Canada’s gun control history shows it’s a waste

It’s like deja-vu, all over again. Yogi Berra’s “deja-vu” quote is more famous than anything else the baseball great did in his career.

The thought covers all kinds of issues that keep coming back to haunt us.

In Canada that includes gun control, more specifically the long-gun registry.

Larry Miller, Conservative firearms critic, vows to fight Liberal moves to bring back the long-gun registry.

The registry, you might remember, was killed in 2012 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Miller, the MP for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, says the Trudeau government is introducing a bill to “amend the ending of the long-gun registry act.” Which is governmentspeak for some kind of reversal.

Miller is demanding the destruction of all “remaining information on law-abiding firearms owners collected under the nows-crapped long-gun registry.”

The Liberal bill is expected to be introduced in a few days. Although the details are now known, it’s clear the governing party has learned nothing on this issue.

The Liberals lost pretty much all support in rural Canada for a law that deeply insulted law-abiding gun owners.

Those of us who have had to shoot rabid foxes among our livestock, or end the suffering of a severely injured pony, know the value of owning a long gun.

But the government would hear none of that kind of discussion. Canadian gun owners couldn’t be trusted with weapons unknown to the government.

In the process of establishing a registry the government threw away about $2 billion. The money was wasted since criminals, the folks we don’t want to have guns, didn’t line up to register their firearms.

Miller’s call for the destruction of records probably won’t fly. Governments never seem to destroy anything except people’s hopes.

Back in 2003 when the registry was being introduced, I was contacted about the handgun in my possession. It turned out the gun, a six-barrelled revolver, belonged to my grandfather, whose name was similar to mine.

Grandpa, who died in 1964, donated the weapon to the county museum in the 1950s, from where it was promptly stolen.

But the anti-gun zealots still wanted to get their hands on it.

Canada already has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world. Even before 1892, justices of the peace had the authority to impose a six-month jail term on anyone carrying a handgun if the person did not have reasonable cause to fear assault against life or property.

In 1892 a licensing law came into effect for pistols, followed by some on-again, off-again licensing requirements.

Then in 1934, the first real registration requirement for handguns was created. Registration certificates were issued and records were kept by the commissioner of the RCMP or by police departments that provincial attorneys general had designated as firearms registries.

Bear in mind here that these highly controlled handguns are the most common weapons used in the criminal world and probably the biggest threat to the peace in the cities of Canada.

But that fact didn’t even slow down the government that wanted to know about every gun in the country, for reasons that don’t go beyond emotional responses to criminal activities.

The gun-control history goes on with a few highlights and a lot more low points over the years.

We await word of how the government is going to meddle this time with a system that works best when the bureaucrats simply butt out.