Canada's Ruling Conservative Party Moves to Scrap Nation's Costly Long Gun Registry

Loathed by Canadian hunters, farmers and sportsmen while coveted by gun control advocates in both Canada and the USA, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Cabinet introduced legislation that would scrap Canada's costly and controversial long gun registry once and for all.

"Our government believes that the requirement to register long-guns has needlessly and unfairly targeted law-abiding Canadians, specifically law-abiding firearms owners, as criminals for simply owning a long-gun," said MP Hoeppner [Representing the Portage-Lisgar, MB riding; southwest of Winnipeg] who introduced a similar private member's bill in the last Parliament that was narrowly defeated.

"Furthermore, these lawabiding firearms owners have been burdened with red tape that the long-gun registry has caused."

Ms. Hoeppner said the Conservatives have "examined" all the evidence and that she can now say confidently that the nearly $2-billion registry has been "completely ineffective" and "completely wasteful."

The legislation introduced Tuesday will not have an impact on registration requirements for restricted and prohibited firearms.

Gun owners will also still be required to pass a police background check, a firearms safety course and they will have to comply with all safe storage and transportation requirements.

The recently introduced bill would also require that data accumulated in the long-gun registry be deleted so that the registry could not be reconstituted in any way shape or form by a future government. Interestingly, after more than a decade of ignoring cost overruns from building and maintaining the actual registry, many supporters of the long gun registry are claiming that deletion of the registry's files on Canadian gun owners would be an onerous and costly proposition. The RCMP, which is responsible for the database, refused to make public any cost estimates regarding the registry's scrapping and deletion.

The Quebec government has already announced their opposition to both the closure of the registry and the mandated deletion of the files within. While the bill would allow for individual provinces to set up their own gun registry scheme, it was also made clear that the provinces should expect no federal funding for such endeavors.

The registry was introduced in 1995 and was finally operational by 2001 before Canadian gun owners were given a deadline of Jan 1, 2003 to individually register their non-restricted firearms. Failure to register guns or renew a Possession and Acquisition License (PAL) by a gun owner could draw a fine, possible jail time or confiscation.

In 2006, an Orilla, ON web consultant who worked on an earlier version of the registry's website said that the database could be easily hacked and the make, model and serial numbers of registered guns along with the home address and phone number of their owners could be accessed by just about anybody with a computer and about a half hour to spare.

Many gun owners also expressed concerns that additional restrictions or a prohibition of firearms with certain characteristics would be put in place under Chretien's government that would outlaw nearly overnight guns that they had legally obtained and owned for years.

While many top-level police officials in Eastern Canada initially supported the registry as a law-enforcement tool, others remained skeptical of its effectiveness.

Dismantling the registry was something Harper had campaigned on in previous elections, but lacked a Conservative majority in parliment to pull it off, although a measure to kill the registry was narrowly defeated in 2010. But in May of this year, Harper won re-election and his Conservative party trounced the opposition.

Since 1977, civilian firearms in Canada have fallen into three categories- non-restricted, restricted and prohibited. Non restricted guns can are usually long guns that can range from antique single-shot rifles and shotguns to semiautomatic or large caliber rifles and carbines. Firearms in the restricted category include all handguns as well as long-guns with certain features such as a flash suppressor or pistol grip (yet are functionally similar to many long guns in the non-restricted category).

Guns in the Prohibited category include belt-fed or fully automatic weapons or sawn off shotguns or rifles that had been grandfathered in prior to the revised guidelines in 1977.

Even though I'm neither Canadian or a Canadian gun owner, I personally will be glad to see this costly, onerous boondoggle go away. About 10 years ago, gun control advocates in the USA were approvingly citing this program as something that should be implemented here.

They didn't seem to mind the fact that this scheme would put law-abiding gun owners under even more scrutiny from law enforcement while gang members and criminals (on either side of the border) would continue to murder, rob and rape with their decidedly unregistered guns that they either stole or got on the black market. This quote from an Ottawa Citizen article about reaction to this week's development is pretty telling:

Some Canadians are alarmed that registered firearms users such as Styles have legal access to such weapons, which are considered "civilianized" models of modern military-assault rifles. Although these high-powered rifles are seldom used in crimes in Canada, many gun-control advocates want them banned in the name of public safety.

