Most firearms registry queries made manually: commissioner's report

It's only a matter of time before the long-gun registry reappears on the parliamentary radar.

Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner's private member's bill died last month, but it is widely expected the government will re-introduce a new bill -- either in the House of Commons or Senate -- that would once again try to scrap the controversial program.

You may well remember that in the most recent heated days of debate, a number of anti-registry advocates disputed the oft-quoted statistics that police search the Canadian Firearms Registry Online (CFHRO) 12,000 times a day.

Those opposed to the registry said most police forces run computer programs that automatically check the CFRO every time they consult the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) for calls completely unrelated to firearms.

Yet the just-published annual report of the Commissioner of Firearms takes indirect aim at that argument. It reiterates that on an average day, Canadian police queried the firearms registry 11,076 times a day in 2009.

"Some of these queries result from police agencies choosing to enable a feature that automatically checks CFRO when a CPIC check is made. However, most police agencies do not automatically check CFRO, and rely on manual queries."