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Knimrod
10-09-2005, 06:58 PM
Report adds fuel to gun registry debate
Fri, October 7, 2005
By DOUG BEAZLEY,
EDMONTON SUN

Most murder guns in Canada are never registered with the Canadian Firearms Centre, according to a new Statistics Canada report.

The new Juristat study - a version of which reported over the summer that Canada's murder rate jumped 12% in 2004 after a three-decade slide - says that registration information on murder guns was "unknown" to police in more than half of homicides reported between 1997 and 2004 where the gun was recovered.

Gun registry opponents say that proves the registry - two years and more than a billion tax dollars later - is a failure.

"First, 65% of firearms homicides involve handguns. We've had a handgun registry for decades, so obviously it didn't work either," said Dennis Young, a researcher in the office of Conservative MP and registry critic Garry Breitkreuz.

"But look at who's actually committing murders. Two-thirds of murderers - and half of their adult victims - already had criminal histories. The federal government decided with the registry to go after law-abiding gun owners, when the people doing the killing are overwhelmingly criminals who'd never think to register their guns. What a waste."

But gun control advocates say the figures actually prove the opposite - that the registry may be driving down murder categories that tend to involve long-barrelled weapons, like spousal homicides.

"There's been a huge drop in domestic violence (since the registry was introduced)," said Wendy Cukier, president of the Toronto-based Coalition for Gun Control.

Spousal homicides did drop for the third consecutive year in 2004; there were 74. But family-related homicides rose from 141 victims to 160 nationwide.

On the other hand, the report says that rifles and shotguns accounted for most firearm homicides before 1990; in 2004, handguns were used in 65% of gun murders.

And the weapon of choice for most murders is still the humble knife. Stabbings accounted for one-third of all killings in 2004 - 205 murders, 63 more than in 2003 and the highest number of stabbing homicides in over a decade. Guns dispatched only a quarter of all homicide victims.

Full Story (http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2005/10/07/1252148-sun.html)

Meta4
10-10-2005, 07:21 AM
I think I have the solution to all of Canada's ills: Register knives! Surely, the knife problem in Canada is out of control, and steps must be taken. Won't somebody think of the children?!

-James