 

Most gangs and criminals, Donohue said, "are either sending someone to Nevada to pick (guns) up, or they're meeting up with someone who went there for them." . . .

One problem with the end of his answer is that even when guns are banned in an entire country gangs are getting a hold of them.

New PoliceOne's Gun Policy & Law Enforcement Survey: Police and their views on gun control

The new PoliceOne.com survey of police and their views on gun control is available here (article is here).  PoliceOne has about 450,000 members when the survey was done.  Here is information on previous surveys as well as a piece that I wrote for the WSJ.com.

A full 86 percent feel that casualties would have been reduced or avoided in recent tragedies like Newtown and Aurora if a legally-armed citizen was present (casualties reduced: 80 percent; avoided altogether: 60 percent). . . .
In addition, the survey asked, “On a scale of one to five — one being low and five being high — how important do you think legally-armed citizens are to reducing crime rates overall?”
Three quarters of you (75 percent) answered either four or five, with more than 50 percent answering five. . . .

I find myself in virtually complete agreement with the police in answering this survey.  I am not a big fan of open carry, but I am of concealed handguns.  I agree with them on the efficacy of gun buybacks, bans on ammunition magazines that hold more 10 rounds, national databases on gun ownership, and background checks.  

The answers to question #20 are extremely important: 77 percent of officers think that private gun ownership is either extremely or very important in reducing crime.  

Question #19 shows 91 percent support right-to-carry concealed carry with a background check.

ACLU understands that the bill before the Senate next week is essentially a gun registration system

Harry Ried's bill that will be before the Senate this next week reads in part:

. . . shall include a provision requiring a record of transaction of any transfer that occurred between an unlicensed transferor and unlicensed transferee accordance with paragraph . . . .

A top lobbyist for the ACLU describes the bill to the Daily Caller this way:

“The first is that it treats the records for private purchases very differently than purchases made through licensed sellers. Under existing law, most information regarding an approved purchase is destroyed within 24 hours when a licensed seller does a [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] check now,” Calabrese said, “and almost all of it is destroyed within 90 days.” 

Calabrese wouldn’t characterize the current legislation’s record-keeping provision as a “national gun registry” — which the White House has denied pursuing — but he did say that such a registry could be “a second step.” . . .

The point is that over time the bill will record a larger and larger percentage of who owns guns in America.  It will be a gradual gun registration bill.  As the ACLU lobbyist warns:

“[U]nfortunately, we have seen in the past that the creation of these types of records leads sometimes to the creation of government databases and collections of personal information on all of us,” Calabrese warned. “That’s not an inevitable result, but we have seen that happen in the past, certainly.”
“As we’ve seen with many large government databases, if you build it, they will come.” . . . 

He comes to the same conclusion that I have come to reading the bill.

“Contrast this with what the existing [Reid] legislation says, which is simply that a record has to be kept of a private transfer,” Calabrese highlighted, “and it doesn’t have any of the protections that we have in current law for existing licensees.” . . . 

Yet, Obama denies that the bill involves registration:

"We're not proposing a gun registration system; we're proposing background checks for criminals," he said Wednesday in Denver. . . .

Though his own Justice Department claims that background checks won't work without registration.

the NRA says the memo proves that the administration “believes that a gun ban will not work without mandatory gun confiscation” and thinks universal background checks “won't work without requiring national gun registration,” according to the AP. . . .

The problem with this information is that it means the polls on background checks are pretty useless.  91 percent may claim that they are in favor of some idealized version of background checks (partly because of the false claims the president has made about 40 percent of gun sales being made without background checks and 2 million prohibited people supposedly being denied from buying guns because of background checks), but how many people support gun registration?  Some news stories note: "Opponents says they fear that universal background checks will eventually lead to gun registration."  But that is wrong.  You don't have to wait for eventually.  The would begin the registration process immediately.

Of course, registration could never lead to confiscation of guns in the US, right?  Well, it has already done so in California.

Anyone who wanted to keep one of the named firearms must have owned it prior to June 1, 1989, and had to register it by March 30, 1992. Registration gave the state a list of owners. . . .  

In August 1998, however, a California appellate court held the Attorney General could not legally allow the gun owners to register their weapons after the March 1992 deadline. That ruling came after many owners had already identified themselves by registering late. The Attorney General had led the law- fearing lambs into a trap: citizens had voluntarily informed the state that they were felons. . . .  

Then California lawmakers passed SB 23. On January 1, 2000, any Californian who possesses a magazine-fed centerfire rifle or carbine may be guilty of a felony. The 1989 law banned weapons only by their names -- the 1999 law bans all such firearms by their features (e.g. pistol grip, thumbhole stock, flash suppressor). . . .

