The long gun registry

So the by the narrowest of margins our elected officials decided to keep the registry.Let me first say I do not own a gun of any sort. Though I would like to go hunting occasionally, without a rifle its a little difficult. That said what burns a hole in me is the cost of this registry. Isn't it something like $2 billion / year? How many police officers with boots on the ground would that cover? Let's say it costs $200000 / year / officer, including training, infrastructure, equipment etc. to have a an officer on active duty. So using simple math that would be 10000 officers available to tackle some real issues like gangs, drugs, violence or even the small things like crime perpetrated on the internet. Maybe I'm just a simple guy from a small city but wouldn't that be money well spent? According to StatsCan in '09 there was 67000+ police in this country. Adding 10000 would be a 15% increase. Thats huge. Wouldn't that make a bigger dent than a registry? How come no one suggested that as a compromise to getting rid of it?