Why Gun Registration will Fail
by Ted Drane
Australian Shooters Journal
May 1997
Sometimes gun registration is touted as being new and relatively untried.
In 1796, David Collins was the Judge Advocate of New South Wales. The year before, there had been reports of people using their firearms to kill government cattle, coupled with a rise in the armed robbery rate.
In January of that year, Collins wrote:
Several attempts have been made by the Commissary to ascertain the number
of arms in the possession of individuals: it being feared that instead of
their being properly distributed among the settlers for their protection,
many are to be found in the hands of persons who use them for committing depredations.
It was attempted to discover their number by directing all persons (the military
excepted) who have arms to bring them to the Commissary's office, where after
registering them they may receive certificates signed by him, of their being
permitted to carry such arms. (1)
Thus Australian people have had a long history of being suspicious of the government - and for very good reason.
There were in the region of three hundred firearms which belonged to the government and were on issue, but of this number under fifty were brought forward for registration, or indeed ever accounted for.
This registration count amounts to approximately a sixth of the guns that were expected to be brought into the net. It is an interesting figure, because it has been echoed elsewhere.
For instance, when dealing with Baader-Meinhof terrorism, the Federal Republic of Germany began comprehensive gun registration in 1972. Government estimated between seventeen and twenty million guns were to be registered, and in fact only 3.2 million surfaced, leaving some 80% unaccounted for.
Despite those measures, on April 24th, 1996, the German Police Federation estimated twenty million illegal guns in Germany today, with the figure growing. In 1994 alone, 4,993 illegal arms were seized during importation. Of the 2,905 firearms taken from criminals in that year, only 4.8% had ever been legally owned, according to the German Interior Ministry.
The Germans have been through all this. It did not lower the murder rates. In other words, it failed to improve public safety.
The Howard government now insists that the whole of Australia must have individual gun registration. This is a hugely wasteful and unintelligent use of police resources, and it is not about public safety. It has two functions only. The first is to make it hard for ordinary, licensed firearm owners, discouraging them from gun ownership in general, and setting up a bureaucracy that assists faceless authorities to deny applicants their right to purchase different firearms, regardless of how unblemished their records.
The second thing it does is something that up until recently the average Australian would have found it very hard to believe, but now should know to be true: it attempts to mark down the location of firearms in the community in readiness for later confiscation.
Those who think this is untrue will perhaps have their minds changed when in their own states they see eighty-year-old rimfire heirlooms going to be crushed.
Where Else Has It Happened?
Many countries have had gun registration, and when it has been introduced
it has surprisingly often come about in response to a belief that the government
was in danger. Just as the German example above came about from fear of terrorist
activity, another good example is Mexico, which in 1968 brought in registration
requirements because of continuing student unrest.
Up until then in that country small calibre rifles and handguns had been freely available. Registration was introduced. Despite the penalties, it has been widely ignored. The murder rate, roughly double that of the United States, where legal gun access is freer, goes on as it did before. Registration achieved no gains.
English Precedent
The
first gun legislation in England was brought about in fear of a Bolshevik
uprising, in 1920, another case of the government fearing destabilization.
The arguments then were all very similar to the ones of today, but it was
pistols that the government was intent on restricting in that country. These
things have a way of growing.
In 1966, in Shepherd's Bush, England, three uniformed policemen were killed by two men using illegal revolvers. Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, was desperate to deflect public calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty because he was personally against it, and despite recent scrutiny finding increasing controls on sporting shotguns to be not worthwhile, he began an immediate crackdown on the legitimate ownership of firearms.
Over the following fourteen years, this had succeeded in bringing down the number of firearm certificates by 26%. Illegal guns had been used illegally in a terrible crime, and in an effort to be seen to do something, and not to have to do what he found distasteful, Jenkins attacked the lawful gun owner.
In the next few years after that, the certificate grant and renewal fees in England and Wales went up by between 700 and 800%, and those for shotguns by up to 1200%. At each turn, the authorities issued costing breakdowns of why this was all 'necessary'. These were subject to wide ridicule when examined closely.
This is a classic example of the way that bureaucracy is used as a hammer to squash gun ownership as a principle, and it is what we can expect here in Australia. Registration is almost inevitably the first step in it, because without it, the authorities cannot tell where any of the guns are. However, those same authorities always fail to say where such registration ever worked in lowering crime generally, or helping to reduce murder, even the mass variety.
All the same, when in the eighties the English police required pump action and semi-automatic shotguns to be registered, out of a known 300,000 in the country (according to trade figures), only 50,000 were ever presented. The rest are still there and still unregistered. If so many guns can disappear into such a small landscape, bear in mind that England and Wales would fit eleven times over into the state of Queensland alone.
