CANADIAN SHOOTING SPORTS ASSOCIATION / CANADIAN INSTITUTE FOR LEGISLATIVE ACTION

TEAM CSSA E-NEWS - November 23, 2012

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COMMENTARY: EUROPEAN UNION PLANS TO LAUNCH FIREARMS REGISTRIES – DON’T DO IT!

Germany is trying to get out front of other EU countries by creating a national firearms registry by January 1, 2013. The Canadian Shooting Sports Association and the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action (CSSA/CILA) combine to offer some friendly advice as a courtesy to the German people in an open letter:

Dear German voters:

CSSA/CILA notes with alarm and dread that Germany is planning to create a firearms registry.

In the wake of the obvious failure of these databases elsewhere in the world, we can only conclude that German government officials may have imbibed too liberally at Oktoberfest! Creating a new registry is a colossally bad idea. Canada has proved that laying a piece of paper beside legal guns is not a public safety measure. It can only create financial havoc that the EU can ill afford. After much sober second thought, the Conservative party in Canada recently scrapped the firearms registry conceived by the Liberal party 20 years ago. The database was designed as a public relations ruse to get the Liberals re-elected, and they successfully duped millions of Canadians into believing it would reduce gun crimes. Of course, it did nothing of the kind. That’s what your government is doing to you now.

A gun registry isn’t capable of reducing crime. Canadians mourned a horrible tragedy on December 6, 1989 when a crazed assailant killed 14 women with a hunting rifle at a college in Quebec. Then he shot himself. The Canadian media still writes about it every year on December 6, which has made the attacker very famous. Canadians felt helpless and demanded that the government do something to prevent it from ever happening again. The Liberal government decided to try to go after all sporting long-guns, instead of targeting criminals. The Liberals blamed the guns! They told gun owners to contact them with a list of their guns or they could go to jail. Needless to say, the criminals didn’t comply. The only people who registered their firearms were the law-abiding sport shooters, farmers, hunters, trappers and collectors, but they were never part of the problem.

Then another tragic college shooting took place in Quebec. Fifteen years after the gun registry had been introduced, another crazed gunman injured 19 people and killed two more. Some people believe he did it so the media would make him famous, too. And it worked! Canadians were shocked because the government promised that the registry would prevent mass shootings. But, slowly the people realized that criminals don’t register guns and even registered guns can be abused. That’s when most Canadians admitted that a gun registry is useless. There are still a few people who seem to believe it somehow keeps them safe, including most of the members of Parliament in our two federal opposition parties. They say they’ll start a new registry if they’re elected, but after 20 years they still can’t provide any evidence that it enhances safety. Most Canadians now realize that opposition MPs are just trying to scare us into voting for them.

The Liberal government said 20 years ago that it would only cost $2 million to create a national computer database to match up all the long-guns in Canada to an individual and their address. They were way off. After 20 years, it has cost more than $2 billion, which is a hundred times more than the original estimate. Our national police force has even admitted that computer hackers have found out where the registered gun are located. After our registry was scrapped, the CSSA/CILA invented the Great Canadian Gun Registry Shuffle, so everyone could legally swap guns and prove the data is antiquated.

Canadians are quite similar to Germans in some ways, especially when it comes to doing what their political masters tell them. We are both law abiding peoples and usually obey our laws – even bad ones. But a gun registry is such an useless public safety measure that many people either ignored the law or didn't know it applied to them. That why more than half the rifles and shotguns in Canada have never been registered.

If you allow your politicians to create a registry, you will deserve the hideous expense to taxpayers and unfairness to responsible gun owners. Canada tried it. New Zealand tried it. It doesn’t work, so we scrapped it. If it is ever introduced here again, it is doubtful that most firearm owners would comply. Your police officers will pretend they need a registry to prevent and solve crimes, but don’t buy it. The Liberal government admitted that they only want police and military personnel to have guns. Perhaps that why the German leadership wants to know where your guns are located. Just in case they decide to confiscate them some day.

Hope you don’t mind us sharing our gun registry experience with you. In the meantime, if you ever find evidence that a registry can work as a public safety component, please let us know. No one here has found a shred of evidence after 20 years.


Regards and hoping you demand better from your legislators,

--The folks at CSSA/CILA

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YOUR MEMBERSHIP DUES ARE NOT ENOUGH: If you want to defend your right to own and use a firearm -- if the freedom to hunt and shoot is important to you -- then you need to support CILA, the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action. CILA defends your firearms rights on Parliament Hill, the United Nations, in provincial legislatures and in courtrooms across Canada. Be part of the solution. Please support CSSA-CILA today by donating here: http://www.cdnshootingsports.org/membership.html

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GERMANS TO “INCREASE SECURITY” WITH NEW REGISTRY: The German interior minister has said a countrywide database of all legal gun owners is set for launch on January 1. Hans-Peter Friedrich predicted a "considerable increase in security" as a result. The German government plans to launch its complete registry of legal gun owners at the beginning of next year, two years ahead of a deadline set by the EU. As with many German authorities, those responsible for weapons licensing and tracking operated on a local basis - with a total of 551 authorities around the country. Under new EU laws, all member countries are obliged to compile a centralized register. There are an estimated 6 million licensed firearms in Germany.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told reporters in Berlin that the database would provide "a very concrete contribution towards improving public safety." Thanks to the information, he said; police would be able to check "who owns which weapons legally, across the entire country," perhaps more quickly than in the past. Friedrich also praised the relevant German agencies for setting up the system ahead of schedule. "With this Germany is one of the first member states to fully comply with the demands of the EU guidelines," the interior minister said.