Other examples of registration being used to confiscate guns include:

(1921) New Zealand, registration of revolvers required -- ownership allowed in the name of personal defense. In 1974, this list was used to confiscate all revolvers.
(1921) The United Kingdom instituted handgun registration. About every 10 years or so, they further restrict what can be owned and use the registration rolls to collect what is illegal.
(1967) In New York City, a registration system enacted for long guns was used in the early 1990s to confiscate lawfully owned semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. The New York City Council banned firearms that had been classified by the city as "assault weapons."
(1989) California revoked a grace period for the registration of certain rifles (SKS Sporters) and prohibited certain semiautomatic long-rifles and pistols. Upon the death of the owner, they are either to be surrendered or moved out of state.
(1990) Chicago enacted registration of long guns and used that same registration to confiscate semi-auto long guns.
(1995) Canada prohibited previously legal and registered small-caliber handguns. The guns are to be forfeited upon death of the owner with no compensation to the estate.
(1996) Australia banned most semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump shotguns, then used its list of registered semi-auto hunting rifles to confiscate all those weapons. . . .

Some polling data is available here.

Background check bill passed out of Senate Judiciary Committee has slim chance of passing full Senate

From Politico:

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a Democratic bill calling for background checks on all gun sales, which could potentially lead to the biggest change in U.S. gun laws in years. 

But the likelihood of the full Senate approving such a bill is slim because of objections from Republicans. 

The bill was approved on a 10-8 party-line vote and mandates background checks on all gun purchases and sales, including private transactions. State governments will also be able to tap into a national criminal background check system. . . . 

Without such Republican support, Democrats from conservative states are unlikely to sign on to the measure. Coburn objected to the idea that permanent records being kept of gun purchases. . . .

Issues with a Washington Post Poll that claims: "77 percent of Maryland residents who bought a gun in the past 10 years say they went through a background check"

According to the Washington Post article, 81% say that they bought a gun at a traditional gun store, but fewer, 77 percent, say that they had a background check.  Even if only half bought their guns through dealers at gun shows (4.5 percent and that is undoubtedly extremely conservative since my understanding is that the gun shows in Maryland don't even let you have a table unless you are a registered dealer), that leaves a big gap between people buying from places where we would know that they would have to have background checks and those who say that they have had a check.  81% + 4.5% would imply at least 85.5% would be in places where they would have for sure had checks, and presumably even a couple of the 10 percent who bought the guns elsewhere would have had to get checks.

From the Washington Post story:

In the new poll, 77 percent of Maryland residents who bought a gun in the past 10 years say they went through a background check; 21 percent say they did not. (Given the rarity of Marylanders purchasing guns, there is a sizable 11.5 percentage point error margin for the results among this group.)
The vast majority of buyers — 81 percent — say they made their purchase at a traditional gun store rather than a gun show (9 percent) or somewhere else (10 percent). The poll finds little correlation between location of purchase and undergoing a background check. . . .

UPDATE: Glenn Kessler was nice enough to email back and forth with me on this issue.  The WP pollster responded this way:

Your researcher’s intuition is correct, but I think slicing up the data this finely goes a little beyond the capabilities of the survey. Just over 100 gun buyers were interviewed, only 8 of whom bought from a gun show. I think the survey alone is not sufficient to conclude that there’s widespread shirking of background checks at places where they are required.    
The underlying notion is correct—some survey respondents report buying guns from traditional gun stores without background checks, and gun show and private sales don’t account for the 21 percent who report no background check. As we note in the article, “it’s not clear the people  who say they didn’t undergo background checks broke the law. The survey asked about gun buying experiences over a 10-year period, so respondent recall may be an issue. The point precision is also not exact, given the relatively small number of Marylanders who say they have purchased a gun in the past decade.”    
We are working to understand these numbers deeper, and will hopefully understand better any possible issues with recall or exemptions (law enforcement officers and military/vets are exempted from some background checks). 

This is how I responded:

Thanks very much, Glenn, though I don't think that answers my question.  I am not so much trying to get into what individual categories are as seeing whether the two totals should be somewhat roughly the same.  I am really just saying that the number of purchases through FFLs has to be significantly above 81%.  I was just trying to motivate with a simple example how much it has to be above 81%, not that I was trying to breakdown the components.  Either these stores or places didn't have checks and broke the law or people didn't understand that they were having checks done or after up to 10 years they don't really remember whether a check was done.  I have a hard time believing that the first option is true.  The results indicate to me that they are significantly biased towards making the number of sales without background checks look larger than they are. Do I have permission to share this response?  Thank you very much. 

My biggest concern about the survey is how long of a period that people are asked about purchasing guns over.

I know that shorter time period reduces sample size a lot, but my biggest concern is the 10 year time window.  All the surveys that I have been involved with indicates to me that the error rate in answers increases dramatically once you go back more than one year (possibly like what we were discussing below).  If you ask people about more than a year you will start getting them including purchases outside that window and you will also tend to get more unusual events simply because people are more likely to quickly recall very unusual events when they are suddenly asked about them.

One obvious example involves defensive gun uses.  The bigger the window that you ask people about the greater the share of defensive uses will involve people firing their gun. 

In the case of purchases, the buying of a gun is probably a much more memorable event than whether there was a background check.  People will remember the purchases, but not remember whether there was a background check that went along with it.

