Boon to public safety or just one big boondoggle? Liveblogging the C-391 hearings

I'll be front and centre for the second round of hearings on Candice Hoeppner's bill to abolish the gun registry, so check back at 3:30 pm for full coverage! To get an idea of what to expect, you can always persuse the liveblog from the kickoff earlier this week.
4:18:20 EEK!!! Something's iffy with Cover It Live, so my posts are continuing below:

Okay, the third witness in this cluster, Mark McCormick, has exactly the same background -- former Winnipeg cop -- and position -- the registry does nothing to keep guns out of the hands of criminals -- as the last two speakers. Once he finishes, though, it's Q&A time! Well, if the chair allows it; he seems a bit cranky today

4:28:58 PM
McCormick comes close to tears as he reaches the climax of a very, very long and detailed account of a near fatal encounter with a knife-wielding assailant. He also repeats the line about guns not killing people, and eventually finishes his testimony.

Question time! Starting with Holland, who thanks the three retired officers in attendance for their service to the community, and asks the same question he posed to Calgary police chief Rick Hanson: How many police associations have come out against the registry? Shipman mentions Saskatchewan, and assures Holland that the rank and file officers are against it, but Holland wonders why, if that's the case, there is such apparent unanimity amongst the democratically elected officers of those associations. Shipman doesn't really have an answer for that one, nor does McCormick when Holland asks if he truly believes it should be a priority for the government to abolish a registry that costs just $3 million a year -- even if there is "division" over its effectiveness. McCormick demurs, noting that he really isn't political; far be it for him to set priorities for the government.

With that, Holland moves to the pro-registry witnesses -- or the victims' groups, as he puts it -- who are much more willing to elaborate at length in response. Rathjen points out that, despite the repeated sloganizing that "guns don't kill people, people kill people," one could say the same thing about cars -- but we still require vehicular registration.

4:42:02 PM
After spending most of her allotted time chatting with the pro-registry witnesses, Maria Mourani turns to "the gentlemen" - and yes, that is, perhaps, an unfortunate, if entirely unintended and unrepresentative, bit of optics - and quizzes Tinsley on the use of long guns; he, however, sticks to his main point, which is that criminals will use any guns they can get their hands on, whether long or short. He questions her statistics, but the chair intervenes right when it's getting good; giving the floor to NDP MP Megan Leslie - now filling in for Comartin, who left midway through the witness presentations - who, as it turns out, doesn't have any answers.

Over to the government side, and Phil McColeman, who wants to hear more about the pressure put on frontline police officers not to opine on the registry, which Tinsley is only too happy to indulge.

McColeman assures Rathjen and Prevost that neither he nor his colleagues are against gun control, and asks Tinsley to share more of his thoughts on how to improve the firearms licencing process, all of which sound very sensible, as far as I can tell -- background checks, spousal interviews, face-to-face chats. Apparently, that no longer happens, although I'm not certain if that decline in attention to detail can be attributed directly to the creation of the registry. Also, McColeman would like to remind those profligate opposition members that $3 million may not sound like much to them, but it's still a lot of money to him, and to people in his riding.

4:56:37 PM
Over to Marlene Jennings, who notes that, during her pre-parliamentary career, she was involved in several investigations into domestic violence, and asks the witnesses for more information on that issue; she also wonders if the gentlemen can confirm that there were fewer homicides with firearms under the old system, and fewer involving long guns than there are today, since that, she thinks, would be the logical extension of their argument.

In response to her first question, Riendeau -- with the Quebec coalition of women's shelters -- gives what amounts to a recap of her opening statement. Tinsley, meanwhile, notes that "the very brave ladies to my right" provided statistics that dealt with the period of time in question. Statistically, he says, the numbers are melded together, but currently, there are far fewer refusals and revocations of licences, which, Jennings notes politely, was not an answer to her question.

5:02:22 PM
Over to Shelley Glover, who wants to "clarify" a few things: She believes that some statistics "don't tell the whole story" -- those on the numbers of women murdered, despite the fact that more women are killed by knives than firearms. There are also hundreds of missing women who aren't counted in the statistics -- and even if every one of those women were found tomorrow, and every one had been killed by a long gun, would that not show the registry isn't working? Uh. That's a rather grisly hypothetical question, isn't it?

5:05:58 PM
Glover wonders if the Polytechnique survivors truly believe that Marc Lepine would not have murdered as many women if his weapons had been registered; Prevost notes that he might have had fewer weapons, and - oh, Shelley Glover once again dismisses statistics, which "can't tell us everything," brings up the failure of the registry to stop the Dawson College shootings, and runs out of time.

5:07:45 PM
Over to Luc Desnoyers, who brings up something that occurred to me when the witness mentioned it: if neither Tinsley nor his colleagues have ever used the registry, how do they know if it would be useful or not? Maybe the 150-odd police associations that support it are onto something. He then brings up those "myths" on the registry, and gives "the ladies" a chance to clear up some of those oft-stated claims for the gentlemen to their collective left. Which Rathjen proceeds to do -- or attempt to do, at least. The gentlemen do not look convinced.

5:12:54 PM
Over to Rick Norlock, who begins by offering Tinsley the opportunity to finish his opening statement -- he was reading off his resume, and you know what? I think we can all get by without hearing about every last shooting, hunting and English Settler group to which he has belonged, even if none of them found the registry useful.

Tinsley's rhetoric then clambours  a wee bit over the top, as he quotes a decades-old British home office white paper on gun control that described it as the first step towards total abolition of the right to own weapons, comes *this* close to breaking Godwin's law, and ends by giving freedom a big thumbs up. He also thinks we need to get tough on criminals, and says it's a "joke" that people can take a life and still be out of jail within four years, which leads to a tangent about monsters, like Marc Lepine, and anyone else who commits such attacks on -- did he just refer to "citizens and women"? Because last time I checked, we're not a separate category of person.
5:23:17 PM
Over to Andrew Kanian, who challenges Tinsley to explain how the gun registry doesn't help police do their jobs, specifically with regard to court orders to seize all weapons. Wouldn't it be better to know that there are thirteen weapons? Tinsley tries to make the case that they wouldn't stop searching until they were sure there wasn't a single gun left in the residence, but is eventually forced to admit that the existence of the registry "wouldn't hurt." McCormick takes over at that point, and assures Kania that they wouldn't stop searching even after finding every registered weapon.

5:27:49 PM
Alright, they're still arguing about those theoretical thirteen guns, Mackenzie notes that a clever lawyer would argue that continuing to search after finding the lucky thirteenth violated the order, and -- yeah, I think that's it from me. I've got a British election to watch, and I don't think much more will come out in the next -- oh, three minutes. Forgive me, will you, for leaving early? At least I made it this far!