This ratio of registration to non-compliance allies itself with the early Australian and the German experiences outlined above and possibly it is a consistent measure of people's mistrust of government not only in Australia.
The first significant study into these matters ever carried out in Britain was by Colin Greenwood (later to retire a Superintendent of Police) during a sabbatical, when he worked from the Institute of Criminology in Cambridge.
As a policeman he began his study by being in favour of gun registration. When he finished, he wrote:
....It cannot be claimed that strict controls have reduced the use of firearms in crime. On the basis of these facts, it might be argued that firearms controls have had little effect and do not justify the amount of police time involved. Indeed, it is possible to build up a sound case for abolishing or substantially reducing controls.... The system of registering all firearms....as well as licensing the individual takes up a large part of the police time involved and causes a great deal of trouble and inconvenience. The voluminous records so produced appear to serve no useful purpose. In none of the cases examined in this study was the existence of these records of any assistance in detecting a crime and no one questioned during the course of the study could offer any evidence to establish the value of the system of registering weapons. (2)
American Experience
Once again,
in this discussion we are faced with the problem of making the media and politicians
understand that the USA is not without gun laws. It has over 20,000 of them.
The unfortunate fact is that they do not achieve what they set out to do,
and an integral part of this has once again been registration.
There have been registration requirements on all sorts of guns in the US, including handguns, so-called 'assault' rifles (always nearly impossible to define for legislative purposes) and various semi-automatics. Compliance with registration laws has ranged from one to twenty-five percent.
An example is New Jersey, where requirements of registration were set in place for 'assault weapons' and these affected between 100,000 and three million firearms, depending on how the ambiguous legal definitions are read. Out of this, the police reported 947 registered, 888 rendered inoperable, and four surrendered. No one knows what happened to the rest.
Australian Opinions
In the current
wave of anti-gun sentiment from Canberra's bureaucrats, it may come as a surprise
to many to realize how widespread opinion has been even in this country to
theeffect that gun registration does no good.
In his independent investigation,
Senior Lecturer in Law and barrister David Fine called individual longarm
registration ineffective, and said:
There appears to be no evidence whatsoever that the cost of administering
any type of registration scheme might achieve any commensurate reduction in
the criminal misuse of firearms, or any increase whatsoever in the frequency
with which criminals are apprehended by police. These appear to be the goals
posited for registration by its proponents in government. (3)
Fine was not alone in
concluding this. He quotes the New Zealand police study which says:
"There is no evidence
to suggest there is any relationship between the registration of firearms
and their control. Education will reduce misuse more than registration." (4)
Other inquiries in Australia
have been carefully ignored by Australian politicians. The most significant
of these was that of Chief Inspector A Newgreen, Victoria's Firearms Registrar,
who reported in 1987, and whose findings were suppressed by the then Labor
Government of Victoria, and only released by virtue of the Freedom of Information
provisions. This said:
"I would therefore
recommend that Firearms Registration be forthwith abolished, and together
with the Firearms Consultative Committee a far reaching, effective and proper
system of education be introduced, as a pre-requisite to the obtaining of
a shooter's licence."
In conjunction with education, the penalties for those who breach the law should be heavily increased.
"....My proposal....would be less costly, and achieve far more in every way, than the concept of registration."
Another point made by the Newgreen report was that in Victoria, after years of registration, by his calculation 41% of guns had never been registered. According to the past Police Minister, Pat McNamara, this figure was a gross understatement.
In conclusion, there is so much evidence against gun registration that it is difficult to imagine why the government insists on persevering with it. One explanation, and possibly the only feasible one, is that federal and state governments alike are not interested in the facts, but for their own purposes are determined to press on against lawful gun owners with a mass of bureaucracy that has never been shown anywhere to be of the slightest effect in lowering crime rates or making Australia safer.
Many of us could cope with this, however distasteful it is. However, the sad part is that as the focus goes in this direction, the underlying causes of gun crime continue unaddressed, and so John Howard's government will continue to sacrifice Australian lives so it can be seen to be against gun ownership as a principle.
1. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, with Remarks on the Disposition, Customs, Manners etc of the Native Inhabitants of that Country, held in the NSW State Library, Mitchell Wing.
2. Colin Greenwood, Firearms Control: A Study of Armed Crime and Firearms Control in England and Wales, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1972, pages 243-247.
3. David Fine, Gun Laws - Proposals for Reform, Federation Press, Sydney, 1988, page 50
4. A G McCallum, Firearms Registration in New Zealand, Support Services Directorate, New Zealand Police, Wellington, 1982, page 26
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