I have, however, been following C-391, a private members’ bill to scrap the wasteful gun registry, fairly closely. It passed first and second readings fairly easily, moving on to committee. Mark Holland, the liberal critic on the committee has done his best to scuttle the fair deliberation of the act by purposefully omitting supporters of C-391 from the proposed list of witnesses. In fact, his original witness list had only 4 witnesses in favor of C-391 and dozens that didn’t.

The latest bit of political trickery is a bit much though.

Today Canadian Association of Police Chiefs President and Toronto Police Service Chief Bill Blair led a press conference in which the CACP, together with the Canadian Association of Police Boards (CAPB) and the Canadian Police Association (CPA), officially endorsed the registry.

This probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. After all, according to the Globe and Mail the CACP received some $100,000+ from CGI Group (the company responsible for managing the Registry’s IT infrastructure) which was used to buy – of all things – concert tickets:

Dr. Jones and the members of the ethics committee were in Montreal in August for two days of meetings around the CACP’s annual conference when they learned about Taser’s sponsorship and that of others, including a joint Bell Mobility-CGI-Group Techna donation of $115,000, which went toward the purchase of 1,000 tickets at $215 each to a Celine Dion concert on Aug. 25.

Of course, the CACP missed that little “truth” in their list of important facts Canadians apparently needed to know. They also failed to mention that their own ethics director quit in August of 2009 over donations like the one from CGI and others from the likes of Tazer.

Instead the CACP has setup a website called “truthsandmyths.ca” where they make a rather amateurish attempt at dispelling what they think are the “myths” that surround the registry. In reality, most of their talking points are half-truths, if not outright lies, designed to fool people who don’t know anything about guns, the registry, or the web of laws that govern firearms in Canada.

Now, that is bad enough.

But here’s the kicker. If you’re in Ontario you probably helped pay for this poorly executed bit of propaganda.

A quick query to the CIRA whois engine gives us this:

Domain name:		truthsandmyths.ca
Domain name status:		EXIST
Domain number:		3412626
Approval date:		2010/04/15
Renewal date:		2011/04/15
Updated date:		2010/04/15
Registrar name:		easyDNS Technologies Inc.
Registrar number:		88
Registrant name:		Toronto Police Service
Registrant number:		53968
Registrant description:		Police Services for the City of Toronto
Administrative contact
Name:		Pedja Ljubomirovic
Job title:		Webmaster
Postal address:		Toronto Police Service 40 College Street Toronto ON M5G 2J3 Canada
Phone:		+1 (416) 808-7106
Fax:		+1 (416) 808-7102
Email:		pedja.ljubomirovic@torontopolice.on.ca
Technical contact
Name:		Pedja Ljubomirovic
Job title:		Webmaster
Postal address:		Toronto Police Service 40 College Street Toronto ON M5G 2J3 Canada
Phone:		+1 (416) 808-7106
Fax:		+1 (416) 808-7102
Email:		pedja.ljubomirovic@torontopolice.on.ca

So, the website isn’t owned or run by the CACP – a lobby group – but instead by the Toronto Police Service. That’s right, taxpayer funded TPS is hosting the site – and providing the webmaster.

Now, I’m no expert on the Police Services Act but I’m pretty sure the following sections might apply:

46. No municipal police officer shall engage in political activity, except as the regulations permit. R.S.O. 1990, c. P.15, s. 46.

and

49. (1) A member of a police force shall not engage in any activity,

(a) that interferes with or influences adversely the performance of his or her duties as a member of a police force, or is likely to do so;

(b) that places him or her in a position of conflict of interest, or is likely to do so;

(c) that would otherwise constitute full-time employment for another person; or

(d) in which he or she has an advantage derived from employment as a member of a police force. R.S.O. 1990, c. P.15, s. 49 (1).

Now, maybe if Dr. Jones, the CACP’s ethics chair, hadn’t quit last year he might be able to explain to Bill Blair whether or not its a conflict of interest to have a TPS employee setup a website lobbying in favor of a registry that is run by a company that gives the organization you’re the president of some $115,000 dollars as “donations”. Obviously such a complex ethical question would take someone with a PHD to figure out.

