Gun registry's legacy

PUBLICATION: The Windsor Star
DATE: 2004.08.19
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Editorial/Opinion
PAGE: A6
SOURCE: Windsor Star

-----------------------

Gun registry's legacy

-----------------------

Some "good" has finally come of the federal Liberal government's $1-billion rifle and shotgun registry -- it's being used by a U.S. project management centre as a case study in incompetence and financial mismanagement.

New York-based Baseline is showing senior corporate executives how the registry went from a relatively simple system that was supposed to cost taxpayers less than $2 million to a bloated billion-dollar mess as costs soared out of control as a result of bureaucratic errors, poor planning, unforeseen expenses and an increasingly complex computer system.

The Baseline analysis also points out that the registry has become "so cumbersome that an independent review board recommended that it be scrapped." Baseline has aptly titled its study, Firearms: Armed Robbery.

What Baseline should be adding to its assessment is the fact that the rifle and shotgun registry is a useless government program that hasn't had any appreciable impact on criminal activity in Canada.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Home

Johnlott.org (description of book, downloadable data sets, and discussions of previous controversies)

Academic papers:

Social Science Research Network

Book Reviews:

For a list of book reviews on The Bias Against Guns, click here.

---------------------------------
List of my Op-eds
---------------------------------

Posts by topic

Appalachian law school attack

Baghdad murder rate

Arming Pilots

Fraudulent website pretending to be run by me

The Merced Pitchfork Killings and Vin Suprynowicz's quote

Ayres and Donohue

Stanford Law Review

Mother Jones article

Links

Craig Newmark

Eric Rasmusen

William Sjostrom

Dr. T's EconLinks.com

Interview with National Review Online

Lyonette Louis-Jacques's page on Firearms Regulation Worldwide

The End of Myth: An Interview with Dr. John Lott

Cold Comfort, Economist John Lott discusses the benefits of guns--and the hazards of pointing them out.

An interview with John R. Lott, Jr. author of More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws

Some data not found at www.johnlott.org:

Updated Media Analysis of Appalachian Law School Attack

Since the first news search was done additional news stories have been added to Nexis:

There are thus now 218 unique stories, and a total of 294 stories counting duplicates (the stories in yellow were duplicates): Excel file for general overview and specific stories. Explicit mentions of defensive gun use increase from 2 to 3 now.

Journal of Legal Studies paper on spoiled ballots during the 2000 Presidential Election

Data set from USA Today, STATA 7.0 data set

"Do" File for some of the basic regressions from the paper