To the Editor,

Re: Long-gun registry must be preserved, Letters, Oct. 31.

Rather than add my views to those thoroughly covered by Alfred R. Adkins and Colin Ivory (Letters, Nov. 3), I will enlighten the uninformed Gerry Prouten with cold hard facts.

In order to aquire firearms, law-abiding/responsible citizens must take the Canadian Firearms Safety Course. Once they have successfully completed the course they must apply for a Possession and Aquisition Licence.

At this stage the RCMP does a thorough search on the individual’s background. Depending on what information is found, the individual may be denied the right to own firearms. If a licence is issued, the individual’s name is entered in the RCMP CPIC system.

It is at this stage that public safety has been addressed.

When police officers access the CPIC system, they will immediately see that an individual was issued a licence and may then have purchased firearms. However, this does not mean that the individual has purchased firearms.

As an example, having a driver’s licence does not mean one owns a car. In any case, a police officer would be more than foolish to attend any location assuming there are no firearms present.

Registering millions of firearms at a cost of $2 billion is an absolute waste of taxpayers’ money. The police know or must assume an individual has firearms and they can react accordingly. Whether there is one or more firearms at a location matters not. They will all be seized if warranted.

With regard to spousal approval, the police will speak to the partner of the individual applying for a licence at which time her/his concerns are taken into consideration.

I would like to know how Prouten’s statement that 77 per cent of people living with a gun owner support registration was derived. As well, where did he get the figure of $15 million per year lost by not charging for registering firearms and that this has led to thousands going unregistererd?

I fear that explaining how the firearms system works and how our hard-earned tax dollars are wasted on the registry will fall on deaf ears of those emotional individuals who just hate guns.

Remember, only responsible law abiding individuals obey laws.

Joseph Michaels

Canadian Firearms Safety Course Instructor

Law for fixed election dates already in place

To the Editor,

Re: Time to set election dates, Opinion, Oct. 27.

Your editorial got it wrong when you implied that the 2008 election was the result of a non confidence vote.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper passed changes to the Canada Elections Act in 2007, which set the next vote for Oct. 19, 2009, unless the government fell on a confidence matter first.

Harper’s election call a year ago at the very least broke his 2006 campaign promise to ban snap elections.

Democracy Watch is pursuing the legality of the 2008 election because it believes Harper’s partisan move broke the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.

Since we already have such a law allowing fixed elections on the books, all we need is a prime minister who respects the intent of the legislation he introduced and plays by the rules.

Sue Shewchuk

Nanoose

Local school boards still serve purpose

To the Editor,

Re: School boards redundant, Letters, Oct. 31.

As a critic of our current school board, I have to say Mr. MacKinnon doesn’t seem to understand that it is the local boards that take the gross sums distributed by the provincial government and apply them to the local education needs.

Can you imagine Victoria having a clue about needs in Fort St. John, Port Hardy and Nanaimo?

The bureaucracy needed for that would be much more expensive than our local boards.

J. Sharpe

Nanaimo