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The cost of gun control

mballaimballai Member Posts: 1,280 ✭✭✭✭✭
In the minds of nearly everyone, everything has its price. For gun control folks, it's "if it only saves one life" Well now you can ask if THEY are willing to pay for it.

Costs Balloon for Canada's Gun Registration Program
By Jim Burns
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
December 04, 2002

(CNSNews.com) - In an annual report on federal spending,
Canada's auditor general said the country's controversial gun
control program will likely cost taxpayers more than $1 billion
by 2005, when the program is expected to be fully up and
running. That's more more than 10 times the amount the liberal
Chretien government originally planned to spend on it.

Auditor General Sheila Fraser was quoted as calling the $1
billion estimate an "astronomical cost overrun" from the
original price tag.

When the gun registration law was passed in 1995, the government
estimated that the program would cost $119 million. Gun
registration fees were expected to bring in $117 million, with
taxpayers picking up $2 million.

The latest estimates say that by 2005, the costs associated with
gun registration will actually cost $1 billion and that
registration fees will raise only $140 million of that amount.
That means the program will end up costing taxpayers $860
million, according to the auditor-general's report.

Fraser said while the overrun is serious, the fact that Canada's
Parliament was not informed of it is "far worse."

Canada's Justice Ministry, according Fraser, acknowledged that
the gun control system posed "a significant logistical,
technical, and management challenge."

It blamed the ballooning costs on changes to the initial
program. For example, a number of provinces, including Alberta,
Saskatchewan, Manitoba, British Columbia, the Northwest
Territories and the Inuit homeland of Nunavut, refused to
administer the program, shifting their portion of the financial
burden to the federal government. Noncompliance may also be an
issue, as outraged gun owners refused to pony up the
registration costs, preferring civil disobedience instead.

Canada's Minister of Justice Martin Cauchon said the government
accepts responsibility for the cost overruns but is now more
interested in making the program work.

Cauchon denied that the government deliberately concealed
figures that would make the controversial program look bad. He
said there was no wrongdoing and he noted that the cost overrun
had been reported internally. But he promised to provide those
kinds of numbers to Parliament in the future.

Fraser, in her report, recommended that the Justice Department
clean up its act by providing complete and accurate information
on the program to Parliament annually.

Even Fraser's auditing staff couldn't penetrate the incomplete
and confusing data the Justice Department supplied about the gun
registry, Fraser said. "I question why the department continued
to watch the costs escalate without informing Parliament and
without considering the alternatives," Fraser wrote.

Gun registration was introduced by then-Justice Department
Minister Allan Rock in 1995 to help stem gun violence. It was
passed partly in response to the 1989 murder of 14 young women
at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. The law expanded
Canada's gun controls to include rifles and shotguns, all of
which must be registered with the Canadian government by Jan. 1,
2003. Handgun ownership already is restricted in Canada.

Saskatchewan Parliament Member Garry Breitkreuz said the
Canadian government should scrap the registry program. "How long
are you going to pour money down this black hole?" he asked. "We
could have bought 238 MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging machines)
for the cost of what we spent on this."

Even Wendy Cukier, the president of Canada's Coalition for Gun
Control, did not defend the high costs of the program, but
nevertheless, she insisted that gun registration is still
needed. "Given that we are located next to a country with almost
as many guns as people and no effective gun control, we must
continue to focus on measures to counter the global illicit
trade," she said.

But the pro-gun group called "Law-abiding Unregistered Firearms
Association" has launched a campaign called "Operation Overload"
that urges Canadian gun owners to protest the gun registration
program by tying up phone, fax and email lines at the Canadian
Firearms Center, which is in charge of registering guns.

"Registration of long rifles and shotguns and the licensing of
law-abiding firearm owners will do nothing to enhance the safety
of any Canadian citizens," the group said in a statement on its
website.

"These concerned, law-abiding Canadians know it is a
catastrophic waste of tax dollars that could, with only a little
common-sense, be better spent in other areas. The Chretien
government refuses to truthfully inform all Canadians of the
costs related to this unworkable system."



Three Precious Metals: Gold, silver and lead

Comments

  • gunphreakgunphreak Member Posts: 1,791 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Cost of gun control: Money, property, life. Victim disarmament never cuts crime.

    Death to Tyrants!!!

    Jesus Christ believed in the right to keep and bear arms, Luke 22:36.

    -Gunphreak
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