Handsome Rob

Absolutely it does. Plainly evidenced by the many non-firearms owners that want the registry nuked. Right, the sole purpose of a knife is to cut and stab, and the dangerous instrument that it is, kills many times more people than guns do every year. Shall we make records for all of them as well? And the registry does absolutely nothing to prevent this. The auditor general's report also found that there is a lack of evidence to support the effectiveness of the gun registry, or to prove that it is meeting its stated goal of improving public safety. "The performance report focuses on activities such as issuing licences and registering firearms. The Centre does not show how these activities help minimize risks to public safety with evidence-based outcomes such as reduced deaths, injuries and threats from firearms," the report said. On January 3, 2003, Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino said in a news release: "We have an ongoing gun crisis including firearms-related homicides lately in Toronto, and a law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them. None of the guns we know to have been used were registered, although we believe that more than half of them were smuggled into Canada from the United States. The firearms registry is long on philosophy and short on practical results considering the money could be more effectively used for security against terrorism as well as a host of other public safety initiatives." It's the idea of not having the government piss away our hard earned money on frivolous nonsense. It doesn't by any means apply to the registry alone, and other programs flushing money down the toilet isn't justification for the registry to do the same. The correlation between economic & social well being and violent crime is pretty clear. But we try to fix the results of the problem rather than the problem itself.

^ That's a fine line against the charter and unreasonable search and seizure.

But why does the agenda not include them? Of course not. I said evidence that pushing such agendas as this one helps to eliminate that issue. My question, the burden of proof is on you. That's what we have a criminal code for. Look at it this way, what happened to the normal distribution, the bell curve? Minorities are going to be under-represented, because, they're minorities. Trying to change that is going to generate some kinds of friction, something plainly evidenced today. It's the difference between say, an english teacher including a book that included gay people as characters because they feel the book is worthy of the curriculum, or including a book that includes gay characters because the state dictates that they must. That is a big difference to many people.

Not entirely true. One can be grandfathered a license allowing Prohib 12(5), and there are lots of them around. Utterly retarded, they should have collected them all and compensated. There is no legitimate reason for to own a fully automatic rifle.

Why aren't the latterday saints pushing to be included in the curriculum? Anecdotal and on well established agenda. I said evidence. By all means, lets open up re-education camps too. Wonder if Pol Pot or Stalin has any kids.

They shouldn't. It was in no way insinuated in the post. What significant evidence can you produce of this. The only person to judge is the parents themselves. They're their kids after-all, not the state's.

I think that mandatory sentences are ridiculous, but then again so is our judicial system. There is no point in even talking about a registry until that is addressed. I would like to see something along the lines of a, "30 strikes and your out," or some other figure much greater than 3. I was reading something a while back, a massive Toronto raid, something like 80 people arrested with over 1000 prior's between them. That's just disgusting, at this point the judges should go to jail. Not that I'm a proponent of it, but the 'make my day law' has generated some considerable positive results in a lot of places. Don't think it's worth the cost though. I think it's time to go back to the drawing board, and look at the root causes. The social, and economic factors that drive people to crime. I view the crime rate as a gauge of our civilizations failure to provide legitimate opportunity. So entirely true.

Agreed. Why though? Why does one need to have a special interest to be included? What makes this a right? Has anybody ever thought about the adversity that such lobbying generates? When they read 'the gay book' at school, what sort of ribbing & bullying is the gay kid in the class going to be subjected to? Why can we not just have a curriculum that has no agenda to keep things out, nor in, and such things are included because they have a rightful place for all to agree on?

Conservative voter here....hopefully he ends up like OJ, where he belongs.

Which makes the case of the HRT's even more absurd, when they reject over 90% of complaints, and the one's they feel have merit end up being Mark Steyn, Guy Earle, B&B owners with sinusits, John Fulton, and all the other junk.

This topic deserves a poll. But I strongly suspect it is only a matter of time. Even the yanks are finally coming around.

Agreed. But every single one of us possesses a certain degree of idiocracy.

They'll move on to another profitable venture. The 6 families are a perfect example of that.

By the same token you may as well complain about auto exhaust, body odor, excess noise, and everything else. Pretty much any activity one's neighbor partakes in could be justified as worth complaining about.

While the rest of us suffer the cost?

