Registration helps solve crimes? Part 2

[Phil Lee]

The thread Registration helps solve crimes?, which was closed for "wandering" after only a couple of posts that seemed off-message, should be continued because the "registration" topic is likely to be a key part of future gun control efforts.

Spouting off opinions will not likely prove helpful to countering any attempt to impose gun registration. But registration has been tried many time in many places and its performance to preventing or solving crime would prove useful in a "registration" fight since its performance is poor.

In the previous thread I gave several sources of performance failure -- here is another acknowledgement of failure. In Canada, where handguns have been registered since 1934, authorities are unable to identify a single crime solved with the registration data base -- see the News Release from Member of Parliament Garry Breitkreuz, 5/17/1996, which states:

Today, Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton-Melville, made available the Liberal government's response to his written question which asked, "Since 1934, how many crimes, in total, have been solved using the RCMP's Restricted Weapon Registration System?" Answering on behalf of the Government, Solicitor General Herb Gray, stated: "The statistics requested respecting the number of crimes that have been solved by tracing the firearm back to the registered owner are not kept at this time and are therefore not available."

"Surely, the purpose of registering handguns and other restricted firearms is to solve crime by tracing the firearms back to the registered owner," asked Breitkreuz. "And, the RCMP doesn't even keep these statistics?"