The perverse policy of the gun registry
By: Barry Cooper
Calgary Herald
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
Every time the Canada Firearms Centre
is in the news, its credibility diminishes. Whether it is an expose of bureaucratic
incompetence at managing the computer system leading to the permanent extinction
of the records of thousands of registered guns or the sending of an angry
letter to a dead man, rebuking him for failing to register hunting rifles
that had long been sold by his family, nearly every story about this billion-dollar
fiasco provides another reason to scrap the entire project.
The latest stories concern a typical
administrative cover-up and an even more typical administrative screw-up.
In response to the scathing report by the Auditor-General, which among other
things detailed the half-million dollars spent on hospitality and $13-million
on travel, the bureaucrats have apparently hidden their spending in other
departments.
The registry was supposed to track
stolen guns, which are disproportionately in the hands of criminals. So far,
the bureaucrats have been able to trace about 4% of guns stolen in the country.
There has always been a deep well of
emotional support for the gun registry. TV images of armed killers are powerful
and compelling, and politicians get the message that something must be done
to make society safe again. Since murderers are usually portrayed as children
or otherwise ordinary people (even though they are much more likely to be
habitual criminals who graduate from lesser crimes to armed robbery and murder),
the politician who wants to appear to be doing something can always restrict
access to weapons. In short, criminal violence causes gun laws.
An important result of registering
weapons and restricting ownership is to make advocates feel good about themselves,
a kind of therapeutic narcissism for the timid. These supporters of the registry
all along assumed that guns caused people to die and that, because every
life is infinitely precious, the cost means nothing. "If one life is saved,"
such people say, "it's worth it." For individuals in the grip of powerful
emotions, evidence is beside the point. However touching such exquisite concern
for human life may be, it makes no practical sense.
The real issue is not the infinite
preciousness of human life, but limited human resources. Accordingly, the
real policy question, as most commonsensical critics of the federal gun registry
have said from the start, is whether a billion dollars spent on something
else would result in even more infinitely precious lives being saved.
Some of its advocates argued, more
or less coherently, that a comprehensive gun registry would help cut violent
crime. The gist of the argument was that the availability of guns contributes
to increases in violent crime, and restricting access will reduce it. If
this argument makes sense, it should be supported by evidence.
Gary Mauser, a professor at Simon Fraser
University, has examined the evidence in excruciating detail. His latest
study looked at gun regulations in Britain and Australia as well as Canada.
He asked whether all these regulations had reduced violent crime. After all,
society is no safer if the trends in violent crime go up, however many guns
may be registered.
In Britain, for two decades, gun laws
have grown more restrictive and violent crime has increased. In 1996, the
UK surpassed the U.S. in violent crime rates. Banning ownership of handguns
in 1997 was followed by a serious increase in both violent and gun crime.
Likewise in Australia that same year, draconian firearms legislation was
immediately followed by an increase in robbery and armed robbery. The Australian
taxpayers forked over $500-million to enable bureaucrats to confiscate and
destroy thousands of guns. As in Canada, sensible Aussies made the obvious
criticism that the money could have been spent on more police and better
equipment.
Worst of all for the emotional as well
as for the more reasonable gun control advocates in Canada, the comparison
with the U.S. is particularly unflattering. Today, where 35 states allow
qualified and responsible citizens to carry concealed weapons, violent crime
and homicide rates have plummeted.
The evidence is clear and so is its
meaning. Confiscating, prohibiting and registering guns are all expensive
failures. The only beneficiaries of this perverse policy are criminals who
can more easily prey on an unarmed citizenry and their bureaucratic accomplices
whose jobs have the effect of harming this same populace.
Barry Cooper is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary.