Okay. Thank you.
This question is for the three retired police officers.
I'll tell you how I believe the registry system does help, and I'm going to give you examples and I'm going to ask you to agree with me.
First, it helps to enforce court orders, because if you have an order from a judge to go into a house and confiscate all weapons, and you know there are 13 registered in that house, that will help you enforce the court order to remove all the weapons, because some could be hidden and you wouldn't know.
I want to go through the list first.
Second, if you have a domestic violence call and you go to a house and you know there's a risk that somebody could cause harm to another person, and you also know, through the registration system, that there are, once again, 13 guns in that house, you can look for them. If you don't know, you will have no idea if some are hidden or just not accounted for.
Third, people who are at risk of suicide are unstable. The same thing applies: if you know that circumstance, and there's a court order or there's an order from a doctor to do something about it, in terms of committing somebody, and you know there are 13 guns in that house, you can go into the house and look for the 13 guns.
Fourth, registration facilitates proof of possession of stolen and smuggled firearms because if the arms have a registration and they're in illegal hands, you will know who is authorized to have those and you'll be able to do something about that.
Accountability. If I'm a gunowner and I have 13 guns registered to me, some gunowners, at least, will be more responsible if they know those particular guns are registered to them in their name. They may not loan them out, they may not sell them, and they may not refuse to keep them locked up properly if they're responsible and they know there will be consequences if they don't follow the law.
Police investigations. If you go to a crime scene and there's a gun there, and it's registered and you can link it to somebody, that will aid you in your investigation, rather than if there's nothing at all. And if there is nothing at all, in terms of the system, and you have to find that gun, you're going to spend police resources and money trying to locate the source of that gun.
So for all those reasons, I believe you must agree with me that the registration system, although not perfect, and I'm not saying it's perfect, must at least make our streets a little bit safer. I can't believe all three of you would say we're not at least a little bit safer based on all those examples.