There you have it. Even though these purportedly fearsome weapons rarely show up at crime scenes on either side of the border, we're supposed to believe that these noble-minded busybodies are trying to protect us from a public safety threat that hardly even exists.

Others have been far more shrill and vindictive, not the least bit hesitant to lump hundreds of thousands of law abiding citizens with a misogynist sociopath who went on a killing spree at Montreal's École Polytechnique in December 1989. And then telling anybody who resents the comparison to 'get over themselves'. As the National Post's Chris Selley pointed out, these are hardly the ingredients for a successful charm offensive.

Outbursts like those from the Montreal Gazette's Janet Bagnall seem to do nothing but remind people that issues like gun control or gun registration were never about public safety to begin with, but rather utilizing the mechanisms of government to control a segment of the population those like her find distasteful.

Borderline Psychosis- The Often Overlooked Northern Border Edition: GAO- Only 32 miles of Canadian Border 'Secure'; Smugglers Pipeline in Northern NY

Looking north from the Whitetail, MT border crossing- Mike Stebelton/ Daniels County Leader

A study released in February indicates that just over 32 miles of the nearly 4,000 mile US/Canadian border is considered 'secure' according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) states the threat of terrorism from the northern border is higher than from the southern Mexico border, given the large expanse of area with limited law enforcement coverage. DHS reports networks of illicit criminal activity and smuggling of drugs, currency, people, and weapons across the northern border.

The report focuses on whether federal agencies are working together to secure the vast stretches of the border owned by the federal government.

The study points out critical gaps in security along the U.S.-Canadian border that limit the ability of Customs and Border Protection to fully secure the border—gaps including a lack of interoperable communications systems and limited sharing of intelligence and information between local and federal officials.

U.S. Customs head Alan Bersin told a US Senate Subcommittee earlier this month that even though the Canadian border sees far fewer arrests than the US/Mexican border, the Canadian border is considered a 'more significant threat' by Customs and DHS.

Although certainly not marred by the bloody narco-violence like Mexico, there are concerns that radical Islamists would attempt to enter the USA through Canada to carry out attacks. In December 1999, an Algerian national was arrested at Port Angeles, WA after entering the country from Victoria, BC when a search of his vehicle turned up plastic bags filled with explosives and some homemade timing devices.

MICHIGAN: Drug traffickers flying in private aircraft have taken to making their drops at small, rural and sometimes unstaffed airports along some border states.

The bust by federal agents didn't happen on the southwestern border. It was in Michigan's rural Thumb region next to a soybean field. The remote airport here in Sandusky offers a smooth runway at any hour to anyone who needs it, a perfect landing spot for brazen drug smugglers who can cross the Great Lakes from Canada in minutes.

Beefed-up enforcement along the Mexican border has made smuggling more challenging for criminal cartels using the major southern routes, but drugs continue to flow across the porous northern border through airstrips like this one as officials look for new ways to fight back.

Tracking rogue planes at low altitude with their transponders off is “like trying to pick a needle out of a haystack,” said John Beutlich of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, who oversees air and marine operations from Washington state to Maine.

“Shoot, we're just a big cherry to pick and didn't realize it,” said Joe Allen, manager of the Sandusky airport, 145 kilometres northeast of Detroit.

He installed a fence to keep cars from meeting planes at the runway, but the property is not staffed at night. Border agents could offer just two signs asking people to call an 800 number if they see something unusual.

Canada is a significant source of high-quality marijuana and the amphetamine Ecstasy. More than 2 million doses of Ecstasy were seized on the northern border in 2009 compared to just 312,000 in 2004, the Drug Enforcement Administration said, offering a snapshot of what's popular and what gets confiscated.

Most shipments come by road. But the 2009 flight from Ontario to Michigan, the subject of a recent federal trial, provided insight into drug operations that use small planes. Officials don't know how frequent such flights are but consider the vulnerability alarming.

Matthew Moody and nephew Jesse Rusenstrom, both from Amherstburg, Ontario, were the couriers captured that night in Sandusky. Their job was to enter the country through Detroit, meet the Canadian plane and deliver the drugs to others in the U.S. They also put 27 kilograms of cocaine worth more than $500,000 on the return flight to Guelph, Ontario.

