Canada's police chiefs voted unanimously on Monday to endorse a new national firearms policing strategy and delivered a ringing endorsement of the national firearms registry.
Their endorsement of the registry promises to set up a war of words with the Harper government, which has vowed to abolish the registry and argues that many rank-and-file cops oppose it.
7 comments:
I find that the police as an institution tend to be in favour of anything that gives them more power and control so this doesn't surprise me. I take whatever they have to say on a subject--whether it be the war on drugs to the gun registry--with a grain of salt.
Never met a police or Liberal bureaucrat who wouldn't gladly trample all over civil liberties if it was "all for the good of the public", as defined by them. One of your fellow bloggers is even touting this as stopping Picton because it gave police that instant fishing trip needed to do a firearms inspection. I guess direct association with biker gangs, illegal drugs and bloody naked women running from the property weren't enough?
Those who want to get rid of the long gun Registry, are really the ones who soft on crime.
Better to ignore the ones who are trying to be legal and punish the ones who have already been found guilty. The fools who stood against the mandatory sentences for gun crimes are the ones with blood on their hands.
Here were criminals who had already been found with illegal handguns, who often would be caught or shot while on bail or parole from previous gun crimes. If they were in jail, we all would be safer but somehow some law abiding nobody is a larger villain because some incompetent bureaucracy loses his paperwork.
Oops, you guys are missing the OTHER side of the story. How convenient -
Not all frontline officers agree with the registry. Randy Kuntz, an Edmonton police officer for 22 years, surveyed 2,600 officers on the issue, and found about 2,400 want to scrap the registry.
"With the boots-meets-the-pavement type of policeman who's going to be dealing with the public every day, overwhelmingly there's no support for this registry," he told CTV's Kevin Armstrong in Edmonton. "It hasn't saved anybody."
Michael Harkov said...
"Not all frontline officers agree with the registry. Randy Kuntz, an Edmonton police officer for 22 years, surveyed 2,600 officers on the issue, and found about 2,400 want to scrap the registry."
With all RCMP officers killed in Alberter with rifles...I don't the pole.
re: that "survey", as Chief Blair said on Power & Politics about it on Monday, it's a highly suspect push-poll (conducted by a someone who moonlights as a hunting guide, driven by his an ad in the police mag, which we haven't seen, so the respondents are self-, not randomly-selected, and we don't even know what the actual (leading?) question was).
Sure, a lot of cops are just as much of gun-lovin' libertarians as some of the 'About to Go Postal' wingnuts the database is intended to help with. (Witness the incident in Manila yesterday: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/08/24/philippines-hostage-canadian-passports.html ) But that doesn't mean they have any real understanding of the true value of the registry. And even among the frontline law enforcement members of that very publication, a different poll and discussion shows far more appreciation than Kuntz lets on: 1/3rd were in favour in this poll on the public part of their fora: http://forums.blueline.ca/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17977&start=0
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