GUNTER: The Liberals have sneakily brought back the gun registry – Toronto Sun

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The long-gun registry returns starting next week.

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Oh, Im sure Trudeau Liberals will claim they are not reviving the convoluted, expensive, controversial, useless registry. After all, they swore up and down before the 2015 election they would never reinstate the registry if elected.

If you call any Liberal MPs office and ask about Registry 2.0, I am confident youll get some talking-points answer along the lines, Were just asking anyone selling a gun in Canada to keep a record of who they sold it to. That information might be useful if the gun is ever used to commit a crime. And isnt that what we all want, a safer Canada?

Except thats not exactly what the Liberals are doing.

Consider whats going to happen starting next week if you own a gun and want to sell it to a relative or friend, or if youre a generous uncle who wants to give an old firearm to a niece to start her in hunting.

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These are the hoops you will have to jump through.

You will have to call up the RCMPs Registrar of Firearms, provide him with your possession and acquisition licence (PAL) number.

Youll have to collect your nieces PAL number, too, and give that to the Mounties, which presupposes both of you have gone through all the paperwork, safety courses, mental health and criminal background checks to get PALs in the first place.

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While youre at it, the registrar will also need both your addresses and phone numbers, and some personal identification number like a drivers licence, social insurance number or passport.

And, of course, the Mounties will need the make, model and type of firearm youre giving away, plus the serial number.

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Then, and only then, will the RCMPs registrar issue you a reference number that both you and your niece can enter on your PALs, after which youre free to give your niece the gun.

(Hope you didnt want it to be a surprise.)

Every detail above will be entered into the Mounties firearms computer. Maybe Im just being paranoid, but that certainly sounds like a registry to me.

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What makes it sound even more like a registry is that fact that if you give the gun to your niece or she accepts it from you before every t is crossed, you could both be heavily fined or even go to jail.

Gun stores must also record all the personal details of everyone they sell a gun to, including their PALs, plus all the details of the guns. And they must keep the records for a minimum of 20 years.

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Moreover, police or provincial firearms officers may demand retailers produce any or all records in their files at any time, and they dont need a warrant to do it. That also means they dont need a specific reason like suspicion of a crime to search a gun shops records.

Of course, crime guns in Canada dont come from gun shops here, for the most part. And they certainly dont come from uncle-niece gifts. The vast majority of guns used in crime in Canada upwards of 90 per cent are smuggled in from the States.

So while the Liberals are bringing in their new backdoor registry next week, theyre surely also clamping down on gun smuggling and violent gun crime, right?

No.

Indeed, because gun smuggling, armed robbery, drug trafficking and illegal possession of firearms are all crimes in which Indigenous and black Canadians are disproportionately involved, the Liberals are shortening sentences for violent gun crime as an important step in addressing systemic racism.

Hunters, farmers and generous uncles are all subject to the new registry, but real gun criminals are not.

How successful do you think the new registry is going to be at making Canada safer?

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GUNTER: The Liberals have sneakily brought back the gun registry - Toronto Sun