Matthew Moody and nephew Jesse Rusenstrom, both from Amherstburg, Ontario, were the couriers captured that night in Sandusky. Their job was to enter the country through Detroit, meet the Canadian plane and deliver the drugs to others in the U.S. [In addition to the 79kg of pot and 400,000 ecstacy pills they had flown in and were apprehended with] they also put 27 kilograms of cocaine worth more than $500,000 on the return flight to Guelph, Ontario.

It was just one in a series of shipments. Mr. Rusenstrom said he met the drug plane at least 10 times at other tiny airports in the Thumb region — Marlette, Ray, Lapeer — as well as in Greenville in western Michigan and an airport in Pennsylvania. The pilot activated runway lights from the cockpit, a standard practice in aviation.

Mr. Rusenstrom, testifying at the trial of an accomplice, Robert “Romeo” D'Leone, said hundreds of airports were studied on Google Maps.

“We would go around looking for airports, seeing if there was fences or cameras,” the 21-year-old told jurors.

Mr. D'Leone, who lives in the Toronto area, stopped his trial and pleaded guilty on April 14. Mr. Rusenstrom and Mr. Moody co-operated, pleaded guilty and were recently sentenced to time served in custody. The U.S. still wants to extradite four others in Ontario who are accused of major roles, including the pilot.

Some jurors were alarmed by the revelations during the D'Leone trial.

“You always hear Homeland Security has an eye on everything. It's surprising that airfields aren't manned 24 hours,” Robert Simpson, 47, told The Associated Press.

The Sandusky airport has spent $2,000 on cameras and hopes to install more.
“We're outside radar,” Mr. Allen, the manager, said, running his finger over a map of Michigan's Thumb. “You can come and go as you please. You don't even have to file a flight plan.”

The minimal help he received from border authorities — warning signs — had to be fixed before he posted them: They referred to suspicious boats, not planes.

[What is it with Homeland Security and thinking signs are the answer!?- NANESB!]

NEW YORK: Another locale popular with smugglers and organized crime on both sides of the border is the Akwesasne Indian Reservation just outside of , which straddles the borders between New York State, Quebec and Ontario along the St Lawrence River.

The area's unique geography and patchwork of jurisdictions on both sides of the border has had the attention of smugglers and bootleggers since Prohibition. In more recent years, local residents will either run contraband across the border themselves- either in snowmobiles during wintertime or motorboats when the St Lawrence is navigable- or charge landing fees to smugglers for using their property.

Illegal immigrants, hydroponic marijuana and Ecstasy are usually smuggled into the USA from the Canadian side while illegal firearms, cocaine and untaxed tobacco or alcohol make their way north. Some estimates say that 20% of Canadian grown marijuana smuggled into the USA moves through the Akwesasne/St Regis reservation.

While there are some cigarette factories on the US side of the reservation, the sale of tax free cigarettes on reservation stores has caught the attention of groups like the 'Ndrangheta, Hells Angels and Bulgarian Mafia who will often purchase cigarettes in bulk then turn around and sell the untaxed cigarettes in high tax municipalities like New York City, Montreal or Toronto.

Terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and the Real IRA have also raised funds through trafficking untaxed cigarettes in the last decade.

RCMP: Anti-Tank Weapon With Live Ammunition Discovered Abandoned Next to BC Highway

Crews contracted by BC Hydro to clear brush from underneath power lines discovered a loaded anti-tank weapon not 20 feet from the Trans Canada Highway on Friday.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a Canadian Forces ordinance disposal unit were called to secure the area about 25km north of Victoria BC and take custody of the device.

The weapon was identified as an M72 Light Anti-tank Weapon (a predecessor to the US Army's AT-4). RCMP Sgt. Rob Webb said that the weapon appeared to be at that location for a few weeks before being discovered.

I'm not sure why a loaded anti-tank weapon would be abandoned by the side of the road in Canada, but it does seem pretty disturbing in light of today's other events. Police elsewhere in British Columbia have said they seized a similar weapon in a raid on a marijuana growing operation in a rural area outside of Kamloops earlier this year. So there may be nothing more to it than that, but it seems extremely foolish to dismiss this report with a mere "Oh come on now, that could be anybody's loaded rocket launcher abandoned by the side of the road."

Also keep in mind that for the failed 1999 Millennium Bombing plot, one of the perpetrators was discovered attempting to enter the USA through Port Angeles, WA with explosives after taking a car ferry from Victoria, BC.