Canada`s Long-Gun Registry

CAW Briefing Notes on
Canada’s Long-Gun Registry
A short
History of Canada’s Long-Gun Registry:
•
On December 6, 1989, the worst, gender-based, mass killing in Canadian history occurred when a gunman walked into
an engineering class at L’École Polytechnique in Montreal and murdered 14 women. The horrific reality of that tragedy
was an awakening. In the days that followed, grief and shock turned to anger, and that anger mobilized a movement dedicated to a safer society for all Canadians.
•
In 1995, the government introduced the Firearms Act, Bill C-68, which included both licensing and registration provisions for
all gun owners in Canada. After a highly publicized struggle, the Act received royal assent on December 5, 1995.
•
The Harper government has noted, repeatedly, its intentions to dismantle the long-gun registry – most recently in the 2011
Speech from the Throne.
•
In 2009-2010, the federal Conservative government tabled three bills (C-301, S-5 and C-391) each with its own variations,
but all geared toward scrapping the requirement to register rifles and shotguns.
•
In the wake of their majority government win, the federal Conservatives – under Stephen Harper – have indicated the new legislation to scrap the registry will be tabled in the fall of 2011.
The
Facts on Gun Violence and the Long-Gun Registry:
Any gun in the wrong hands is potentially dangerous and all firearms should be regulated to reduce the risk of
misuse, and to ensure accountability and responsibility.
•
Rifles and shotguns are the firearms most readily available and those most often used in spousal homicides, suicides and to
kill police officers. They also figure prominently in workplace violence. For example: in March 2010, a disgruntled employee suspended from his job at an Edmonton car dealership opened fire with a shotgun and killed two employees before turning the gun
on himself; in 1999, four employees were killed by a former employee armed with a high-powered hunting rifle at the OC
Transpo bus yard in Ottawa.
•
Rural communities have high gun ownership rates and it is there that women, children and police officers are most at risk of
firearm death and injury.
•
Rifles and shotguns, also known to many as ‘family guns’, are the firearms most often used in family violence. A gun does not
have to be fired to inflict psychological damage. A study conducted between 2005 and 2007 on rural domestic violence in
Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick found that two thirds of women who indicated that there were firearms in their home
said knowing about the firearms made them more fearful for their safety and well-being. Women were more likely to express
concern for their safety when the owners of these firearms were not licensed, and the firearms not registered or safely stored.1
The
Evidence is compelling that stronger gun control laws result in safer communities:
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In Canada, the rate of death involving guns is the lowest it has been in over 40 years. In fact, 400 fewer Canadians died of gunshots in 2007 compared to 1995, the year the Firearms Act was introduced.2
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Public health studies have assessed the impact of the Firearms Act and estimated that this law has led to 250 fewer suicides
and 50 fewer homicides annually.3
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Murders with rifles and shotguns have decreased dramatically, from 61 in 1995 to 29 in 2009.4
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The rate of women murdered with firearms by their intimate partner has decreased by 69% since 1995.5
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Since the long-gun registry and its related requirements for safe storage of guns were introduced, youth suicide rates by
firearms have declined in relation to suicide rates by other means.6 The Canadian Paediatric Society and the Canadian Association of Adolescent Health have argued that the significant decline in suicides is due to an increased sense of personal
responsibility and accountability on the part of gun owners who know that registration links them directly to their firearms,
reducing impulsive access to firearms to those at risk.
•
Strong firearm controls reduce the risk that legal firearms will be misused or diverted.
•
Police access the long-gun registry 14,385 times per day across Canada, on average.7
•
The President of the Canadian Police Association, Tom Stamatakis, recently reaffirmed that the long-gun registry, like other
police databases, is a valuable tool to keep communities and officers safe.8
The
Importance of Canada’s Long-Gun Registry:
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If owners are licensed but their guns are not registered, there is no way to prevent them from giving or transferring their guns
to an unlicensed, dangerous individual. The link between licensing of firearm owners and the registration of firearms was
affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in its unanimous decision (2000).9 As few as six different public inquests have maintained the importance of licensing and registration to prevent tragedies.
