Originally Posted by
welsh
All the usual registry arguments get trotted out, on schedule. It's not clear why we would be debating the registry, as it's a dead issue. The feds are not going to reinstate it and other than Quebec, no province has so much as hinted that they would create a provincial registry.
On registries in general, what's never mentioned in these threads is that registries have one obvious and indisputable benefit: in conjunction with licensing, they provide a strong control over transfers into the black market. That is, if I can only sell to a licensed person and if each sale has to be registered, then it becomes very risky for me to sell to unlicensed people. On the other hand, in the absence of a registry, I can sell to anyone with no fear that the sale will be traced back to me.
As I said earlier, the risk is less that law-abiding gun owners will sell to criminals than that people can obtain licences for the purpose of straw buying. The handgun registry has closed this door, and this is why gangs have had to turn to smuggling.
The thing about the long gun registry is, at the time of its creation there was no reasonable argument that this control over black market transfers was necessary for long guns. There was no real reason to think that transfers of long guns into the black market presented a significant concern. The irony of it is, though, that since the expiry of the Clinton AWB, the long gun market has changed significantly, and that argument can now be made ... which leaves a future government determined to register semi-autos, but faced with the reality that the LGR is a dead duck, with one obvious alternative: restrict them.