The Criminal Code of Canada has failed to prevent crime and should be scrapped immediately, say its opponents.

 "It is self-evident that last week's multiple murder tragedy was not in any way prevented or impeded by the Criminal Code, although the Criminal Code was brought into effect primarily to deal with precisely this kind of tragedy," said Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.

Sounds rather goofy when you put it that way, doesn't it ? And if you didn't pick up on it, I made those first two grafs up.

But that is what Stephen Harper said about the gun registry in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta said something similar.

Personally, I don't know why The Globe and Mail (note: I work for CTV. Bell Globemedia is the parent company of CTV and The Globe) is buying into that type of National Post/Sun Media logic (here's the Toronto Star's editorial from Thursday for comparison).

On Wednesday , The Globe wrote: "How is it that Canada has spent $1-billion on a gun registry, yet just suffered the most violent gun attack on the RCMP in 120 years?"

Let's walk through the obvious.

Jim Roszko, the killer of the four RCMP officers, was convicted in April 2000 of sexual abuse charges. I'm quite sure I read somewhere that as part of his sentence, Roszko had a firearms prohibition order slapped on him -- but I stand to be corrected.

It was well known by the entire community in the Mayerthorpe, Alta. area that Roszko was, as one person put it, a "walking time bomb."

A question to be asked when the investigation into this tragedy proceeds is even if there was no gun registry, why wouldn't you assume that Roszko was armed and dangerous, given his widespread reputation as a gun-loving cop hater?

One of the police victims was reportedly on a day off and was just dropping someone off; as a result, he wasn't wearing either body armour or carrying a firearm. If true, couldn't that be seen that this wasn't perceived by the officers as a particularly dangerous assignment?

There was talk that Roszko had weapons hidden on his property. Unfortunately, you can't get a search warrant based on talk. Well, you could in a police state, but unless you're a terror suspect, we aren't one of those.

Buying and registering firearms

The next Jim Roszko (and some day, unfortunately, there will be another) will have to get a Possession and Acquisition Licence to purchase a firearm. He will have to register those firearms.

Here are some of the questions he'll be asked on Form CFAC 1039 E:

• If he's been the subject of a peace bond in the last five years
• Has he been prohibited from possessing a firearm?
• Has he threatened or attempted suicide or had serious emotional or behavioural problems?
• Has he been reported to the police for real or threatened violence?
• Has he experienced job loss, bankruptcy or relationship breakdown?

Here's something Tom Axworthy (chair, Centre for the Study of Democracy, Queen's University) wrote in the March 6 Toronto Star:

Firearms were the most frequently used weapon to kill women in spousal homicides between 1974 and 2000, but homicides have decreased dramatically. This is because the licensing and screening process prevents potential violence: Two referees must sign an application form stating that they know of no reason why the applicant should not have a gun. Current and former spouses are notified to give them a chance to raise concern if safety is an issue, and the registry allows police to check if there is a gun on the premises before they make a call. These are common sense measures that work.

Chances are someone with Roszko's past would not be allowed to legally purchase a firearm. Addendum - This Roszko owned firearms prior to the creation of the gun registry. There are references to his semi-automatic assault rifle back to the early 1990s.

Now, if you have links to the criminal underworld, you can probably get guns illegally -- along with almost any other item whose possession the law restricts.

I don't have those connections. I wouldn't know where to start. But I suspect you'd have to be a member of the criminal brotherhood to be trusted as a customer.

The U.S. complains about "B.C. Bud" flowing southward. I'd love to know how many guns on the streets of Toronto originally came here from the United States.

But that's largely a border security issue and a legal one. Axworthy said the fine for bringing a gun into Canada is $500.

He actually takes the position that handguns should be banned in Canada outright.

Some good things about the registry

One thing the registry and other changes did do was force law-abiding gun owners like myself to divest if we weren't going to be serious about it.

I grew up in a household that had a link to farm life. Guns were part of it. When I worked in forestry, I had a few close encounters with bears in very remote areas. I was seriously tempted to buy either a compact shotgun for a high-calibre handgun for self-protection, but never did.

But in my later years, while I still owned guns, it was as an afterthought. If I shot a rifle in the 1990s, I can't remember doing it. Basically, the guns were left at my parents' house while I went on with my life in other cities and provinces. They weren't properly secured.

Rather than register them when the deadline came up in December 2002, I sold them -- which is something I should have done years before. Firearms, in the wrong hands, are lethal. If you aren't going to take their ownership and possession seriously, you shouldn't have one.

I don't know how many under-utilized, unnecessarily-owned firearms were potentially taken out of commission this way, but restricting the supply of guns to those who are serious about owning them and making it tougher to enlarge that potential supply again seems to make sense to me.

Now, if a gun owner has done everything right but his firearms are stolen, the police know there are X more illegal guns out there.

The registry is used by police. They reportedly make 2,600 requests of the database per day.

One attack on the registry has been over its cost. One reason why it cost much more than initially estimated was civil disobedience by gun owners.

The Globe points to the registry's ongoing cost of $85 million per year and wonders whether that expenditure is useful.

I wonder how that compares to the cost-efficiency of registering, say, automobiles.

If Roszko had killed the four officers with an unregistered car, would critics be calling for the abolition of automobile ownership registration?

What is it about any type of state authority over guns that makes some people so fanatical?

I wonder how Roszko felt about the gun registry?

Addendum - A Globe letter to the editor on March 11 made the point that 14,000 applications for an FAC have been turned down. "Chances are there were one or two Roszkos in there."