The registration of the weapons has value to policing. It has value to my investigators. Having information that someone is licensed to own a firearm is useful information. We support the licensing regime in this country.
But it's also of extremely important value to know how many guns a person possesses. For example, if you go to a domestic situation where the life of a woman has been threatened, you're trying to determine how many weapons are in the house. The registry will give you information on the make, model, calibre, and serial numbers of the weapons. No police officers are going to go in, find the nine guns that are registered, and quit. They're going to continue. If they haven't found all nine that are registered, they're going to continue the search to make sure they've done everything possible to remove the firearms from the situation and render the situation safe.
The information contained in the registry helps us identify weapons that have been stolen and weapons that have been used in crime. It helps us return those guns.
If I might cite an example, in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, one of the chiefs who expressed his public opposition was very well quoted in a newspaper article at the conclusion of an investigation in which they seized 77 firearms. When asked what they were going to do, he said the first thing they were going to do was check the firearms against the registry to find out where they belonged and return them to their rightful owners.
I checked back with him. All of the weapons were identified. The registered owners were identified and the weapons were returned to them. The person in possession of them was criminally prosecuted for stealing them.