To the Editor,
Re: Gun licence provides necessary detail, Letters, Jan. 12.
Joseph Michaels complaints of frustration that after numerous interviews by him to the public, we still get it wrong about the long gun registry. He should check his course material.
He states that a gun owner applying for a possession and acquisition licence would still be entered into the system after the registry is withdrawn.
Yes, but now there will be no record of what long guns that person owns. It’s like saying that because the police know you have a driver’s licence, they must surely know that you own a car, or maybe several.
Possession of a firearm permit tells the police very little.
He challenges calling opponents “lazy and in contempt of the law.”
Long gun owners can register their weapons for free, online, and it takes just a few minutes.
In 2001, the Edmonton Journal wrote that more than one half of the long gun owners have not registered and are “unlawful.”
Jim Hinter, president of the National Firearms Association said of that, “I think it proves that there’s literally millions of Canadians who are just refusing to participate in what they see as a bogus law.”
If those were left-leaning liberal environmentalists, they’d be labelled anarchists.
In 2007 the government gave a one-year amnesty to at least 200,000 unregistered long gun owners. They were still defying the law six years after it came into effect.
There are defiant gun owners who refuse to register and the registration is simple and free, so my last letter stating “lazy and in contempt” was correct.
Klaus Nenn
Nanaimo