I wonder if the folks on the Police Services Board know their already tight budget is being wasted by Chief Blair to support the registry so the CACP can keep buying its members tickets to see Celine Dion?

Update #1:

Welcome to all the readers from SDA.

Update #2 (May 6, 2010 @ 12:30pm EDT):

I decided to do a little more digging.

www.TruthsandMyths.ca is a CNAME record that resolves to truthsandmyths.ca @ 216.201.96.75. That IP is part of the netblock reserved for Korax Inc., a web-hosting provider located in Burlington, Ontario.

Domain	Type	Class	TTL	Answer
truthsandmyths.ca.	A	IN	10800	216.201.96.75

Hop	T1	T2	T3	Best	Graph	IP	Hostname	Dist	TTL	Ctry	Time
1	1	1	*	0.4 ms		174.133.202.225 AS21844 THEPLANET-AS	e1.ca.85ae.static.theplanet.com.		255	US	Unix: 16:11:40.392
2	0	3	*	0.4 ms [+0ms]		74.55.252.121 AS21844 THEPLANET-AS	po10.dsr02.hstntx2.theplanet.com.	0 miles [+0]	254	US	Unix: 16:11:40.418
3	0	0	*	0.4 ms [+0ms]		74.55.252.37 AS21844 THEPLANET-AS	5-4.ibr01.hstntx2.theplanet.com.	0 miles [+0]	62	US	[Router did not respond]
4	1	1	*	1.0 ms [+0ms]		64.214.196.57 AS3549 GBLX	tengigabitethernet2-3.ar2.hou1.gblx.net.	0 miles [+0]	252	US	Unix: 16:11:40.503
5	46	*	*	46 ms [+45ms]		64.208.110.98 AS3549 GBLX	cogent-1.ar1.atl2.gblx.net.	0 miles [+0]	246	US	[Router did not respond]
6	47	*	*	47 ms [+0ms]		154.54.6.113 AS174 COGENT	te7-4.mpd02.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com.	0 miles [+0]	245	US	[Router did not respond]
7	62	52	*	52 ms [+5ms]		154.54.29.86 AS174 COGENT	te0-2-0-7.mpd22.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com.	0 miles [+0]	245	US	[Router did not respond]
8	60	*	*	60 ms [+7ms]		154.54.6.181 AS174 COGENT	te4-8.mpd01.yyz02.atlas.cogentco.com.	0 miles [+0]	245	US	[Router did not respond]
9	*	*	*	60 ms [+0ms]		[Unknown]	[Unknown - Firewall did not respond]	0 miles [+0]
10	60	60	*	60 ms [+0ms]		216.201.96.75 AS18650 KORAX	[Reached Destination]vsd3.korax.net.	-1 miles [+0]	52	CA	[Router did not respond

A quick trip to domaintools.com’s Reverse IP Lookup tool shows us that there are only 4 sites hosted on vsd3.korax.net – the other three:

Cpmp.ca, Torontopolice.ca, and Torontopolice.on.ca.

Now, CMPM.ca seems to resolve to a placeholder but its obvious the other two sites belong to the Toronto Police Service. So, is this a co-located server owned by the TPS? Is it a server they’re leasing? Or is it a shared server that just “happens” to be running the TPS’s site?

In any case its pretty clear whose footing the bill for mythsandtruths.ca – Toronto taxpayers.

In a final bit of irony, Toronto happens to be a bandwidth hub chock-a-block with ISPs and hosting providers. Odd that the TPS had to go outside of the city to host their site.

To top it off, the firearms registry is responsible for draining precious resources that could otherwise be used to prevent domestic abuse.

Statistics Canada’s 2008 report on Family Violence shows only 40 of over 38,000 incidents of domestic violence involved firearms. In other words, 99.92% of spousal assaults didn’t involve guns. In instances where spousal abuse involved physical violence, firearms were used against women 34 times and against men 6 times out of over 17,000 violent assaults.

According to the Canadian Center for Justice Statistics, the total spending for shelters in 2006 totaled $317 million. In the same year the government spent $82 million on the firearms program.

