Federal MPs voted yesterday to shutter the long-gun registry, all but certainly ending one of the most ill-advised government interventions of the Jean Chretien era.
Like many such initiatives, the gun registry was an idea that sounded good in theory — especially to the cadre of activists who can be counted upon to support any intrusion of government into the lives of Canadians — but proved costly and ineffective when put into practice.
The plan was that Ottawa would force gun owners to register their weapons and pay regular fees to keep the registry up to date. This database then could be consulted by police, and thereby aid in the war against crime. The Liberal government of the time promised it could be done cheaply, at a net cost of a few million dollars. Instead, it ballooned into a $2-billion boondoggle, with most of the money going to the technology consultants who produced, and then replaced, the bungled database software used to run the program.
At the end of the day, it’s not clear that a single gun crime was pre-empted by the gun registry. Had those billions been instead put into, say, safer roads or state-of-the-art medical technology, on the other hand, hundreds, or even thousands, of lives might have been saved.
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The registry achieved its objective of making a few friends of the corrupt Liberal Party very wealthy, which in turn bought them good media and a few votes.
Not even crooked Liberals were actually dumb enough to believe the registry would ever fight crime.
So few people saw it for what it was…..a well planned and executed rip off of a few billion dollars!!!
You’ve got to give the Libranos credit where credit is due, they’re good at it.
Yet the headline in the newspaper didn’t carry a picture of a rifle or shotgun… It was a picture of a handgun which isn’t affected by this private member’s bill whatsoever. Go figure.
Depicting a handgun as such really exemplifies the stupidity and utter lack of understanding of this legislation from the very beginning by the MSM. Not only were they stupid, they were lazy because few if any of them had the slightest inclination or motivation to research the already drastic failure of similar legislation in other countries (UK & Australia for example) and report accurately. It was much easier to run with the Liberal or Wendy Cukier talking points so that they could hit the local pub on time after work. A lot of the blame for it taking this long to get to where we are today on this issue can be laid right at the feet of the MSM.
As I was reading the usual quotes from Wendy Cukier and Hedy Fry, I couldn’t help but wonder… where were the quotes from the OTHER side of the issue? Are journalists afraid to interview folks who believe Cukier and those like her as wackos?