A Registry “cost” explanation for the “numbers-challenged”.

The writer of this letter (from 2004) tries to help put the Registry cost into perspective for those of us that don’t see things in big numbers.

Bill C-391 is on the table folks. Bill C-391 is intended to help save Canadian Taxpayers money.

The Registry is not licensing. Licensing is not going to go away. Licensing screens the people. The Registry does nothing.

(Boldface added for emphasis.)

“…My Fellow Canadian ~

I once read an excellent Isaac Asimov non-fiction essay on really big numbers. Humans are in general really bad at understanding big numbers. Because of my math / science / engineering background, I’m maybe a bit better than average, but I’m no Asimov. I have though learned a few ways to help me better understand big numbers, so that I can better deal with them when I need to. This essay shows how some of those methods work.

The initial Government of Canada estimate for the gun registry database system was $1 million. Technically, I think that’s probably a bit low. Based on my on three decades of work in the field of distributed multi-user database transaction processing systems like the registry, and on some systems I’m currently working on which are of that type, I think $3 million would have been a better estimate.

If someone from the Government of Canada can provide me with a simple accounting showing some component of the system that I’ve missed, I’d be more than happy to adjust my analysis of the situation to take that data into account. My current analysis is based on the numbers I have collected from the public media over the last few years.

Given how important it is for state monopolies to serve citizens to the highest possible ethical standard, let’s throw in a factor of three-ish over my base estimate and call it $10 million, to be as careful as possible.

Now, say you had such a $10 million contract with some customers. And then, say you spent three times that: $30 million. Does it occur to you that your customers (in this case, we citizens) might be, oh, shall we say, somewhat angry? Ok, let’s say it’s another factor of three: $90 million. How are your customers doing now? Fine. Let’s throw in another factor of three, so we’re now up to $270 million. How angry are your customers now? In more primitive times than we live in, would you still be alive? But wait, there’s more. How much would we pay for another factor of three? Oh, about $810 million. Say, that’s interesting, the gun registry database system has, according to the CBC, cost $750 million.

It didn’t cost 3 times as much. Or 3 times 3 times as much. Or 3 times 3 times 3 times as much. It cost 3 times 3 times 3 times 3 times as much.

That’s like planning to have two children, and ending up with 162 (two times three to the power of four). Now stop. Think about that number, 162 children. It’s unimaginable that you could legitimately have 162 children, in any way whatsoever. Likewise, there is no way I can come up with to imagine how the registry database project could legitimately cost $750 million, whatsoever.

Never mind that it is to me unfathomable that it could take eight years to develop the registry database, and never mind that according to the CBC it doesn’t actually work; $750 million divided by eight years is about $250,000 per day. That’s right, they spent what should have been, at its most extreme, a $10 million budget for the entire project, they spent that much every 40 days, for eight years.

Here’s another way to look at it. The database system has cost about 750 / 8 = $94 million per year, for eight years. Loaded full-time staff costs in this field are about $100,000 per year. That means the development of this system employed 940 full-time staff per year for eight years. How the hell can a database fundamentally designed
to store and retrieve 7 million gun records distributed across 3 million person records take 7,500 man-years to develop? What is this, the Pyramid of Cheops?

(Actually, the CBC’s total cost figure of $2 billion for the entire gun registry “file” amounts to about $685,000 per day, which means they spent the entire initially estimated budget of $2 million, again according to the CBC, every three days, for eight years straight.That’s 20,000 man-years, to register 7 million guns. But what do I know, I’m just a software guy, I’ll stick to the database system.)

Corporations get sued for cost overruns on the order of tens of percent. Assuming my careful $10 million estimate is reasonable, the registry database is not 10 % over. It’s not 100 % over. It’s not 1,000 % over. It’s 7,500 % over.

It’s not 10 times less than the standard we citizens are held to, under threat of criminal prosecution. It’s not 100 times less. The state’s standard of performance for itself is 750 times less than the standard it holds us to.

