Gun Registry Seperatism

The Quebec government, stubbornly, is considering passing a long-gun registry of it's very own if Ottawa turfs the federal one.

How quaint. How wonderfully "autonomous". The Feds don't want to continue the war against Canadian Red Necks then Hell! - we'll show those Anglophone Bastards and make up one of our own!

Quebec has every right to do whatever it pleases, but Quebequers would do well to pay attention the facts before they give King Charest their blessing to create a Provincial Registry:

• Since the registry's mandatory implementation in 2003, a grand total of a whooping 47 registered firearms have been used in homicides out of 2441 (less than two percent). It's obvious that criminals aren't stupid enough to register their firearms.(link)
• The registry was originally budgeted to cost a net 2 million dollars. In reality (although the total costs are unknown) actual costs are known to be well over 2 billion dollars according to most estimates. That's at minimum an average of 43 million dollars per registered firearm homicide. Putting it in other terms, that at least 36 RCMP officers a year per registered firearm used in a homicide that we could have hired (or 1700 RCMP officers total). The waste in money is staggering.
• The non-compliance rates have been absolutely horrendous. Regardless if you accept gun advocate numbers of a 70% non-compliance rate or the Liberals 10%, the fact remains that several extentions of registration deadlines were made for good reasons. 70,000 firearms at minimum remain unregistered in this country. This failure can't be ignored.(link)
• The registry has had no effect on homicide rates, total suicide rates, or any other indicator. Registry advocates will no-doubt point to declining homicide rates since the 1990s as proof the registry works. Yet these same statistics were already declining by similar amounts before registry implementation. Nothing has gotten any better since the registry was passed. The registry has been ineffective in the truest sense of the word.(link)

In short the registry has done nothing except to waste taxpayer dollars that could have been spent doing things that could have actually reduced crime. It's treated Canadian hunters living in rural areas like criminals by placing them on a national registry - a distintion reserved for among others child molesters.

I can understand the need to do something to respond to the horrible attack that happened at the Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. However the registry has done nothing to prevent further such attacks from happening.

A far better approach to avoid future similar school shootings, would be to invest in better mental health iniatives, and other crime prevention measures that actually work.