Mr. Speaker, that is not hard to do. I have seen some of the survey questions. I would have to say yes to some of the questions and be part of that 74% because that same survey talks about safe handling, safe storage, training and screening. I have no problem with any of that. None of us do. That was all done before under the old FAC process that we had for 15 or 20 years before the Liberals twisted it around into this particular procedure.
The government has claimed that the Firearms Act under Bill C-68 would have more effective screening, and the member for Mississauga said that same thing today. He went on about percentages of rejections, that 9,000 people have been denied a firearm.
The screening under the old FAC was twice as stringent. More people were denied a licence at the FAC process from 25 years ago than are rejected under the Bill C-68 screening that we see now. We had a good system in place. It was working. Why did we have to change it? Nobody knows. It became a political football.
Let us look at what happened when this type of registration was introduced around the world. Great Britain banned all private ownership of handguns in 1997. Violent crime rose 10% the next year and then doubled up to 2000 again. In Australia, stringent new gun control laws were introduced again in 1997. Homicides involving firearms have doubled and armed robberies have increased 166%. New Zealand had it in 1983 and killed it. The police over there declared that the policy was a complete failure.
It has been tried in jurisdictions all around the word and has proven to be an utterly disastrous situation. Yet those guys go merrily down the road, saying stats this, numbers that, but they pervert them and twist them to make their point. It is not factual. It is not accurate. It just off the map and playing politics with the situation.