An anti-gun campaigner and government advisor thanked the government for helping to provide Quebec with inaccurate, incomplete and obsolete data on licensed gun owners, saying the flawed list will make people safer.
Canada’s Ministry of Public Safety proposed a law yesterday that, if passed, would supply Quebec with data from Canada’s so-called “Long-gun Registry,” which was shut down in 2012 by the previous Conservative-led government.
The database was stopped and the RCMP said it deleted the non-Quebec content in October 2012 after the registry was criticized for its costs, errors and ineffectiveness, and for getting police who trusted it killed.
Quebec sued the federal government to oppose the destruction. The data on Quebec were updated until March 2015, PolySeSouvient, a group that campaigns against gun owners and firearm ownership, said on its website yesterday after the government published the bill to provide the archaic data.
Campaigner, Advisor
“We would like to thank the Liberal government,” Nathalie Provost, a vice-chair of the government’s Canadian Firearms Advisory Committee and a spokeswoman for PolySeSouvient, said yesterday in a statement. “This gesture shows the willingness of Justin Trudeau’s government to collaborate in good faith with Quebec as concerns the crucial issue of public safety that is gun control.”
At the end of 2011, the “long-gun registry” listed 498,225 licensed firearm owners in Quebec who had more than 1.6 million legally owned shotguns and rifles classified as “Non-restricted.”
Incomplete and Obsolete
The database listed law-abiding gun owners and the firearms they registered with police, but left out people who had acquired guns legally and didn’t register them, and also excluded violent criminals and their guns, which are generally obtained illegally.
By the time the law passes, the partial, erroneous data could be more than three years out of date. Quebec also decided a year ago to create its own registry.
If you have an old phonebook or gun catalogue, Quebec might be interested.
Related Information
- Goodale Names Judge, Olympian and Anti-Gun Activist as Advisors
- Do Police Really Trust Their Lives to a Flawed Gun Database?
- Why Is Quebec Helping Thieves, Rapists and Murderers?
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