Mr. Speaker, if I may, I would like to provide my colleague with an example of what the gun registry can do for police officers.
In the winter of 2003, police officers with the Montreal police force intervened in a case of domestic violence. The wife was afraid that her husband would return after a short hospital stay. When they checked the registry, the police discovered that the man had a veritable arsenal: 26 handguns, 16 long guns and 45,000 bullets.
The guns were immediately seized and had the search not been successful, the police could have pressured the man to locate the guns. Without the registry, it would have been impossible to know that the man had an arsenal of weapons.