Canadians Scrapping Gun Registry

The new Canadian PM is hard at work trying to fix some of the nonsense left by the liberals. One of his targets is the Canadian long gun registration program, an expensive mess which served only to harass law-abiding citizens while criminals continued unmolested (h/t Alphecca):

OTTAWA — The Conservative government has created a committee of two cabinet ministers and a backbencher to figure out how best to kill the long-gun registry as soon as possible.

Registry critic Garry Breitkreuz, who is working with Justice Minister Vic Toews and Public Security Minister Stockwell Day, said he has been given wide leeway to deal swiftly with the registry.

[...]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised voters during the election campaign that the long-gun registry would be scrapped and money redirected to public safety.

When the Liberals added the registry to the federal gun control program in 1995, they said it would cost taxpayers no more than $2 million. But the most recent estimates put the figure in the hundreds of millions of dollars, bringing the total cost of the gun program to more than $1 billion.

The Conservatives have called the registry a waste of taxpayers money that targets duck hunters rather than criminals.

And from another Toronto Star article:

One former Mountie called the registry "totally useless" because criminals don't register their guns.

"They've wasted $2 billion on what should have gone to front-line policing," said Dennis Young, parliamentary assistant to Saskatchewan Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz, a gun-registry critic.

"They've targeted law-abiding citizens instead of the 176,000 people (with court convictions) who have been prohibited from owning guns."

Wouldn't it be nice if the U.S. were able to figure all this stuff out.