Return of Long Gun Registry

[greatwhite]

Many of my guns never had serial numbers.

Rick,

You know what goes on CPIC and its not descriptions of nicks and other damage to the gun,its a serial number.Period.

My advice to all gun owners is to keep your registrations and have all serial numbers otherwise recorded.

My other advice is to vote NDP, failing that Liberal, anything but Harper.LOL

[greatwhite]

I believe JT has said he would use the various classifications to solve the issue and thought Australia would be a possible model.

I can also see JT finding a way to give lunatics like Wynne more Provincial powers to make gun ownership almost imposssible. Be it a gun tax, ammunition tax or whatever. I see it in our future.

[welsh]

Wynne already has the power to tax guns and ammunition. Always has had that power. Also probably has the power to impose strict storage requirements, or to require that guns are stored in central facilities, etc.

It hasn't happened.

[MikePal]

Do the Premiers of the provinces, or Mayors of cities, at present, have the authority to demand tracking of sales of firearms as described in the article....and could they force stores to submit video surveillance of the sales etc. to the police ?

[welsh]

The powers of the provinces include the regulation of business except in a small number of federally regulated industries (things like shipping and aviation). This gives the provinces the power to regulate sales of firearms and ammunition, which is how we have an Ontario law regulating ammo sales.

The Supreme Court reference re the Firearms Act (2000) is widely misunderstood (by people who haven't read the decision) to mean that firearms are a federal jurisdiction. In fact, the court was asked to rule on whether the Firearms Act, by regulating private property, was treading on provincial powers. The court's answer was no, because the Firearms Act was an exercise of the federal criminal law power. But the court did not rule out the possibility that the provinces could also have their own registries, under their business and private property powers. "Guns" aren't a federal jurisdiction; criminal law is federal, and property is provincial.

So short answer: Yes for the provinces.

[terrym]

SSSsssshhhhh!!! Don't say that too loud. Wynne has never seen an oppurtunity to tax she didn't cackle in glee about. My guess is she probably doesn't understand this yet. Too busy deflecting from the rest if her misdeeds.

[trimmer21]

SSSsssshhhhh!!! Don't say that too loud. Wynne has never seen an oppurtunity to tax she didn't cackle in glee about. My guess is she probably doesn't understand this yet. Too busy deflecting from the rest if her misdeeds.

The only thing saving firearms owners from provincial registration and bans is the cost to taxpayers. It would be a bureaucratic nightmare and no political party wants to have that permanently attached to them.

[welsh]

In tonight's French-language leaders' debate, this topic came up -- unsuprisingly, given that Quebec is the only place where people really care about this. Trudeau and Mulcair both said flat out that they would not bring back a long-gun registry. Duceppe wants one, for whatever that's worth (approximately doodly-squat).

[terrym]

Wynne calls taxes "Revenue Tools". Yet there are new ones and increased ones and they still cost us money. They can twist it anyway they want to "not" call it a registry doesn't mean it won't happen. A damned registry could turn out to be the least damaging to legal gun owners. Who knows what kind of reclassification and prohibitions those idiots will come up with. I clearly remember Dalton McGuinty signing a pledge to not raise taxes. I clearly remember Cretien promising to scrap the GST. Do you really take politicians seriously when they promise stuff? I judge them more by the track record than what they say during a campaign.

[welsh]

Obviously, they could say one thing and do another. But the important point here is that during the French language debate, neither party saw any advantage in reviving this issue. This tells us voters don't much care. And when voters don't care, politicians don't care.