Gun Violence in Canada
Yesterday Paul Martin’s Liberals made campaign headlines with a plan to ban handguns in Canada. The Jane-Finch neighborhood in Toronto has been the target of a series of shootings recently, and the issue of gun control plays well to Canadians.
I grabbed a couple of numbers out of a very large list of gun statistics published in the Citizen this morning:
- 7.1 million registered firearms in Canada
- 172 gun related homicides in Canada in 2004
- 112 committed with handguns
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71 gang-related homicides in Canada in 2004
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70.4 percent of gang-related homicides committed with a gun
- 20.7 percent of non-gang related homicides committed with a gun
The highest concentration of gun violence is amongst gangs. 50 out of the 70 gang murders last year used guns, and 32 of those murders were carried out with hand guns.
In the best case, assuming that the homicides committed with a handgun would never have occurred in any other way, 112 lives might be saved by the Liberal ban. Mr. Martin is proposing to spend $590 million dollars to accomplish this.
Wouldn’t that money be better spent on the root cause of this violence? Rebuilding the ghettos of Toronto? Better policing at the border? Programs to target organized crime?
The facts are that Canada doesn’t have a gun violence problem. The UK, which has sweeping bans on guns of all kinds, experienced 9974 gun related homicides in 2002 — a rate close to 125 deaths per million people annually. Here in Canada, we experience about 5 deaths per million.
The gun registry we have today is doing it’s job. There’s no need for an outright ban on handguns. The existing restrictions work just fine.
The people who’s children are dying on the streets of Toronto are being used as a campaign prop by the Liberals. What an outrageous and cynical act!
December 9th, 2005 at 8:52 am
[...] Is the proposed ban on handguns attacking the symptom or the cause of the problem? For all the public relations the Liberals attempted to gain with this proposed law, the reality is a lot more needs to be done to curb gun-related violence. This includes community centres, well-funded social services, job-training and life-skills programs, we well as enough police resources. Does it strike anyone as opportunistic that we’ve had months of gun-related violence, and it’s only when Paul Martin is trying to save his job that he shows up at the scene of the “crimes”? For insight into this problem, check out Alec Saunders post in which talk shows that Martin is willing to spend $590 million to address 112 handgun-related deaths. [...]
December 9th, 2005 at 9:59 am
As per normal for central Canadians, you speak as tho Toronto is the whole of Canada; it’s not. Those 112 handgun deaths from last year have more than doubled this year, with a bunch of em right here in lotusland.
Although I agree that banning handguns really only keeps the honest from using them, I don’t think the Liberals’ policy is an outrageous and cynical act, although it may be a bit of a knee jerk reaction. I will say that PM P.M.’s action is a heck of a lot less frightening than Stephen Harper’s response of “that won’t solve the issue so let’s do nothing”. Let me add, I am definitely no big fan of the liberals, but they are heckuva lot less frightening to me than the alternatives.
On CFOX, (the local rock radio station here) yesterday they brought it up, and everyone agreed that something has to be done about gun violence NOW, and everyone agreed that although the liberals proposed solution doesn’t solve the problem, its a bigger start than anyone else is showing us. Also, I don’t think their proposal stops at gun legislation; there is a bunch in there about harsher penalties and increased law enforcement. I believe a big part of that 500 plus million bucks is the law enforcement…
December 9th, 2005 at 11:02 am
Martin’s reaction is due to the endless stream of gun violence stories coming from the media here which are focused on Toronto. I am sure that out in Vancouver there are also gun violence problems, but he’s reacting to Toronto. In any case, what I said applies equally well across the country. We’ve already got one of the lowest rates of gun-related homicide in the world. Most types of weapons you can buy today are heavily regulated. Why not focus on the root causes of the problems? Why invest millions in a ban when the registry is already doing its job well?
And yes, I did do some further digging on the story after writing this piece. There are a variety of initiatives being planned. The Liberals mis-positioned the whole thing as a hand gun ban. If they’d been smart they would have announced initiatives to deal with gun violence, rather than an outright ban. Defang the Conservatives at the same time, because nobody can argue that dealing with violence is a bad thing. Instead they rolled border patrolling and everything else into a $590 million news piece with an outrageous headline guaranteed to alienate a good percentage of voters.
The truth appears to be an expenditure of $30 million annually for five years, plus legislation to ban handguns. The details are available here: http://www.liberal.ca/news_e.aspx?id=1143. The money may not even be spent, as well, since it’s money that’s being offered to the provinces to enact their own handgun bans. Sorry to be cynical, but that looks like pretty good value for the Liberal parties campaign dollars, wouldn’t you say? Martin makes an over the top election promise that he may never have to keep, and get re-elected in the process.
So, it’s $150 million rather than $590 million. It’s still too much for the result being achieved.
December 9th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
You make a very valid point Alec. Thanks for the insight.
I couldn’t understand as well (though I am in India at the moment, I still keep up with Canadian news). I don’t think the gangs care one way or the other if there is a ban. I don’t think they were carrying regulated guns for the most part. So a ban wouldn’t necessarily do anything. The only smart thing, as you said, is to cause a ripple in the environment to positively affect the atmosphere and give them something else to do, think and work towards.
December 26th, 2005 at 7:53 pm
A better statistic was the cost of the UK handgun ban. According to the National Audit Office and the Home Office the cost of the handgun ban was £97 million (including admin costs), and that was in GB where there were 200,000 handguns, of which 160,000 were surrendered for compensation.
According to the Canadian Firearm Centre, there are around 1.1 million registered handguns in Canada, assume that 80% of those are surrendered for compensation, that means 880,000 handguns. Take into account inflation since the British handgun ban and you’re looking at a compensation cost around $1.3 billion by my reckoning.
June 9th, 2006 at 11:44 am
Scuse me
June 4th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
man…. why people wanna b bannin dem guns. what me n my bnoys gonna do tan eat?n cant stick no body up, cant rob no store, cant blast a man that gona kill me if i was slangin drugs….fuck a ban and paul martin the B**** A**n motherF******. sum 1 should make him a statistic. 590 million…get people out the ghetto man. save sum for me, s***, i could put it ta better use than that goof. he wont even fly a f***** canadian flag on his company boats n he was primeminister. S*** im 16 n i can see he is an idiot. maybe next time when we have an election i should go look in the crack spot for a candidate.