Yes, the title is sarcastic.  The handgun registry is every bit as useless as the long gun registry, something this teen armed robber proves for me.

This is the second time Canada has dropped long gun registration.  Most people choose to forget that we tried this stupidity once before and finally dropped it when law-abiding Canadians refused to register their rifles and shotguns.  The original long gun registry was dropped just after World War II.

With all the uproar over the impending demise of Canada’s current long gun registry and its uselessness at preventing or solving crime, I’ve been amazed that so many politicians continue to support the registration of handguns.  The very same logic they use to tell us how useless the long gun registry has proven to be is twisted to explain why the registration of handguns “absolutely must continue.”

Canada began registering handguns in 1934, yet despite all those decades, the police cannot give a single example of where the registry aided them in solving a single crime.  Anywhere else in life we would call that useless.

Canada, like the rest of the world, has a severe debt problem.  We as a nation are spending our grandchildren’s earnings yet we think nothing of it.

We wasted well over 2 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money registering guns and tracking law-abiding firearm owners, and this is just the amount we’ve tossed on the trash pile and burned in the past 15 years.  There is no accurate calculation of how much money has been wasted since we started registering handguns in 1934.

This is ludicrous, of course.  But the word “handgun” or “gun owner” is used and all critical thinking immediately stops for the majority of people, including police and politicians.

We continue to insist that spending over 100 million dollars per year to track law-abiding citizens is a “worthwhile public safety measure” while convicted criminals with firearm prohibition orders against them are not tracked at all.

François Pepin, the man who murdered Constable Valérie Gignac, had a firearms prohibition order against him at the time of her murder.  Despite that prohibition order, not only was he able to obtain the firearm he used to murder Constable Gignac, he still had two firearms in his possession that should have been removed under his firearm prohibition order, but were not.

Again, useless is the word that comes to mind.

It is no shock that police want the registry maintained.  They want that for the same reason they want warrantless search legislation expanded into more areas, such as Bill C-30, so disingenuously called the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act”; they simply want more power and control over our lives.

Obtaining warrants requires actual evidence of a crime and both that and the actual warrant process takes time, something our police forces seem to have little of when it comes to protecting the Rights and Freedoms of Canadian citizens.

That aside, the fact remains that law-abiding Canadian firearm owners, and by that I mean those individuals who are willing to jump through all the government hoops to take the Canadian Firearms Safety Course and obtain a firearms license after passing a background check … Law-abiding firearm owners are the very people who are LEAST likely to commit violent crime or be a problem for police in any fashion.

Yet we spend billions of dollars tracking, checking and harassing these people while the individuals who have proven themselves to be a REAL danger to the rest of us are left completely alone.

Does that make sense?

Of course it doesn’t, but for reasons beyond my ability to comprehend, it makes great public safety policy.

My point?

On Friday, March 2, 2012 two teenage boys robbed a store at gunpoint. One of them was apprehended in possession of a loaded handgun.  The other remains, last I could ascertain, at large.

The young man in custody has been charged with numerous offenses including armed robbery, wearing a disguise while committing a crime, illegal possession of a restricted firearm and even, according to the Toronto Sun, failing to report a found firearm.

That leads me to believe the young man is claiming to have “found” the loaded handgun he used to rob the store. More on that in a moment.

This young man is precisely the type of person Canada’s gun laws have absolutely no effect upon.  He’s not old enough to legally own a handgun.  He has no firearms license or authorization to transport his illegal handgun. He is a criminal willing to place another human being’s life at risk for a couple of dollars.

In fact he is precisely the type of person our gun laws should be placing their focus on, but do not.

He will likely receive a slap on the wrist, be told to be a good boy and not do it again, and then will be released back into society.  That’s how our “justice” system seems to work these days.

The actual owner of the stolen handgun?  He or she will face numerous charges shortly, I’m sure, as police will make the claim that the owner failed to comply properly with storage regulations, regardless of whether he or she reported the firearm stolen or not.

Obviously he or she didn’t store the handgun properly.  It was stolen, wasn’t it?

That’s the absurd logic used when it comes to firearms.  The lawful owner of the handgun will face a longer jail term that the little punk who stole the handgun and then robbed a store with it.

Only in Canada does that make any rational sense.

What it should be telling us is that registering handguns is just as useless as registering long guns.  Neither registry can prevent someone with criminal intent from stealing a gun or from subsequently using that stolen firearm to commit armed robbery.

So why are we wasting over 100 million dollars every single year to keep a system alive that has absolutely no true benefit?

That’s a question that you should put to your elected Member of Parliament.

Just remember to have a barf bucket handy when the form letter response arrives in a few months time.

You’ll need it.