I take it you would have preferred him to blow off all the expressed concerns?

Points to Harper for reacting to the outcry. A problem was highlighted, and is now being addressed.

Buble/Bieber v. McGuinty/Ignatieff would the it. Either way, we win!

'media's constant fellating of Sidney Crosby (aka Golden Boy).'

Fixed that for you....

If the cop of the street knows what is useful in pursuing criminals, why are you listening to the CACP, who are a quasi-political organization out of touch with actual front line officers?

The Canadian Association of Police Chiefs (CACP) receives very large donations from both CGI, the company that both built and currently maintains the software and systems that power the firearms registry and several anti-gun organizations (including the Coalition for Gun Control). There is a very large potential conflict of interest as those donations would dry up if the registry was dismantled as C-391 threatens to do.

Acting Det. Randy Kuntz of the Edmonton Police Service conducted a survey of nearly 2500 front-line officers from police forces across Canada on their support of the firearms registry. Of the 2489 responses he has recieved as of March 10, 2010, only 8.3% (208) of the officers indicated support for the firearms registry. The remaining 92% (2281) were in favour of dismantling the registry.

Sorry Ted. While you are a great debater, you are building your arguments up from a mistaken basis (universal police support).

To address your three uses:

1. Prevention of crimes: How many crimes has the long gun registry prevented? How many has it created (think expired registrations and other paper crimes)? Can you point to any studies which demonstrate the prevention of crime by the Long Gun registry?

2. Protecting of police: Front-line police don't use the registry information to make these kind of risk assessments. They have to assume *every time* that they will be dealing with people who are potentially armed, or have firearms in their possession. The registry can never guarantee that there are no firearms present in a situation, so it must be assumed that they may be present.

3. Solving Crimes: Can you name even one crime that the information in the registry solved? I can't. Neither can the various gun control advocacy groups out there.

The firearms registry was created to gain political capital for the Liberal party so they would be seen to be 'doing something' in the wake of the Ecole Polytechnique and similar shootings. Fast forward a dozen years, and we've thrown $2 billion down a hole, with no appreciable or measurable results, apart from pulling the wool over the public's eyes.

75 years after the handgun registries were started in 1934, how well has that worked?

The Canadian Association of Police Chiefs (CACP) receives very large donations from both CGI, the company that both built and currently maintains the software and systems that power the firearms registry and several anti-gun organizations (including the Coalition for Gun Control). There is a very large potential conflict of interest as those donations would dry up if the registry was dismantled as C-391 threatens to do.

On a related note, Acting Det. Randy Kuntz of the Edmonton Police Service conducted a survey of nearly 2500 front-line officers from police forces across Canada on their support of the firearms registry. Of the 2489 responses he has recieved as of March 10, 2010, only 8.3% (208) of the officers indicated support for the firearms registry. The remaining 92% (2281) were in favour of dismantling the registry.

In short, the CACP has a large conflict of interest on this issue, and does not remotely represent the interests of the frontline officers they claim to represent.