The 'false promises' of gun control
National Affairs
Claire Hoy
When self-described "Angel of Death" Kimveer Gill was pumping nine bullets into the body of Dawson College student Anastasia De

WSousa -while reportedly shouting that "Today is the day she's going to die"his actions were obviously illegal, but his guns weren't.

As opponents of our multi-billion dollar national longgun registry have always argued, it's not the gun, stupid, it's the gunner. Even had Gill not registered his guns, nothing could have stopped him from his maniacal shooting spree last week. But the fact that his guns were registered underscores the folly and false promises of gun control advocates.

Gill, who died after shooting himself in the head, has sadly become a poster boy for the uselessness of the registry and surely helps make Prime Minister Stephen Harper's case against the continuation of this bureaucratic boondoggle.

As Harper said in the aftermath of this horrible tragedy, "the reason we were told we were going to have a registry was to prevent these very types of tragedies .. and... at the time ... myself and many others concluded the registry wouldn't work and the unfortunate reality is that's been shown to be correct."

Harper's Quebec lieutenant Michael Fortier went on to say that Quebecers, and all Canadians, "want public policies that are effective." And so it goes.

Those opposed to Harper's plans to scrap the long-gun registry argue that even more rigorous screening is needed to make sure that, as one newspaper wrote, "firearms are held only by people who have good reason to own them."

This, of course, is dreaming in technicolor. Society would likely agree that being a criminal is not a "good reason" to own a gun, but does anyone anyone at all really believe that a criminal is going to deny himself a gun simply because a law says that ownership must be approved before he can take legal ownership of a gun? Please.

Much is also made of the fact that across the country police "use" the gun registry 5,000 times a day.

So what? It means they call it up often, as they look at all public resources hoping for information, but what evidence is there name a single case where the existence of the registry and a call from police to that registry has stopped a crime from being committed.

As everybody knows, criminals don't register their guns in advance. Usually anyway, although it appears that Gill did, and that didn't help anybody either. Do you think the guy on the way to rob a bank is going to go back home when he realizes his sawed-off shotgun isn't legal? What's more, most gun murders in this country are committed with pistols, and they've been the subject of a registry for decades.

Just to make it clear, this writer does not now nor ever has owned a gun. The last time I fired one was as a member of high school cadets at target practice in the late 1950s. I am not offended by hunting, although I've never done it myself.

What is offensive, however, is the wanton waste of taxpayer's dollars which continue to pour into this gun bureaucracy not to mention public funds helping to prop up gun-control advocacy groups for not reason beyond the appearance of doing "something" to combat gun crime.

If the real intent of these people is to enjoy a society with reduced gun crime then, instead of harassing innocent, law-abiding gun owners, the obvious answer is to make life harder on those who use guns illegally.

This, of course, is the approach that Harper advocates.

Instead of fining a farmer because he didn't register his rifle, why not bring in mandatory terms say, 10 years on top of whatever else a criminal is convicted of if he (or she) uses a gun in the commission of a crime?

Let us punish those who abuse guns instead of focusing on those who simply own them for target shooting, hunting or whatever.

None of this, alas, has any impact at all upon misfits such as Gill, who are twisted to the point of wanting to kill for the sake of killing. While the prospects of extra jail time wouldn't stop every would-be John Dillinger from using a gun to commit a crime, it would stop some.

More to the point, police statistics consistently show that most gun crimes are committed by criminals already out on bail or early parole for previous gun crimes.

Locking them up would certainly cut back on that category.