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The money spent on the federal long-gun registry would be better spent on preventing handguns and other weapons from crossing the border into Canada, or on youth programs in the most at-risk neighbourhoods. If the registry dies because of a Conservative private-member's bill, which passed a key vote this week, it would not be a defeat for gun control. It would be the end of a costly bureaucratic system whose benefits are uncertain.

Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz says the registry has cost 500 times more than projected “without saving a single life.” If he is wrong, no one has shown clearly why. Is there evidence that crimes committed with long guns are dropping as a result of the registry? Have dangerous incidents involving police been averted? (Police can check the registry before heading out on “domestic” calls.) Canada's billion-dollar gun registry (its total cost to 2005) was initially projected to have a net cost of $2-million a year. After the overruns and the flim-flammery (money was pushed into other files to conceal the true costs from Parliament, Auditor-General Sheila Fraser has found), the registry's advocates needed to demonstrate that it is indispensable. They haven't.

The gun registry did not prevent the killing of four Mounties at Mayerthorpe, Alta., by James Roszko in 2005. Three of the four guns he carried were unregistered in Canada; the fourth was registered, though not to him. (He was banned from owning guns.) Nor did it prevent the attack by Kimveer Gill at Dawson College in Montreal in 2006. All three guns he carried were legally registered to him. It does not prevent killings by handguns, which are tightly controlled.

Gun control will not die with the long-gun registry, if it is indeed scrapped. Canadians will still be required to register handguns, and they will still need a licence for all guns, whether pistols, rifles or shotguns. They will still need to pass safety and background checks meant to prevent dangerous or irresponsible people from owning guns. And rules for the storage of hunting guns need not change.

One member of Parliament argued that there is no reason to burn down a house one has overpaid for. But there is no reason to pay forever for a mistake, either.