Note on New Zealand's long gun registry

Charles Cooke has this useful note:

New Zealand’s long-gun-registry experiment ended in failure, too. By the early 1980s, New Zealand’s National Police pleaded with that country’s parliament to abandon the system, having watched ballooning budgets lead only to a lot of wasted time and to the expansion of a system that, frankly, didn’t do anything useful. In 1983, parliament, conceding that criminals are unlikely to leave registered guns at the scenes of their crimes, complied. . . .

Canadian Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau calls long-gun registry 'a failure'

This is a pretty amazing statement by Trudeau.

. . . "The long-gun registry, as it was, was a failure and I'm not going to resuscitate that," Trudeau said while visiting the DART Aerospace plant in Hawkesbury. 

"We will continue to look at ways of keeping our cities safe and making sure that we do address the concerns around domestic violence that happen right across the country, in rural as well as urban areas in which, unfortunately, guns do play a role." 

"But there are better ways of keeping us safe than that registry which is, has been removed," Trudeau said. 

The Liberal leadership hopeful made the comments after he was asked for his view on the now-defunct long-gun registry. 

"I grew up with long guns, rifles and shotguns," explained the son of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. 

"Yes, the RCMP guarding me had handguns and I got to play with them every now and then," said Trudeau, quickly adding that the RCMP was "very responsible" around him and his siblings. . . .  

Trudeau voted against the abolition of the federal long-gun registry. . . .

The registry cost a lot of money, but didn't solve any crimes.

From 2003 to 2009, there were 4,257 homicides in Canada, 1,314 of which were committed with firearms. Data provided last fall by the Library of Parliament reveals that the weapon was identified in fewer than a third of the homicides with firearms, and that about three-quarters of the identified weapons were not registered. Of the weapons that were registered, about half were registered to someone other than the person accused of the homicide. In just 62 cases — that is, only 4.7 percent of all firearm homicides — was the gun registered to the accused. As most homicides in Canada are not committed with a gun, the 62 cases correspond to only about 1 percent of all homicides.
To repeat, during these seven years, there were only 62 cases — nine a year — where it was even conceivable that registration made a difference. But apparently, the registry was not important even in those cases. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Chiefs of Police have not yet provided a single example in which tracing was of more than peripheral importance in solving a case.
The problem isn’t just with the long-gun registry. The data provided above cover all guns, including handguns. There is no evidence that, since the handgun registry was started in 1934, it has been important in solving a single homicide. . . .

 

Canadian member of parliament resigns from NDP over gun registration issue

Interesting story about how the NDP yanked Hyer's speaking time before the House so that he couldn't make a public statement on his decision to resign.

Bruce Hyer has quit the federal New Democrats, electing to sit as an Independent member of Parliament, weeks after being at odds with his party about the end of the long-gun registry.
The decision by one of the party's northern Ontario MPs marks the second time this year the party has suffered a resignation, the first being Lise St-Denis who now sits as a Liberal. . . .
Hyer was one of two New Democrats to vote with the government to end the long-gun registry, a move for which he was disciplined. His departure leaves the NDP with 101 seats.

Washington Examiner piece: "Ask Canada -- gun registration won't make D.C. safer"

My piece with Gary Mauser in the Washington Examiner starts this way:

The D.C. Council will soon vote on a new law that would eliminate several obstacles for gun buyers -- a five-hour training course, ballistics testing, a vision test, and a ban on certain types of ammunition. But they will leave unchanged the registration requirement for gun owners. D.C. could learn a lot from Canada's decision to finally rescind its gun registry in February.Beginning in 1998, Canadians spent a whopping $2.7 billion on creating and running a registry for long guns -- in the U.S., the same amount per gun owner would come to $67 billion. For all that money, the registry was never credited with solving a single murder. Instead, it became an enormous waste of police officers' time, diverting their efforts from traditional policing activities. . . .

Some relevant links are here:

 D.C. Council panel agrees to discard some gun rules

 Fox Can't Keep Story Straight On D.C. Gun Laws

Newest Op-ed piece: Death of a Long-Gun Registry

My piece with Gary Mauser at National Review Online starts this way:

Despite spending a whopping $2.7 billion on creating and running a long-gun registry, Canadians never reaped any benefits from the project. The legislation to end the program finally passed the Parliament on Wednesday. Even though the country started registering long guns in 1998, the registry never solved a single murder. Instead it has been an enormous waste of police officers’ time, diverting their efforts from patrolling Canadian streets and doing traditional policing activities.
Gun-control advocates have long claimed that registration is a safety issue, and their reasoning is straightforward: If a gun has been left at a crime scene and it was registered to the person who committed the crime, the registry will link the crime gun back to the criminal.
Nice logic, but reality never worked that way. Crime guns are very rarely left at the crime scene, and when they are left at the scene, they have not been registered — criminals are not stupid enough to leave behind a gun that’s registered to them. Even in the few cases where registered crime guns are left at the scene, it is usually because the criminal has been seriously injured or killed, so these crimes would have been solved even without registration.
The statistics speak for themselves. . . . .

Canadian gun registry advocates cite the United Nations' Declaration on Archives

The National Post has this editorial.

In democracies, citizens are the sovereigns, not governments or government archivists. The right of a government to preserve a record should never, therefore, supersede the right of its citizens to their privacy.