I note from your article that many people are worried about the security of the National Identity Register if it is implemented (No change to identity card scheme, says government).

However, there are many other government databases that would be at least as valuable to criminals, one of which has already had its fair share of IT incompetence, so why should we believe its security is any good?

The National Firearms Database has taken nearly 10 years to introduce and has been implemented with the competence and professionalism that we have come to expect from government IT projects.
I recently had to renew my firearms certificate and it took four months, as opposed to the four weeks that it took prior to the introduction of the new database.

My local police firearms licensing department laid the blame squarely at the door of the National Firearms Database.

How can we have any confidence in the security of its data as, based on the HMRC debacle, goodness know who else has access?

There are at least 700,000 legal firearms of one sort or another in the UK. All of these are or will be on the National Firearms Database, complete with the names and addresses of their registered keepers. It is hard to imagine what would happen if that data fell into the hands of criminals.

Name withheld on request