>>>>>>>Here in the U.S. I think they always just assume there IS a gun on the premises. They should.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>And I imagine they are usually right. Guns in homes here are not the norm. Although you just gave me an odd thought. In the type of domestic dispute that would require police intervention, I wonder what the stats are on there being a gun in the home or not. After all, those people would also not represent the norm in our society. I suspect there are no such stats available - especially when the gun, if there is one at all, isn't used during the dispute. I also suspect that the incidence of guns existing in those homes would be higher than in normal society, but that might just be my own prejudices speaking. Interesting thought.
>>>>>>
>>>>>SNIP
>>>>>
>>>>>I suspect there are figures somewhere.
>>>>>
>>>>>I've read that in the bigger cities the gun regisrty is checked before attending any domestic disputes.
>>>>
>>>>That's what I was saying before. If the gun registry has done nothing else, it has at least given the police a hint about what they might find when they have to go out on a call.
>>>
>>>Unlikely. The registry was a huge expenditure for little gain. The police would be fools to rely on it. There is nothing keeping it accurate.
>>
>>If it's inacurate, then it's only because so called 'law abiding citizens' are breaking the law.
>
>Exactly why it should never have been made. Doesn't stop crime.

I doubt that any reasonable person expected it to stop crime. It's supposed to be a tool to help law enforcement entities, and to some extent, I think it does. Certainly, it was insanely mismanaged. It should never have cost anything approaching what it did, but then, it was a government project, after all. Also, it faced a lot of battles because of people using the specious argument that it wouldn't stop crime. If everything we did depended on 'stopping crime', we'd never get anything done. Nothing we can ever do will stop crime. We can lock people up and throw away the key; we can spend millions on education and grass roots projects; we can bring back the death penalty. If the criteria is 'will it stop crime', then there is no point in bothering with any of it. May as well just leave things as they are.

Personally, I think a gun registry is just one place to start. We need tougher laws for persons who just guns in commission of a crime. For that matter I think we need tougher laws for any crime. We also need to do something about our constant need to pave over recreation sites to create shopping malls. We need to beef up the relevance of education to future hopefully useful citizens. We need to make parents more accountable for the actions of their children. We need to do a lot of things. The gun registry is only one small part of it all.