Oh, Canadian people are better than Americans, natch, but politicians are all the same. 
There must not have been an election going on. They’ve always been nasty.
In 1993, the now-defunct Progressive Conservative party ran an election ad making fun of Jean Chretien’s Bell’s palsy.
In 1988, during the TV debate, the three leaders were actually yelling at each pther.
Canadian politics has always been mean.
Can I interrupt this with a serious question that’s not worth of its own thread?
I have an antique rifle which doesn’t have a serial number. It’s more of a display piece than an actual weapon (though its operaple.) If I lived in Canada,would it qualify for needing to be registered? How would I register it without a serial number?
It seems it would be really difficult on some antique pieces. How are museums handling it, or are they excused?
Assuming it’s operable, the rifle would likely meet the Criminal Code’s definition of a “firearm” so would have to be registered, even though it’s an antique.
The Firearms Act, s. 14 says that to be registered the firearm has to bear a serial number, or be “described in the prescribed manner.”
Section 6 of the Firearms Regulations states that if the firearm doesn’t have a serial number, the firearm has to bear its “Firearms Identification Number” instead. Section 3(2) of the Regs says that the Registrar shall issue a sticker with the FIN that is to be placed on the firearm.
Forgot to add the usual disclaimer - this is meant to illustrate the operation of the law, but if you need information about a specific case, you should speak to the local firearms registration officials or a lawyer.
Heh. I grew up closer to pavement but in a smaller town. Everyone in the area always thought the long gun registry was a solution in search of a problem.
A sticker? They’ve got to be kidding. I wouldn’t put a sticker on an antique for anything.
Secondly, do they really think a criminal just wouldn’t peel it off?
Of course they would. The registry is a complete, hopeless joke.
Nobody’s actually mentioned the numbers so far, but the government originally promised it would cost $120 million. It has - so far - cost over $2 billion, an overrun of almost two thousand percent. Its value, as you point out, is negligible; it’s a purely political move meant to appeal to urban voters who don’t actually bother to study the issue.
I’m no gun nut by any means - I don’t own a gun, never have, and have no plans to - but even I can smell this as being the purest bullshit.
This is in Canada, right? With a population less than California.
How much per gun is that $2 billion?
Statistics on this page.
Do I read that correctly to say that there are 7 million guns in Canada, but only 2 million licenses have been issued? Does that mean the average license owner has over 3 guns, or does it mean that the registry has only had a 30% compliance rate?
As for the number of police queries, I assume this means that before the police approach a residence, they query the residence to see if there are guns in the home. I wonder if that means a gun owner is under a higher risk of being accidentally shot by a cop, or to have a no-knock warrant issued on him or her?
I also wonder if it means that the act of owning a firearm prejudices the police against you. If you’re a suspect or ‘suspicious’, I wonder if a positive query to the firearms registry would affect your chances of being pulled in for questioning, or having a warrant served on you, or whatever.
I also think it’s violation of privacy for the police to be able to drag up information about my firearms ownership without a warrant or court order.
It says that there are 1.6 million license holders, and 7 million registered firearms. That’s an average of just over 4 guns per license holder, actually. Of course, it ignores the completely unknown level of non-compliance there’s been.
As to the police queries, it looks like most of them are run on names or addresses, which suggests to me that they’re checking to see if a person/location they’re about to approach might be armed. Naturally the information isn’t terribly useful, since anyone who has a registered firearm is prima facie law-abiding while most people having firearms for unlawful purposes won’t have registered them. I would doubt that having a registered firearm would have any impact on warrants and such, but if you have a registered firearm and the cops knock on your door saying they have a report of a domestic disturbance, I recommend not doing anything that might be misinterpreted as reaching for a gun (probably good advice even if you don’t have a registered gun).
A “regional” party? You want to see a regional party, try the Bloc, who don’t run candidates anywhere outside of Quebec and have absolutely no business being considered a Federal party.
I don’t have a cite for this, but I have heard police officers in Alberta say they had no intention of enforcing the gun registry here; it is considered useless legislation for the sake of legislation (okay, if we’re putting our cards on the table here, it is considered useless legislation for the sake of pacifiying scared Toronto residents).
The Conservatives seem to be the party of only rural hicks in your opinion. That doesn’t even make sense; there are nowhere near enough rural hicks to elect a government, even a minority one. They are obviously being supported by more than just “hicks,” unless you consider all residents of Western Canada hicks. Even then, they couldn’t have been elected just on Western Canada votes.
My opinion on the gun registry is that it was ill-conceived and poorly implemented. It was an empty gesture to buy votes, but unfortunately it cost everybody billions of dollars to have virtually zero effect. Any person with a modicum of good judgement could have told the politicians that the people who most need to have their guns controlled are exactly the people who will never register them. I would say it is more accurate to say that logical people don’t support the gun registry, rather than saying that hicks don’t support it. It was a ridiculous idea, and the sooner we cut our losses with this elephant-sized boondoggle the better.
Not to mention maybe giving our border guards some weapons.
(Bolding mine.)
Why not? Is there any rule that says that federal political parties must present candidates in every riding, or in ridings in every province and territory? No, there isn’t. And they currently have 50 seats, so clearly they have some support from the population.
Remember, many federations have political parties that are regional in nature. It’s part of the game.
For the record, I don’t think the Conservative party is a regional party. They have proved that they have support in the whole of Canada (although their support in the big cities is still lacking).
Which they’ve plans to do.
Frankly, I question the wisdom of this policy. Are border guards going to go through the same training and qualifications as police officers? If not, why do they get guns? Is it frequently the case that they even need guns?
Just because an authority figure wants something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to give it to them (and despite the rambling OP, in fact many police chiefs and such have said the gun registry is not worth it.)
A few years back Ontario’s MTO officers - these are the guys who weigh and inspect trucks - wanted guns. I know, because I was in the meeting and heard them (or their more Wyatt Earpish union reps, more precisely) demand guns. They were laughed off, I’m pleased to say. Why the hell do they need GUNS? They could not provide a single case that had ever happened, ever, when an MTO officer needed a gun in a confrontation when running away was not a better option.
Just out of curiousity, Sam, do you think that the abilty of the police to pull up information about your car ownership without a warrant or a court order is a violation of your privacy? Your car ownership and driver’s licence carry personal information as well. What’s the difference, if any?
Except of course I never defended the registry. I’m pretty indifferent to it and I’d defer to those on the front lines for their opinion. If the cops thought it was useful, that would be good enough for me. Unfortunately, I have never seen any un-spun data on that to convince me one way or the other. You would have also noticed if you read my next sentence in that post that I still figured there would be significant cost overruns.
What annoys me is people deliberately wasting the government’s money, and therefore mine. Especially if they complain later about how much the system cost. If they don’t want to register their weapons, then don’t, but don’t be a dick about it and force the cost overruns even higher.
Good points. Rather than reforming the standards for calling something a federal party, we should just reform Rep by Pop so each region is represented equally and be done with it.
Which would not really change Quebec’s representation; Quebec represents a but under a quarter of the nation’s population and they have just under a quarter of the seats in the House. It would knock down the Bloc’s seat total but they’d still be the biggest party in Quebec.