West Edmonton retailer looks forward to end of long-gun registry

By Shaamini Yogaretnam

EDMONTON — A West Edmonton long-gun retailer will have less paperwork to deal with, as the Harper government is set to abolish the long-gun registry in the coming weeks.

“That’ll be nice,” said an eager Ken Kupsch. Kupsch is co-owner of Wild West Shooting Centre at West Edmonton Mall. He has  owned the shooting centre, one of the hubs of Edmonton’s shooting communities, for 12 years and has more than two decades of experience in the gun industry. Kupsch thinks the end of the long-gun registry will mean faster processing times and not having to turn customers away.

As it stands, the registry is a big part of long-gun sales.

When potential buyers come into Wild West, they have to show their firearms licence to initiate a purchase. Kupsch and his team then have to do a transfer through the Canadian Firearms Program, in Miramichi, N.B., that houses the registry. All of the guns for sale at Wild West are registered to the centre until they find a permanent home with a buyer, who can then take on their registration. Once the transfer is done, through the phone or Internet, the gun ownership transfers to the buyer and he/she can take it home.

“It’s just bureaucracy that we don’t need,” said Kupsch, who has lost customers over the process. “A lot of people won’t bother with it.”

If the registry is done away with, customers will still have to produce a firearms licence to buy the long gun but once they do, they can purchase and leave with it.

“Business-wise, it makes it easier for us,” Kupsch said. ‘It’s less complicated, which is better for everybody in the industry and everybody in the shooting community.”

Wild West offers patrons both a shooting range and a place to purchase guns and shooting accessories.

The long-gun registry

In 1995, a change was made to the Firearms Act in reaction to the use of a long-gun in the slaying of 14 women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. Hunting rifles and shotguns were to be licenced by 2001 and registered by the first day of 2003. These non-restricted long-gun registrations make up the long-gun registry and were added to an existing registry that listed restricted and prohibited guns.

The law demands that all non-restricted long guns – guns that are at least 26 inches long and are not classified as restricted or prohibited – be registered. The models, makes, descriptions and serial numbers of all long guns are supposed to be recorded.

In 2006, the Conservative government announced an amnesty for all long-gun owners who failed to register their firearms. The amnesty was extended once and is set to expire on May 16, 2013. The registry and its contents are on target to be erased well before then.

There are over seven million firearms files in the long-gun registry.

Compliance and criminal activity

“Most of the people that have guns, didn’t register ‘em,” said Kupsch.

He doesn’t believe the registry has lowered gun crime in the country.

“It doesn’t help because somebody with criminal intent, the firearms laws isn’t going to stop them,” Kupsch said. “If they were willing to commit a crime, a gun law isn’t going to stop them from doing that. The gun laws can’t prevent a crime.”

“Bad people do bad things, it has nothing to do with access to firearms,” Kupsch said. “The criminals today still have access to firearms. No matter how strict our gun laws are, people still have them. All we say is let the good people have them too.”

Difficult to work with the registry

Evan Porter is a long-gun owner who has had long guns for two years and has always registered them.

“Every time I purchased a firearm, the dealership would just do it for me and then it would come in the mail,” Porter said. “It was easy to do.”

It’s been simple to register his guns but Porter doesn’t see a need for the registry and has had his share of hassles with the system.

Porter’s father wanted to give him a hunting rifle that had been in the family for years. When the elder Porter applied for a change of ownership, he found that the registry had incorrect information about the gun.

“They didn’t know how long it was, they didn’t know how many rounds it held, nothing like that,” said Porter.

“We did everything we could to find out what the rules were so we could make sure all of our ducks were in a row and it was just incredibly frustrating.”

It took some time, but Porter’s father held off on giving him the gun until the registration process was complete. They’ve always abided by the law.

“In my opinion, people that are going to commit crimes with firearms don’t register them, or wouldn’t use a registered firearm,” Porter said.

Opponents of the registry often think that it places an unfair financial and time burden on law-abiding rural gun owners instead of zeroing in on the urban criminal use of firearms.

“In a city environment, it makes more sense. But the majority of people that use these long guns don’t live in big cities,” Porter said.

What the passing of Bill C-19 means for EPS

Bill C-19, the Elimination of the Long-Gun Registry Bill, was introduced in the House of Commons in October 2011 by the Conservative government. Critics of the registry have often said that it is ineffectual as a policing tool and a waste of gun-owners’ money.

Edmonton gun owners might think the registry is a bureaucratic nightmare but the reality of the registry is very different for law enforcement. Det. Ron Johnson, of the Edmonton Police Service’s National Weapons Enforcement Support Team, says that the long-gun registry is the first point of policing every time a non-restricted, long-barreled firearm is seized.

“We use it every day in our office,” Johnson said.

The guns are checked to see if they are reported stolen and if they are registered. If they are registered, the owners are contacted to see what they know of the circumstance of the gun coming into EPS’s possession.

“Maybe it hasn’t got the value that people thought it would have when it was brought in, but it’s certainly a starting point in some investigations,” Johnson said.

“Sometimes we get sawed-off guns that are stolen from a guy’s place and he doesn’t know it’s been stolen until he gets contacted by police saying ‘Hey, guess what. We bagged your gun.’”

In the likely absence of the registry, EPS will no longer be able to access the information. All current files of the registry will be destroyed if Bill C-19 is passed, effectively making the decision to scrap the registry irreversible.

“What your hope would be is that the people who have their guns registered now will keep their certificates,” Johnson said. For many gun owners, the long-gun registry is the only record of serial numbers that they have.

Bill C-19 began its third and final reading on Monday. The Conservatives have won a motion to limit the time to debate to two days.

yogaretnams@mymail.macewan.ca