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Gun editorial misses mark

Dear Editor: Irrational public policy debates like the long-gun registry interest me. In my view, your recent editorial trashing the Conservatives for abolishing the registry is seriously misleading (Safety catch, Oct. 26, North Shore News).

Dear Editor:

Irrational public policy debates like the long-gun registry interest me. In my view, your recent editorial trashing the Conservatives for abolishing the registry is seriously misleading (Safety catch, Oct. 26, North Shore News).

You claim that police won't know if there are long guns in a house post-long-gun registry. This is misleading: Police will know in the case of law-abiding gun owners because they have a "gun licence" (PAL or POL) which officers can check from their cars. But post-long gun registry, as today, if the homeowner is a criminal, police will normally have no such information; criminals don't register guns or get licences. My friends in law enforcement tell me that they must assume every house has firearms for that reason.

Police will no longer be able to return stolen guns, you say. Wrong. Having lost a legal, 1,000-plus-dollar gun, the owner won't report it stolen to the police?

You quote Statistics Canada data indicating that 43 people were killed with long guns in 2009 and imply that a registry would have saved lives. How would a long-gun registry prevent long-gun deaths when a handgun registry (which has existed since 1934) did not stop the 112 handgun deaths in 2009? You fail to report that of the 43 long-gun deaths, at least 20 were by illegal weapons (and hence non-registerable), and do not report suicides, which if not done by gun, are usually done otherwise. These statistics are not supportive of your argument.

You trash the Conservatives for being "blind to the evidence, deaf to professionals and motivated by unexamined ideology." Unbelievable! In its 77 years, the short-gun registry has totally failed to stop criminal use of short guns.

The federal Liberals, needing to be seen to be addressing the 1989 Montreal tragedy, brought in long-gun registration to stop long-gun crime. Isn't insanity described as trying something and, when it fails, trying the same thing again? That is what the Liberals did, and what many others continue to pursue.

John Hunter

North Vancouver