Canada shows signs of sanity

and begins scrapping the gun registry.

Found this over at Captain's Quarters, which also linked to Alphecca on the matter. Among the important points:
"Canadians will be shocked by the true cost of the federal government's ill-fated gun registry, says new Public Security Minister Stockwell Day.

Day told The Canadian Press that figures bureaucrats have shown him during briefings for his new portfolio are much higher than previously thought. He would not divulge what the tab is, but said it's upsetting. ..." and

"At last estimate, the gun program was said to be consuming $90 million a year to maintain."

$90 million/year to maintain? Considering the original cost was said to be $2 million, and at last report it was at $1 billion, with lousy results on top of that... Which, in a way, may have been seen by the Liberal party as a feature, not a bug; the Capt. points out that since the RCMP couldn't get sufficient funding to operate the program(think about that, too), they lost a lot of their agency resources trying to do so, which means they didn't have time/money for other things, like investigating corruption...

There's been a lot of criticism of this mess since it began, including, as I recall, some western provinces basically saying "We don't have the money, people and time to waste chasing someone because they didn't want to register their rifle or shotgun, so we ain't enforcing this mess". And yet it kept going, eating money and time at a prodigeous rate, and why? A quote from an article Alphecca linked to in the past:
"And it's not just the uselessness. The registry is also one of those truisms for liberals, one of their articles of blind faith. To a liberal, universal registration of guns is something all intelligent people must support or, well, they're not intelligent. They use gun control as a litmus test for who is and isn't sophisticated and subtle of mind. So that even if you can prove the registry will have no practical effect -- it won't prevent armed robberies or murders, or keep enraged spouses from killing one another -- a liberal still has to cling to it for fear of being seen as NOKD (not our kind, dear). But what troubles me most is what it says about its supporters' attitude toward the people and government. Backing most gun laws amounts to proclaiming trust in government over trust in one's fellow citizens."

That pretty much covers it; "It needs to be done, so we'll keep doing it even though it doesn't actually work, because we have to". I think Kevin at Smallest Minority refers to it as the "It doesn't work, so we have to do it harder" mindset.

This could have some interesting repercussions internationally, too. Brazil votes down a gun ban and kicks the personal disarmament groups in the crotch, and now Canada- long held up as a country 'doing it right'- trashes the registration system. And warns the people that when the find out the actual cost, they're going to be very upset, which admission will upset the gun banners still further("What's money when we're doing the Right Thing? What do you mean you don't want to go broke paying for it? It's for The Children!") Add that to the fact that it has not worked, that crime has continued to rise and so forth(with people who were burglarized being charged with 'unsecure storage' when their vault took two days to break into), it'll be some interesting points to bring up to people.