PARLIAMENT HILL—The widening U.S. debate over tighter gun laws in the wake of a massacre of 20 children at a Connecticut elementary school on Dec. 14 has focused critics of the government’s decision last June eliminating a requirement for gun dealers in Canada to keep records of rifle and shotgun sales.Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) government passed a secret Cabinet order on June 28, which it later made public, that imposed new regulations preventing police and provincial firearms officers from requiring records of rifle and shotgun sales, including names of owners, after the Conservative majority government pushed legislation through Parliament to scrap the federal registry for rifles and shotguns in April.
A report from the Commons Public Safety and National Security Committee, which along with a Senate committee report paved the way for Cabinet to hastily pass the regulations without normal notice for public discussion, received little attention as it was tabled the day the House adjourned for its summer recess.
The report and the Cabinet decision also received little attention over the summer, until the full effect of the new regulations came to light amid public attention once Parliament resumed, and even then the government weathered only a day or two of the opposition parties’ questions in the Commons before the dust settled again.
The Newtown, Conn., school shootings, however, where gunman Adam Lanza killed 20 children, his mother, and six other people before killing himself, have reignited questions in Canada about the federal government decision to take a Conservative election promise to the extreme it did—ending any requirement for a transfer record of gun sales and buyers across the country.
In Quebec, where the provincial government won a Quebec Superior Court order maintaining the registry records in the province, is the only exception.
Geoff Currie, a former U.S. citizen who moved to Canada at the age of 15 and subsequently became an ardent supporter of Canada’s gun-control system, told The Hill Times on Tuesday that the restrictions ending record requirements for sales and transfers of non-restricted firearms, including semi-automatic hunting rifles and semi-automatic shotguns, also extends to the importation of non-restricted rifles and shotguns from the U.S. Those identification records will now be kept only within gun shops and other stores, should the dealers decide to hold on to them.
Mr. Currie pointed out the Ontario government requires registration of ice-fishing shacks, to help ensure prevention of hazardous holes in lake ice covers during winter.
Wendy Cukier, a longtime champion of the federal gun registry and of tighter control over rifles and shotguns as president of the Coalition for Gun Control, told The Hill Times on Tuesday the June Cabinet decision ended more than three decades of recording long-gun sale transactions in Canada.
“Canada introduced a system to record sales of firearms at the point of purchase in 1977,” Ms. Cukier said. “In addition to ending registration of rifles and shotguns, and destroying the records on who owned five million unrestricted firearms, the Conservatives quietly ended the requirement to record sales.”
“This means a licensed gun owner could purchase one, two, or 50 firearms, including powerful semi-automatics, like the Ruger Mini 14 [used by a gunman who shot 14 women to death at the Montreal L’Ecole Polytechnique in 1989] without any record being kept. Not only does this undermine the accountability of gun owners for their guns but it makes it virtually impossible to trace non restricted firearms or to meet our international obligations,” Ms. Cukier said.
Evidence from the June 19 meeting of the House Public Safety and National Security Committee shows that only Public Safety Minister Vic Toews (Provencher, Man.) appeared as a witness to answer questions from government and opposition MPs when the Conservative majority on the committee passed a report, after only an hour of evidence and debate, recommending the new regulations eliminating the sales-record loophole.
The evidence also reveals Mr. Toews said concern over the right to private property, not simply Criminal Code requirements to register rifles and shotguns, was behind the government’s decision to destroy the registry records.
“Our government is once again standing up for law abiding Canadians, such as farmers, hunters, and sports shooters, we are standing up for rural, northern, and remote Canadians who use shotguns and rifles as tools in their day-to-day lives,” he told the committee.
“But Mr. Chair, most of all, we are standing up for Canadians who do not believe that the state has a right to needlessly interfere with the private property of law-abiding Canadians,” Mr. Toews said.
In a back-and-forth with NDP MP Françoise Boivin (Gatineau, Que.), Mr. Toews claimed the NDP believes the state should have control over private property, including firearms.
“All I’m pointing out is that there is a fundamental difference between the way you and I perceive property. You don’t believe that anyone owns anything. The state owns it. As a socialist, that’s what you believe,” Mr. Toews said.
“Don’t put words in my mouth, I’ve never said that, but I do believe that it's nice to keep records of certain things,” Ms. Boivin replied in the confrontation, which received no media or public attention as Parliament was winding up for the summer.
The Connecticut killings, meanwhile, have stirred a monumental debate in the U.S. about whether the U.S. government and state legislatures should take the opposite direction that Mr. Harper’s government took last spring, and increase gun control rather than ease it.
The New York Times reported Tuesday afternoon that President Barack Obama is preparing to tackle the explosive issue, with gun ownership a long-contested political battleground in the U.S.
The newspaper cited hints from the White House about possible measures that would conform to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision reiterating citizen constitutional rights to own firearm, with certain limits. Those measures, according to the New York Times, include the reinstatement of a ban on assault weapons.
In Ottawa, meanwhile, a spokesperson for Mr. Toews indicated, after being asked directly, that the Conservative government has no intention of reconsidering its elimination of gun tracking and control programs over the past year.
“Canada has a stronger gun control system than the United States and we will maintain a strong gun control system,” said Julie Carmichael, Mr. Toews’ communications director. “According to Statistics Canada, the firearms homicide rate is at its lowest point in nearly 50 years. In fact, the rate of homicides committed with a handgun has fallen by 30 percent in the last four years.”
Despite what Ms. Carmichael said, the U.S. federal government and state government’s require records of gun sales as well, under state laws, background checks before sales can take place.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
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