Keep long-gun registry, attorney general urges
Ontario’s attorney general is urging the federal government to keep the controversial long-gun registry.
Chris Bentley told the House of Commons public safety committee yesterday it’s “pretty clear” the registry works, even if it’s not perfect.
He notes that Canadian police officers access the registry 11,000 times a day.
Bentley called the registry “minimally intrusive” on gun owners and said it’s an important source of information for police.
A private member’s bill introduced by Manitoba Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner seeks to scrap the long-gun registry.
The bill has already passed two readings in the House of Commons with support from eight Liberal MPs and one-third of the NDP caucus, and a third passage will send it to the Senate where a Conservative plurality makes its adoption much more likely.
In one survey by the RCMP’s Canada Firearms Centre, which administers the registry, 92 per cent of general-duty police officers said they use the system and 74 per cent said “query results have proven beneficial during major operations.”
“Why would you want to deny those who stake their lives on the fact that the information is important?” Bentley said. “Why would you want to deny them that information?”
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