•
Without the information contained in the registry it would be nearly
impossible to prevent dangerous people from keeping or getting access
to firearms.
“
A license tells us a person
can have a gun. The
registry tells us what guns
that person has. There is a
huge difference – a
difference that could put
the lives of citizens and our
officers in great danger.”
•
The long-gun registry is an essential measure to enforce prohibition
orders, and taking preventative action when there is a risk of domestic
violence, or suicide in the household.
•
Front-line crisis workers including rural women shelter workers and
emergency physicians have testified that police consult the long-gun
registry to remove all firearms from potentially deadly situations and
deliberately search for the presence of firearms in the home when they
are called to a domestic violence incident.
•
Victims’ advocates, including the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of
Crime, have argued the long-gun registry is a tool that can reduce gun
crime and prevent further victimization.
•
The registry aids police investigations. For example, a recovered registered shotgun helped police apprehend a suspect in a bank
robbery in Thunder Bay, Ontario. In Mayerthorpe, Alberta two men were identified and convicted as accessories to the murder
of four RCMP officers, in part because a registered rifle was left at the scene of the crime. While the gun registry did not prevent the tragedy, it did provide a useful tool to help police bring criminals to justice. The registry has also supported the
prosecution of gun-related crime by providing data to support almost 18,000 affidavits between 2003 and 2008.10
Thunder Bay Police Service Chief
Robert Herman
•
•
By ensuring gun owners are held accountable for each and every firearm they
possess, the registry enforces the legal obligation to report lost or stolen guns. It
also encourages safe storage, which helps reduce gun theft and the diversion of
legal guns into illegal markets and criminal use. The long-gun registry allows
police to trace firearms easily to their rightful owner, a potential lead for investigators searching for a suspect following a violent occurrence.
Through the procedure of registering firearms, police are in a position to differentiate between legal and illegal firearms, allowing them to identify trafficked
or smuggled firearms and charge individuals with illegal possession of illicitly
acquired firearms.
Facts on the
Did You Know?
Shortly after the shooting at
Montreal’s Dawson College
in 2006, the gun registry
allowed police to remove
firearms from a potential
copycat in Hudson, Quebec.
Costs of the Long-Gun Registry:
•
Ending the program now will not refund the investment to set it up. The money has been spent. The auditor general reaffirmed
at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU) parliamentary committee hearings on Bill C-391 in
May 2010 that the program is now well managed. The bulk of the costs of the Firearms Program are for licensing gun owners
and screening them for risk factors of violence and suicide. Eliminating the long-gun registry will not give us that money back,
nor will it save billions of dollars in the future.
•
The costs of maintaining the registration of rifles and shotguns are modest. An independent cost-benefit analysis for the RCMP
has estimated that scrapping the registry would save between $1.5 million and $4 million per year.11 Comparatively, police
associations have given evidence that it is approximately the cost of a complex murder investigation and public health advocates have argued that it is dwarfed by the annual costs of firearm death and injury, estimated at $6.6 billion annually in 1995.
•
Since 2006, the government has waived fees associated with gun licence renewal, estimated at $21 million in lost revenues
in 2011 alone.12
•
Scrapping the long-gun registry will also have a cost and the government has yet to provide estimates on that. Previous Conservative bills included provisions that would eliminate the need to record gun sales at the point of purchase (provisions that
have been in place since 1977) and would destroy the current registration records of 6.9 million non-restricted firearms. Ensuring that only the non-restricted firearms (long-gun) entries are deleted from the gun registry will be costly, requiring manual
combing of Canada’s 1,848,000 licensed gun owners’ files, one line at a time.
Support for the Long-Gun Registry:
•
Recent polls have shown that two-thirds of Canadians support the long-gun registry.13 Even in rural areas, the vocal gun lobby
does not speak for most rural residents as supporters equal opponents in numbers.
