Usage
The RCMP Canadian Firearms Program produces a quarterly report called Facts and Figures. The information most often quoted in the media is the total number of queries, in the section entitled Average Daily Queries to the CFRO (Canadian Firearms Registry On-line). This number is what is commonly used to determine how often the registry is accessed by police officers. Changes to the system and the level of automation have resulted in the total number of queries increasing dramatically since the RCMP began tracking these numbers in 2003.
- 2003 - 1,813;
- 2004 - 2,087;
- 2005 - 4,091;
- 2006 - 6,591;
- 2007 - 6,973;
- 2008 - 9,408;
- 2009 - 11,086;
- 2010 - 14,012
As of June 2010, the CFRO is reportedly accessed 14,012 times per day. Only 530 (3.7%) of those "hits" are specific to firearms registration (licence number, serial number and certificate number). The remaining 13,482 (96.3%) are automatically generated every time an address is checked or a licence plate is verified. Officers claim that these automatic checks are valuable to them since they now know if the person or address whom they are researching has registered firearms and where they are. Officers claim that they feel safer knowing about present firearms when addressing a call, specifically in rural regions with domestic violence calls.
While there is reliable information to suggest how many times per day police officers access the firearms registry, the mostly non-automatic inclusion of this information in vehicle and address reports, whereby police must specifically request the information, is considered by many to be a valuable policing tool.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Firearms Registry
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