Statistically, six of these suicides occurred prior to the gun registry, nine after. Of the two murders, they were both a friend of the RCMP and a friend of mine and a member of the Edmonton Police Service. The other murder was that of a friend; it was in conjunction with a murder-suicide. I lost two people that day. If you want an age range, the youngest was 12 years old. I believe the oldest was in the early sixties at the time.
When a person goes through something like that. you would think the first thing they would do is say to ban guns, period, because they're evil. I like to think of myself as a little smarter than that, because I know that no matter what the instrument is, people are going to kill other people, and they're going to kill themselves.
People need to intervene with people. No database is going to save somebody's life. You need people--like the good doctor--who will take the time to spend time with people. I've found that's the most successful way. That's where I've had the most success in my police work: in sitting down and talking to someone face to face. That's what works. Relying on a database that has so many errors.... As intelligence analysts, we had a saying: garbage in, garbage out. You had to confirm everything.
Millions of people register their firearms by pieces of paper. I know there are model numbers, because I've spent hours correcting things for older and younger friends of mine who received their registration documents on which the information was not correct. I took it upon myself to help them that way so that they did have the correct information on it, because I am law abiding and I want good information in there. But it's only done because of the risk of prosecution, not because of the value of the system. That was the deterrent. The criminality was the deterrent. Knowing what I know about the registry, in 10 years we will look back at this and you will see no difference.