The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police unanimously passed a resolution supporting the federal firearms registration in Windsor earlier this week.
A Private Member’s bill proposing to eliminate the long-gun registry will be up for a third reading sometime next month and OACP first vice-president and Thunder Bay Police Chief Bob Herman said scrapping the gun registry at this time would be ill advised.
“In Canada, police officers check the registry more than 11,500 times per day,” he said, adding in Thunder Bay, officers use the registry on a regular basis especially for cases involving domestic violence and when dealing with individuals with mental health issues.
Herman said someone with a mental health issue like dementia could have firearms they registered prior to the onset of the disease; police could check the registry and remove those firearms to ensure a safe environment for that individual.
As for domestic violence situations, Herman said they have many examples where the courts ordered a person to turn their firearms over to the police.
“We get a few of the firearms but upon checking the registry we realize the person owns more firearms and therefore are able to retrieve those firearms and increase community safety and the safety of the individuals effected by that situation,” he said.
Some critics of the registry argue that registered firearms aren’t used in most violent crimes and the registry is a burden to hunters and farmers. Northwestern Ontario Sportsmen’s Alliance executive director John Kaplanis said believes the gun registry does little to stem violent crime.
“The whole time that gang violence and shootings occur in downtown streets of Toronto, duck hunters and farmers are being held accountable for legally owning firearms and I think that’s’ where the real crimes is being committed,” he said. “These people aren’t the problem; it’s the people using guns to commit violent crime and accessing these guns illegally and committing crimes with them.”
While Herman said it is true a lot of crime is committed with illegal firearms, most murders are committed with long rifles.
“The fact that whether they’re registered or not registered, in my mind, probably wouldn’t prevent some of those crimes, but at the end of the day we’re talking about community safety here,” he said. “I have a really hard time seeing why people would object to registering a firearm when you have to register your car and any other number of things you may own when it fact it does contribute to community safety, does enable the police to do their job more effectively and I can’t see any valid reason for scrapping it.”
Kaplanis said instead of the registry they’d like to see a focus on harsher punishment for those convicted of crimes using guns and licensing for firearms is something the Alliance would like to see.
“This still provides a database for police officers to track those who legally own firearms,” he said. “You can’t regulate criminal use of handguns and long guns. Clearly the justice system in Canada has to shift focus from the gun registry back onto sentencing.”
Herman said there are a couple of misconceptions some people have about the firearms registry. One is the cost.
“The RCMP took over administration of the registry in 2005,” he said. “They do it very efficiently and very effectively and they do it for about $4 million a year. At the end of the day, it doesn’t cost a lot of money when you look on the grand scale – we’re talking an entire country here – to maintain a registry.”
People often criticize the process as being complicated and lengthy. The chief said he just had to register a firearm and it was one of the easiest things he’s done.
“Those criticisms aren’t valid anymore,” he said. “They have been at the time (the registry was created) but steps have been taken to make it more efficient.”
