A question for Canadian members about our Gun Registry fiasco

[GliderGuider]

I heard well-considered speculation from a Federal Civil Service database expert last night that the Gun Registry may not have been a gun registry in anything except name. He believes it was a cover for a data warehousing exercise a la John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness initiative in the States. He figures they got incompetent programmers involved and the thing just ballooned out of control from there.

The idea made the penny drop for me. It neatly explains how what should have been a week's worth of database programming and a scalability exercise turned into a multi-department database disaster with no Treasury Board oversight anywhere in sight.

What say you? Does it make sense?

On edit: spelling

[Maple]

1. He conveniently forgot to mention

the thousands of forms filled out the wrong way deliberately, causing much back-and-forth communication, and then constant corrections to the system because of that.

Thousands of fake forms from non-existent people. Wasted thousands of man-hours entering, then searching and deleting.

Phonecalls all day which tied up the switchboards for hours, and then crashed them.

And even visits to the building itself in which paper towel was stuffed down the toilets so they'd overflow.

I'm surprised it cost as little as it did considering the level of sabotage involved

[elare]

2. Don't forget the online registration

Which was also crashed by people submitted fake forms from non-existent people. It was pretty much impossible to do the registration online.

[Maple]

5. Yeah, I gave up on it

Finally sent it in snailmail...took months to do.

[Canadian Socialist]

3. I had not heard of the sabotage

Maple, would it be possible for you to lead me in the right direction re: sabotage? I worked with a bunch of nuts who used to rail against the registry, and I know <missing>Link Byfield was their leader. Thanks in advance!

[Maple]

4. You don't have to look any further

than our favourite :7 party. The Harp Seals in fact.

Also the National Firearms Association

http://www.nfa.ca/

and the rest of these charming people:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=firearms+association+canada

[applegrove]

6. NRA was busy. Now most of our gun trouble comes from "imported"

guns. And people die & neighbourhoods go to pot.

[jim3775]

7. I have no doubt that incompetent programmers were involved

I can imagine it would be hard to find good qualified people that can handle this sort of thing. I suppose "data warehousing" is what always happens when a large database is created, and data mining would be (and probably always has been using non gun registry data) used by police to identify criminals and patterns of crime. Statscan would probably use data mining to gather statistics.

The whole thing is such a ridiculous waste of resources.

[Maple]

8. The problem was not with the programmers

We have had one since the 1920's, so we know how to do it.

And Canadians want and like a gun registry

The police use it every day.

[buzzard]

9. One of my biggest problems with the registry is that those with

criminal intent are unlikely to register their guns. So what real purpose does it serve.

[jim3775]

10. The thing was still a big wasteful mess though

I used to think the registry was a great idea, but since the furor over the recent spate of shootings in TO I realized the problem isn't with legally owned guns. All the registry does is identify who owns what gun legally, that hardly makes us any safer.(BTW, it really bothers me that I sound like a conservative when I typed that)

This program needs a serious overhaul of its budget and objectives, I'm not saying we should scrap it or it was a terrible idea to begin with.

[Maple]

11. Just more hype

Toronto shootings are minor and specific to a gang war. There is actually more violence in Manitoba.

The registry doesn't make guns vanish, or prevent a determined murderer.

It makes guns traceable when used, lost or stolen, and makes everyone aware that they are registered weapons....it discourages the idea of a gun culture.

They already got the AG on it, and a complete overhaul of it.

[buzzard]

12. That is what I would really like to know what are the objectives, if

they can't be clearly identified then I feel it is a waste of money. I don't see it ever realistically preventing any gun crime, and I am disturbed over the recent increase in gun crime as well.