The 2007 Commissioner of Firearms report states that 70 of the 1,758 firearms license revocations that year were the result of domestic violence. At the end of 2007 there were 1,877,880 individuals licenses to own firearms in Canada.

The numbers translate to a rate of 3.7 revocations per 100,000 gun owners.

The 2006 Census reports there were over 31.6 million people in Canada resulting in a rate of 120.2 incidents of domestic violence per 100,000 population and 53.7 violent assaults per 100,000 population.

In other words, firearms owners are between 14.5 and 32.5 times less likely to commit domestic violence. Yet responsible firearms owners continue to be demonized as ”potential” abusers by registry supporters.

While we must be vocal in condemning all forms of domestic violence, spending a disproportionate amount of limited tax dollars to achieve a relatively meager reduction in the rate of domestic violence seems counterintuitive.

Certainly, the bulk of victims of spousal abuse would benefit more from expanded shelter space and increased funding for existing programs than they do from government spending millions of dollars to maintain a list of firearms. Scrapping the registry will not do away with firearms licensing, the main tool police use to revoke firearms ownership.

Scrapping the registry also won’t make women more likely to be abused. If anything, it will free up tax dollars for programs that make a real difference in keeping Canadians safe.

But don’t take my word for it, look up the stats yourself:

• Statistics Canada – Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile 2008 – Stats for domestic violence in 2006.
• Juristat – Canada’s shelters for abused women, 2005/2006 – budgets for 2005/2006 spending on women’s shelters.
• Treasury Board – RPP 2005-2006 Canada Firearms Centre – 2006 budget for Firearms Center.
• Commissioner of Firearms Reports.

Sadly it doesn’t seem like IANSA’s Elizabeth Mandelman – a Masters student at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs  - got the memo.

In her latest blog post Elizabeth comes to the conclusion:

These statistics illustrate the need for gun control not only to reduce and prevent domestic violence, but violence in general.  Many weapons are used to domestically abuse and assault people, but none are more lethal than firearms.

Well, ok.

I guess that Ms. Mandelman must have clear evidence that firearms are used frequently, and with lethal effects, in cases of domestic violence.

I mean, she certainly couldn’t come to the conclusion that gun control is essential based on evidence that shows firearms are responsible for less deaths than, say, stabbing or bludgeoning on beating could she?

In 2006 (a report was not submitted for 2007), twelve of thirty-six homicides (thirty-three percent) resulted from domestic violence, and firearms contributed to twelve (thirty-three percent) of the total number of homicides.  In 2005, thirty-one of the forty-nine homicides (sixty-three percent) investigated were attributed to domestic violence, and eleven of the forty-nine homicides were a result of firearms (twenty-two percent).

Oh. That’s certainly not what I expected.

In fact, it’s much worse.

In her blog Ms. Mandelman is suggesting that firearms are responsible for a good number of homicides related to domestic violence. Clearly, however, the statistics just don’t show that.

While it’s true that twelve of thirty-six homicides resulted from domestic violence, and twelve of thirty-six homicides were committed with firearms, there is nothing in those statistics that indicates how many homicides linked to domestic violence resulted from firearms. In fact, as I posted previously, in 2006 only 0.01% of incidents of domestic violence reported to police nation-wide involved firearms.

What I really want to know is if guns somehow make people deader? Why doesn’t Elizabeth Mandelman seem to care much about the causes of the other 24 homicides in 2006? Shouldn’t we dedicate our effort to reducing all types of domestic violence? All violence in general? Hell, shouldn’t we at least tackle the causes of homicide from most to least?

Obviously Ms. Mandelman isn’t really concerned with reducing domestic violence or curbing homicide in Canada. Like many lobbyists she’s only concerned with spinning and confusing statistics in order to further her organization’s agenda.

I try to stay out of firearms politics – but it’s hard when I see people climbing up on the corpses of victims of violence in order to pitch their product.

In 2006, over 36,000 men, women, and children were the victims of domestic violence so severe that it was reported to police. We need to work to resolve the root causes of domestic violence and concern ourselves with all 36,000 victims, not just a fraction of them.