Who the hell, exactly, do these people think they are, and why the hell shouldn’t we smite them?

Ok, I’ll tell you what. Section 380 of the Criminal Code of Canada calls for jail for up to 10 years for fraud over $5,000. Applying the 750 factor apparently used by State Canada, let’s just say that any politician or civil servant that is guilty of fraud over $5,000 should go to jail for 7,500 years.

That’s starting to sound like a big enough number for me.

Yours,
Tony Olekshy,
The Sagacious Iconoclast

…”

ENTRY HERE

John Ibbitson almost gets it.

 

Globe and Mail

We would like to point out something to Mr. Ibbitson.

The Second Amendment is part of a document that was written to PREVENT subjugation of people.

It also prevents anyone from taking away his ability to speak and write. Which co-incidentally is the source of his paycheque and ability to feed, clothe and shelter himself.

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Shoot Responsibly. Shoot Daily. Share Your Shooting Sport With Others. 

Violence Policy Center in the US releases some stats. **

http://www.vpc.org/press/0905gundeath.htm

That’s all well and good that someone analyzed this. 

We wonder what the article would look like if the title were different.

For argument’s sake? Let’s say “ States with Higher Vehicle Ownership and Weak Vehicle Laws Lead Nation in Vehicle Death” ?

We’ll poke around to see if we can find some similar stats. If any of our readers know where to find that? We would greatly appreciate the tip.

That might be a tad difficult though. Many state’s Motor Vehicle laws are pretty similar in many respects.

That has to out there somewhere. Afterall, there are people that get charged with vehicular manslaughter or murder for using a vehicle as a weapon.

We recall the case at a Southern US university where a driver used his vehicle as a weapon to intentionally run down pedestrians.

We would like to illustrate our point by adding the following. Please note that these came from JUST THE FIRST PAGE of a Google search that was at least 10 pages long.

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**  The VPC defined states with “weak” gun laws as those that add little
or nothing to federal restrictions and have permissive concealed carry
laws allowing civilians to carry concealed handguns. States with
“strong” gun laws were defined as those that add significant state
regulation in addition to federal law, such as restricting access to
particularly hazardous types of firearms (for example, assault
weapons), setting minimum safety standards for firearms and/or
requiring a permit to purchase a firearm, and have restrictive
concealed carry laws. 
 

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Shoot Safely. Shoot Often. Share Your Shooting Sport With Others. 

We applaud Rex Murphy of CBC for his commentary concerning the gun registry in Canada.

Mr. Murphy is a very articulate fellow who can pull no punches on the topics he speaks about.

Again. We applaud him for his candor.

You can see and hear his comments below.

 

 

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Shoot Safely. Shoot Often. Share Your Shooting Sport With Others.

We find ourselves in agreement…

…Somewhat with Mr. Elahi.

Canada should be more like Texas.

People accept personal responsibility and are shunning excessive government intrusion in their personal lives, their rights and freedoms and their individual intimate personal decisions regarding their lives.

Mr. Elahi might want to make a note about the Canadian constitution:

He is free to enter and LEAVE Canada.

If he feels so strongly about changing things and making Texas and example? We think he should go there.

On one condition.

He has to meet and tell Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp to her face what he thinks about the Luby Massacre.

VIDEO BEING REPLACED – STAND BY – DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SCOPES

If she’s brave enough to testify and remind United States Senators the reason the Second Amendment exists? Mr. Elahi won’t last but mere seconds.