Jörg Ziercke, the head of Germany's federal criminal investigative agency, the BKA, said at Monday's presentation that particular gains would be made in investigations where time was of the essence. He told reporters that in the worst case scenario, it used to take three or four months to discover where a weapon came from, whereas soon it should be just a click away. The January 1 version of the database is only the first, watered-down database documenting only the legal registration of firearms. The upgraded registry should eventually document historical information like weapon producers, dealers, importers and any previous private owners.

The GdP trade union representing many of the country's police officers welcomed the development, while saying that it was a little overdue. "With this, an old demand from the GdP has been fulfilled. It took a long time, but the technical implementation was quite a challenge," the union's national chairman, Bernhard Witthaut, said. A sister police officers' union issued a similar statement, saying its officers had long lobbied for swifter access to information on firearms. (Deutche Welle – November 19, 2012)

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FIRE AT GABRIOLA CLUB RAISES QUESTIONS: A "suspicious" fire that burned the Gabriola Rod, Gun and Conservation Club to the ground this weekend could feed into negative feelings already surrounding the controversial property, says the island's fire chief.

Club members found the charred remains of their clubhouse Saturday when they went to practise at the range. There had been no prior reports to the Gabriola Fire Department of a blaze and the rubble was "stone cold" by the time investigators arrived.

Fire chief Rick Jackson said the fire likely started 48 hours before it was discovered, and would have been difficult for nearby residents to see because the property is surrounded by trees.

The investigation has been handed over to the RCMP. Jackson said the building had no electrical wiring and the propane was turned off, making the cause "suspicious." The fire, which razed the club kitchen and "irreplaceable" trophies and photographs, horrified club members, and Jackson said he feared it could increase tension between the club and residents.

The property has been a source of controversy, with residents recently launching a civil suit against the B.C. government and the gun club over "war zone" noise they claim has caused them fear, anxiety and property damages. The club had been implementing mitigation measures in response to complaints. (Nanaimo Daily News -- November 22, 2012)

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GUN SHOW: Sunday, November 25 at Markham Fairgrounds -- 10801 McCowan Rd, Markham ON. 7:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. For more information please call Allan at 416-579-4944. Other upcoming shows can be seen at www.ontariogunshows.com

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IS AMMO DANGEROUS IN A FIRE?– WATCH THE VIDEO: Here’s a great video on how cartridges, shotgun shells and black powder react in adverse conditions. Presented by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute. Fire fighters learn they have little to fear: http://www.saami.org/videos/sporting...irefighter.cfm

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OY - MORE IDIOTIC T.O. STAR COVERAGE: It was a quiet death. Two weeks ago, with no fanfare and no formal announcement, the federal Conservatives oversaw the end of the long-gun registry. All that the Mounties kept was information on long guns held in Quebec, until a court challenge by that province to keep the data is settled. Now, just as quietly, along comes the long-gun registry's obituary in the form of the annual report for 2011 on the firearms program. Vic Toews, minister of public safety, tabled the document in the last hour on the last day before Parliament rose for the Remembrance Day break. No speech. No announcement. It wasn't posted on either his website or the RCMP's.

Each year, the annual firearms reports became subject to fierce vetting by the public safety minister's office. This one was the slimmest volume yet. It is scrubbed of many of the past references to how useful the registry was to police. Yet it gives one last glimpse of just that. It reports that annual police usage of the firearms registry rose steadily since the Conservatives took power. In fact, it nearly tripled. And despite consecutive amnesties offered by the Conservative government that removed the threat of criminal sanction from those who declined to register their weapons, the number of guns Canadians registered rose. As of the end of 2011, the overall registry contained data on 7.8 million guns in Canada - most of which were 7.1 million non-restricted rifles and shotguns. That's 189,522 more non-restricted weapons than the previous year.

The number of daily queries by police also rose. In 2011, Canadian law enforcement agencies queried the Canadian Firearms Registry Online an average of 17,778 times per day. Indeed, the latest available statistics that were published for the third quarter of this year on the RCMP's website show those police queries continued to rise throughout 2012 to an average of 18,555 a day. The annual numbers suggest police usage grew as the Conservatives actively pursued the registry's legislative death in a bill that passed late last spring. In 2007, police queried the online firearms registry 2.5 million times. By the end of 2011, that number had reached 6.5 million. The 2011 report explains these were not automatic queries that were merely the result of casual police checks of the Canadian Police Information Centre or CPIC, as Conservatives often claimed. Rather, they were deliberate queries by frontline officers... (By Tonda MacCharles – Toronto Star – November 16, 2012)

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THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

The CSSA is the voice of the sport shooter and firearms enthusiast in Canada. Our national membership supports and promotes Canada's firearms heritage, traditional target shooting competition, modern action shooting sports, hunting, and archery. We support and sponsor competitions and youth programs that promote these Canadian heritage activities.

To join or donate to the CSSA, visit: http://www.cdnshootingsports.org/membership.html

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CANADIAN SHOOTING SPORTS ASSOCIATION / CANADIAN INSTITUTE FOR LEGISLATIVE ACTION
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