Quoted from the http://www.vpc.org website:
{What are the limitations of licensing and registration?
Licensing systems are very expensive to administer. Canada's experience with its full licensing and registration system, begun in December 1998, is not encouraging. The government originally estimated that the cost of licensing Canada's three million gun owners and registering their seven million guns would be $185 million [Canadian] over five years including a one-time start-up cost of $85 million [Canadian]. But, by March 2000 the Canadian Firearms Centre admitted that the system had already cost Canadian taxpayers $327 million [Canadian] and was running up an annual bill nearly 10 times higher than the government's original forecast. The March announcement also revealed that although 270,000 valid licenses existed from the country's earlier gun control system, only 142,000 new licenses had been issued. Using these figures as a baseline for America's arsenal of 65 million handguns, the estimated cost of such a system here is staggering.
Most importantly, licensing and registration in America would have little effect on the vast majority of gun violence, such as unintentional gunshot deaths, suicides and the majority of homicides, since most homicides are the result of arguments between people who know each other and who purchase guns legally.}
So, according to VPC, registration is expensive, nearly impossible to administer, and virtually ineffective to reduce crime, but they want to do it anyway because it "supplements" regulation. WTF?
[This message has been edited by GnL (edited June 28, 2000).]
{What are the limitations of licensing and registration?
Licensing systems are very expensive to administer. Canada's experience with its full licensing and registration system, begun in December 1998, is not encouraging. The government originally estimated that the cost of licensing Canada's three million gun owners and registering their seven million guns would be $185 million [Canadian] over five years including a one-time start-up cost of $85 million [Canadian]. But, by March 2000 the Canadian Firearms Centre admitted that the system had already cost Canadian taxpayers $327 million [Canadian] and was running up an annual bill nearly 10 times higher than the government's original forecast. The March announcement also revealed that although 270,000 valid licenses existed from the country's earlier gun control system, only 142,000 new licenses had been issued. Using these figures as a baseline for America's arsenal of 65 million handguns, the estimated cost of such a system here is staggering.
Most importantly, licensing and registration in America would have little effect on the vast majority of gun violence, such as unintentional gunshot deaths, suicides and the majority of homicides, since most homicides are the result of arguments between people who know each other and who purchase guns legally.}
So, according to VPC, registration is expensive, nearly impossible to administer, and virtually ineffective to reduce crime, but they want to do it anyway because it "supplements" regulation. WTF?
[This message has been edited by GnL (edited June 28, 2000).]