Personal thoughts here: People sell kids short by a country mile. A good friend of mine once told me, "I'd like to own guns, but I won't, because I know, regardless of how secure a storage system I buy, my kids will find a way in, even if I can't break in myself." One of the brightest guys I know. It's like there's some sort of line one crosses, when turning 25, they forget every aspect of the last 25 years. When I was 12, we were having sex. We knew exactly what AIDS & other STD's were, we knew what teen pregnancy was, we knew exactlywhat we were doing stealing beer out of people's garages, and what the consequences were. Now with the way the internet is, and facebook, etc, I strongly believe that things have progressed even more in this direction. I attended 15 minutes of a single sex ed class, and never went back to any others, such a waste of time it was. It amazes me, in debates such as this, that nobody considers what sort of reception will be had. The curriculum is written to an agenda, not to a reality. It's almost like nobody wants to get involved. It's a personal opinion, not trying to sell it, but I will say that it's no surprise that public school enrollment is plummeting provincially where I live, and homeschooling and private are skyrocketing. I would be in a state of shock if that wasn't the case across the nation.

True. But non-restricted registration is far and away the largest task in front of them. Licensing is nearly stagnant, and the ration of non-restricted to restricted is massive. They don't get into specifics on cost because it would be so controversial, so I elected to use the 'best' figure available to support my argument. Lie, damn lies, and statistics! It's the same figure, I quoted per 100,000, you quoted the entire figure. It still isn't significant, in the scope of our crime rate. So many guns somehow represents a greater danger than a single gun? In such a case, the owner simply transfers the registration to another licensed individual. Such programs are administered provincially. Vehicles are registered for insurance reasons, due to high rates of theft and the fact that automobiles kill far more people every year than guns could ever hope to. Apples & potatoes. Driver licensing is exactly the same ideal as PAL/POL. Are you suggesting it isn't? Blunt & sharp objects kill far and away more people than guns do in violent crime every year, shall we ban them as well? Or just have a dangerous knife registry. What does the registry have to do with loose gun ownership? We have standards in place to deem whom is acceptable and not for gun ownership, licensing to track people, registration of the firearms most commonly used in crime, etc. How does having a piece of paper accompanying less than 1 in every 2 guns, with a less than 50% chance of having accurate information on it, keep us any safer?

If you actually read up on einstein quotes, and not just quote him directly without the context, I think you'll find that Einstein's "god" was the physical laws, properties and perfection of the natural universe. It's up to how one views things though, I don't believe he actually ever directly discussed it. I'd say string theory & quantum mechanics are after his time though.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Harper+decries+impotence+challenging+pardon+process/2924639/story.html?tab=PHOT Just disturbing. The fact that she was released is disturbing.

Atheism specifically, or lack of religious participation? I should like to think that most ordinary individuals belongs to the "Just don't care" camp.

Economic Left/Right: -3.75 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.28

I don't really understand how such things as the Manhattan project can be called conspiracy. I haven't really gone into research on hit, but I find it hard to fathom the idea of concealing the trinity test from the general public. In fact, I don't think most of those don't really fit the definition of: Interesting nonetheless.

I should certainly hope, that to be traveling in this direction, there should be no homeless, no starving, no medical funding problems, and all the other things that provide security of person.

In 2005, the government provided 114 million in excess of what the CFC collected. Can't find more recent financial statements. What benefit? 2.4% of violent crime in Canada involving guns. Of that, handguns, which have nothing to do with the registry account for over 60% of that. So using those stats, with a violent crime rate of 1,000/100,000 pop, 24 involve a gun. Of those 16 are handguns. This leaves us with 8 violent crimes using a non-restricted firearm, and with a registration rate of less than 50%, perhaps we might have 3 of them, if the records are accurate. So a 2 billion dollar start up cost, 100 million dollar annual cost, to maybe assist in the conviction of 3 violent crimes out of every 1,000 per 100,000 pop. This is supposed to be a benefit? I realise using the media to collect stats is ridiculous, but you get the picture? The PAL/POL provides more than sufficient checks and balances when operated properly.

So if any government program is going to suffer from this, let's reduce the amount of frivolous nonsense that the government does. The long-gun registry is not alone in this. Again, if it cost that much money to voluntarily register less than half of the non-restricted firearms, how much exactly is it going to cost to capture the rest involuntarily? Surely this can't be called a one time cost. It is not an up and running system. If you purchased a vehicle for $20,000, and proceeded to dump $400,000 into it to make it barely run, at which point does one give up and call it quits? Even the authorities acknowledge it is plagued with problems. The simple idea of the thousands of registered glue guns & staple guns is basic evidence enough, without getting into things like modified firearms, addressing, sales without transfer of title and the TAN & so forth. Money. Cost VS benefit, something it seems no government employee has any concept of.