The newly elected Conservative government of Canada will be moving to abolish the Canadian registry of shotguns and rifles as quickly as possible. The new Public Security Minister Stockwell Day said the public would be shocked when the actual costs of Canada’s gun registry program are finally revealed.  Day said the public would have to wait for the Auditor genearal to release the figures, but said: “People are going to be upset and they’re going to have a right to be upset.”

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…

The gun program consumes about $90-million a year in direct costs while a single campaign promise to hire an additional 1,000 Mounties would add $50-million to the federal payroll.

Jeff Soyer quotes some earlier coverage.

Let’s hope that Australia, Britain, and the United States learn from the results of the Canadian experiment.