 

A collection of writings by a one Mahmood Elahi

Posted on Mar 26, 2007, 7:57 PM

LETTERS: Gun owners respond to Mahmood Elahi’s gun control letter in

by nancy

 LETTERS: Gun owners respond to Mahmood Elahi’s gun control letter in Hill Times
http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/cover_index.php?display=story&full_path/2007/march/26/letter6/&c=1
http://www.network54.com/Forum/33620/message/1174953559/The+Hill+Times,+March+26th,+2007

The Hill Times, March 26th, 2007
LETTERS

Gun owners respond to gun control letter in HT
Re: “To understand misuse of guns, look to Texas,” (Letters to the editor, p. 9, The Hill Times, March 19.). Instead of looking at the big picture, Mahmood Elahi uses extreme isolated events to provide proof for his claim.

Anyone can find anecdotal evidence to back up their assertions but to get a better idea of the impact that something has on society it is always more important to look at the big picture.

Jeff Gardiner
Waterloo, Ont.

* What does the action of one distressed Texan kid have to do with Canadian gun control? As far as I know, we are a very distinct society.

In the last 30 years, Canada has had more school shootings than Texas. Should we be learning something from this fact? Since we are talking about the U.S., maybe letter writer Mahmood Elahi could explain to us why U.S. cities such as Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago, which have the most stringent gun laws in the world are also the most violent cities in the U.S.? Maybe it is because criminals could not care less about our rules, regulations and social values.

Michel Trahan
Verdun, Que.

* Mahmood Elahi should do a better job of researching when he goes on one of his anti-gun tirades. When he says Texas is “the national capital of the gun culture,” he should have noted that the 2005 statistic for murder and non-negligent homicide was 6.2 (per 100,000 population), whereas the homicide rate in Washington, D.C. was 35.4.

What Mr. Elahi would never admit is how the presence of firearms actually contributes to a lower crime rate. There may be incidents of rare tragedies outlined in his letter (going back 13 years to find one), but vastly offset by the lives saved by law-abiding citizens using firearms for self-protection.

Getting back to relevance to Canada, legal gun ownership has never been a problem of crime or murder. Our murder rates have been steadily climbing over the last years since Bill C-68 and gun control was implemented in Canada. Given the choice of either having a gun control state/high murder rate like the city of Washington, D.C., or having the lower murder rate of Texas, I would choose the Lone Star state every time.

Lionel Trudel
Vancouver, B.C.

* Mahmood Elahi clearly displays his ignorance when it comes to violent crime and its relation to private firearms ownership. He leads readers to believe that Texas is a haven for violence and uses isolated incidents in order to make his point. However, when you look at the facts, this simply isn’t true.

Kyle Erhart
Winnipeg, Man.

* It’s clear letter-writer Mahmood Elahi is not properly informed about firearms, which may explain his irrational fear of them. We tend to fear the unknown and are quick to judge what we don’t understand.

Mr. Elahi is guilty of passing unfair judgment not only on firearms but on Texans as well. He states, when Texans like Juan Ramon get angry, they “start shooting.” Being of French Canadian heritage I would be offended if I was stereotyped as “a poutine eating lumberjack.” Unfortunately Mr. Elahi resorts to using stereotypes as a basis for his argument.

We have had a handgun registry in Canada since 1934, yet handgun crime is on the rise. Our long gun registry has cost close to $2-billion to date. The registry did not prevent a depressed and dangerous individual from shooting students at Dawson College.

Mr. Elahi fails to see the point that a gun cannot pull its own trigger. A gun is a tool, used for target shooting, hunting and to protect one’s life or the lives of others. The focus should not be on the tool, but on the individual.

Pierre Dupont
Oshawa, Ont.

* I find Mahmood Elahi’s letter regarding firearms ownership in Texas to be a quaint bit of propaganda at best.

Shawn Mulock
Calgary, Alta.

* It is inevitable that as long as there are unstable people willing to do harm to others, there will be murders of innocent people, regardless of whether these acts are performed through shootings, stabbings, bombings or beatings.

Dan Smith
London, Ont.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !

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This is an interesting find:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/27668.html

Same letter as the Hill Times with a very interesting twist. It seems that John Lott himself may have replied to Mr. Elahi.

