On Gun Control and Banning Weapons

OK, I know I've waited to post on this subject, but here it is:

The Liberal Party policy announcement to ban handguns in an effort to reduce crime is three things:

• A flip flop on their statement from the 1997 election when they said the gun registry wouldn't lead to confiscation
• More evidence they don't trust law abiding Canadians
• Clear indication they don't recognize how crime works.

The plan to ban guns is predicated on the mistaken belief that allowing people to own a handgun legally has any bearing whatsoever on the incidence of violent crime. The gun registry, which cost us billions of dollars for no reason (I built a gun registry database in a weekend and I had to learn about databases...) has not reduced gun crime, as is evidenced by the spate of shootings in Toronto, Vancouver and other cities in 2005. Since handguns have been required to be registered since 1934, this is not surprising.

Second, the complete failure of the Liberals to learn from the experiences in other countries (notably the UK and USA) is amazing. I shall not dwell on the details of crime increases in the UK after they banned handguns, and falls in US states after passage of concealed weapon legislation.

I will instead dwell on the logical inconsistencies:

• If you ban guns, you must confiscate them. To confiscate, you must find. Finding registered, legally held weapons is easy. Finding the smuggled, stolen and illegal ones is very hard. The crime you are seeking to stop is committed primarily with the hard to find weapons.
  
• If you ban guns, you need to make the penalties for possessing an illegal weapon very strict. In fact, it is possible that in this scenario you could get more jail time for possessing a gun than for actually committing a crime. Of course, that would me implementing stiffer penalties. Since the Liberals don't like incarcerating people, there will likely be no serious penalties for illegal gun possession. No deterrent means no effect. And no decrease in crime.

No deterrent means no decrease in crime. Does that mean that Paul Martin is promising stiffer penalties for gun crimes and criminal offenses? Or is he just playing politics? I know what I think.