•
A Leger Marketing poll showed that people living with gun owners were more likely to support the registry (47%) than
oppose it (36%).14
•
Police, public safety, crime prevention, women’s organizations, and others support the existing gun control law, and maintain
that it contributes to public safety.
•
Much of the opposition to the long-gun registry is based on misinformation. Since 2006, the Conservative government has
relentlessly opposed the long-gun registry and used every tool at its disposal to undermine it. For example, it has suppressed
critical evidence on the program, its efficiency, and its costs by holding back reports. The RCMP officer responsible for the gun
registry was removed from his job after he publicly defended it.
•
The government continues to renew an amnesty for gun owners who have not yet registered their long guns, even though the
registration requirement came into effect in 2003. The government’s ongoing amnesty allows gun owners to continue to break the
law despite the fact that the House of Commons passed a motion in 2009 asking that it end.The amnesty seriously weakens public safety, degrades the data contained in the gun registry, and prevents charges against individuals with unregistered guns.
Long-Gun Registry – An
Investment for Women’s Safety:
The CAW views gun control and the long-gun registry, specifically, as a public safety issue, and also as a women’s issue. Our members’ lives do not begin and end in the workplace, and we recognize that the long-gun registry has made our country a safer place
for women and children.
Women are a small percentage of gun owners, but they account for a high percentage of victims of gun violence. Women’s safety
experts and front-line shelter workers maintain that the interests of all women, rural and urban, are not being served by abolishing
the gun registry.
As specialty workplace union representatives, our Women’s Advocates, along with other front-line workers, are too familiar with
the cycle of intimidation and violence against women and children in their homes. As they can attest, an abusive partner with unrestricted access to firearms significantly increases the lethality risk. Our Women’s Advocates are very aware of sisters in our union
trapped in the escalating cycle of abuse and have provided evidence where the police have been involved and registered guns have
been removed from the hands of violent abusers, eliminating a significant risk factor of femicide for those women.
The long-gun registry is the only tool that provides information on how many firearms must be removed from a dangerous spouse.
Before taking the definitive step of scrapping the long-gun registry, compromises designed to address the concerns of certain gun
owners should be reviewed extensively to ensure that they do not also compromise public safety.
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Doherty, D., Hornosty, J. (2007) Exploring the Links: Firearms, Family Violence and Animal Abuse in Rural Communities. Fredericton, NB: University of New Brunswick
Family Violence on the Farm and in Rural Communities Project.
Hung, K. (2000) Firearm Statistics. Supplementary Tables. Ottawa: Research and Statistics Division, Department of Justice.; Statistics Canada. (2010) Mortality Summary
List Cause (2006). Ottawa: Statistics Canada.
Lavoie, Michel, Pilote, Ruth, Maurice, Pierre, Blais, Étienne. (2010) Brief Submitted to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security
Concerning Bill C-391, the Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act. Québec: Institut national de santé publique.
Kwing Hung,“Firearms Statistics Updated Tables,” January 2006; Sarah Beatty and Adam Cotler,“Homicide in Canada 2009,” Statistics Canada, Juristat Vol. 30, no.3, October 2010.
Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Homicide Survey.
Dr. Katherine Austin, Canadian Paediatric Society, Testimony at SECU, May 27, 2010.
RCMP, Canadian Firearm Program. (2011) Facts and Figures (October - December 2010).
CTV Powerplay, May 12, 2011.
Reference re Firearms Act (Can.), [2000] 1 S.C.R. 783
RCMP, (2010); RCMP, Canadian Firearms Program. (2009) Commissioner of Firearms 2008 Report. Ottawa: RCMP.
Peter Hall for RCMP Canada/ Canadian Firearms Program. (2009) Risks and Benefits of Proposed Firearms Legislation. Ottawa:PLEIAD Canada Inc.
MacCharles, T. “Conservatives give up $21 million in waived gun fees,” Toronto Star, March 25, 2011.
“Two-thirds of Canadians back long-gun registry: poll,” National Post, October 5, 2010.
Leger Marketing, December 2009, margin of error ± 2,53%, 19 times out of 20.
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