California's government, which has ably demonstrated its skills at regulating energy, is searching for new vistas to regulate. This past Thursday the California Assembly passed by one vote a bill to license handgun owners. A slightly different bill has already passed the Senate, and the two bills must be reconciled in conference. Yet before the final decisions are made and Governor Davis makes his decision, examining the experience in places like Canada and Hawaii might be helpful. As with electricity regulation, the best intentions are not always enough. When fighting crime, mistaken laws can cost lives.

Canadians are a law-abiding lot, but, as of January 1st of this year, millions have become criminals. Bill C-68, Canada's gun-licensing law that passed in 1995, gave half a decade's warning for people to obtain gun licenses. The Canadian program's obvious failure to license most gun owners despite its no-expense-spared approach should give Californians advocating licensing some pause.

Officially the Canadian Department of Justice now claims that its recent surveys show only 2.5 million Canadian gun owners — a 31-percent drop from what the government claimed just a couple years ago. But press accounts reveal internal Justice Department documents putting the number at 5 to 7 million gun owners, and academic and private surveys indicate numbers just as large.

What is most surprising is that any Canadians admit to pollsters that they own a gun without a license. With only 2 million Canadians licensed or in the process of being licensed, roughly 10 to 16 percent of Canadians are now felons.

Getting the government to release the costs of licensing is like cracking the black-ops budgets in the U.S. defense department. The numbers have even been refused to many members of parliament. Inside sources have told MPs that, excluding any costs borne by the Royal Canadian Mounties as well as local police, $265 million (Canadian dollars) was spent by the federal Canadian Firearms Centre this past year. To put it another way, just this limited accounting corresponds to 5 percent of all police expenditures in Canada.

Yet, the real costs of these unfunded mandates are borne by the provinces and local governments. No attempt has been made to record how many hours local police officers have spent processing paper work, but complaints are common. For example, the attorney general of Alberta complains that the law is an administrative mess, it is very costly, and it is using money that would be better suited to really fighting crime.

The California State Sheriff's Association, which has come out strongly against the legislation, has raised similar concerns and warned that the California legislation will spread already undermanned police agencies even thinner.

The ultimate question, though, is what impact these rules might have on violent crime. While Canada's system is too new to discern any impact, the experience in our own country is not encouraging.

In theory, if a gun is left at the scene of the crime, licensing and registration will allow a gun to be traced back to its owner. Police have spent tens of thousands of man-hours administering these laws in Hawaii (the one state with both rules). But, amazingly, there has not even been a single case where police claim licensing and registration have been instrumental in identifying the criminal.

Why? Criminals very rarely leave their guns at the scene of the crime. This really only happens when the criminals have been seriously wounded or killed. Would-be criminals also virtually never get licenses or register their weapons.

So will at least licensing allow for even more comprehensive background checks and thus keep criminals from getting guns in the first place? Unfortunately, there is not a single academic study that finds that background checks reduce violent-crime rates.

The California legislation is also filled with pages detailing everything from when grandparents are allowed to temporarily loan a gun to their grandchildren, to the politically correct gun myths that licensees must regurgitate on the licensing exam, to requiring that mandatory testing be done in only English or Spanish. For a state with election ballots printed in over 80 languages, this last requirement appears racist. But with the new fees and hundreds of dollars required for training classes, in addition to recent California laws outlawing inexpensive guns, the Democratic legislators who support this bill appear anti-poor. After all, it is the poor who are most likely to be victims of crime and to benefit the most from being able to protect themselves.

Those who so automatically see licensing as the solution to crime face an obvious question. As police spend thousands of man-hours enforcing the licensing, what else might they do with their time? Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks stated his concerns simply: "It is my belief that this legislation significantly misses the mark because it diverts our attention from what really should be our common goal: holding the true criminals accountable for the crimes they commit and getting them off the street."