 

“…

AND it seems that John Lott HIMSELF replies to it. “…

John Lott replies: Steven Toby asks whether most murders involve individuals who are close to each other. His fear may stem from FBI statistics that indicate that about 50 percent of murders are committed by “acquaintances.” But that is a broad term; most of those murders involve drug buyers and pushers, gang members, and prostitutes.

The typical citizen does not become a murderer. About 90 percent of adult murderers already had a criminal record. Murderers are overwhelmingly young males with low IQs who find it difficult to get along with others.

Also in regard to Mr. Toby’s question, in my book More Guns, Less Crime I find that murders among strangers as well as among acquaintances fall after the right-to-carry laws are adopted. Mr. Toby is surprised that concealed handgun laws deter crime since murder is “a failure of self-control.” However, just as higher arrest or conviction rates or longer prison sentences can deter criminals, allowing potential victims to defend themselves also appears to work. Surveys of criminals indicate that they avoid victims known to be armed.

Mahmood Elahi makes the common but nonetheless false claim that the areas with the highest gun ownership rates have the highest murder rates. There is no such positive correlation in the U.S. or other nations. The U.S. states with the highest gun ownership rates actually tend to have the lowest violent crime rates. More importantly, those states with the biggest relative increases in gun ownership have had the biggest drops in violent crime.

Mr. Elahi’s claim about Texas is wrong: In 1996, Texans owned guns at slightly below the national rate. Texas is a relative newcomer to concealed handgun laws, not enacting its law until 1996. It has both the highest permit fees and one of the longest training requirements. Despite this, Texas has seen crime rates fall.

Karl Black argues that I have been too tough on the NRA. This is true, in part; the NRA is the only organization large enough to effectively fight gun control. Yet, while informing its members about defensive gun uses is valuable, most Americans hear little about the defensive benefits. Arguing that gun laws are not being enforced is shortsighted because, unless you also point out the benefits of gun ownership, the response will be: “Let’s enforce the old laws and enact some new ones.”  

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Mr. Elahi has other opinions on America as well.

http://www.worldandi.com/specialreport/2002/october/Sa22598.htm

America the Unpopular Protector

 

Article # :	22598
Section :	EDITORIAL
Issue Date :	10 / 2002	396 Words
Author :	Mahmood Elahi Ottawa, Canada
To the Editor:                I am writing with reference to the editorial “September 11 and American Unpopularity in the Muslim World,” by Morton A. Kaplan [June 2002, p. 12]. Kaplan is absolutely right when he writes: “President Bush responded that we must work to improve our image among Muslims. On this occasion, he had it dead wrong. The proof of that is given by the figures from Kuwait. After the Iraqi attack, we saved Kuwait from destruction and conquest. … Yet even in Kuwait only 28 percent had a favorable image of the United States, while 41 percent had an unfavorable one.”                Even in France, a country liberated by America from the Nazi yoke, most Frenchmen have a negative image of the United States. This can only be explained by a deep-rooted inferiority complex shared by all these countries. They know they depend on America for their survival, and this helplessness breeds an antipathy toward their savior. Western Europe would have been overrun by the Soviet Union if the United States did not contain it by a powerful military presence.                Similarly, the Middle East would face a catastrophe if the United States decided to leave the region to itself. Any American withdrawal from the Middle East will be quickly followed by a new conquest of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. An easy conquest of Kuwait by Iraq would immediately threaten oil-rich but militarily weak Saudi Arabia and other nations.                This would inevitably add to the fear of Iran, which was a victim of Iraqi aggression before and would be tempted to strike against Iraq. Others would also join in. In short, most  (1995 of 2436 Characters) Read Full Article

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Well, it seems that Mr. Elahi has shared his opinions concerning gun control in the past and has been rebuked.

Thank you Mr. Elahi for helping to make the argument against the Registry and onerous gun laws for the pro-gun side. 

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Shoot Safely. Shoot Often. Share Your Shooting Sport With Others.