Gun Policy: Controlling Violence Or Political Posturing?

The $380,000 contract the Liberal government gave Kim Doran (an employee of the Liberal Party) to represent the Coalition for Gun Control is a measure of how appealing this strategy was to the Liberals. Ms. Doran used the money to lobby the federal Solicitor General, Treasury Board and Privy Council in support of the government's own policies. A move that enabled them to claim that a government funded lobby group, lobbying the government on the government’s behalf was a “grass roots” organization representing the “majority of Canadians”. One argument used to support this “inanimate objects cause violence” agenda is the notorious more guns = more crime assumption. For example, Wendy Cukier of the Coalition for Gun Control happily asserts that “when other factors are held constant, the gun death rises in proportion to the rate of gun ownership. One study found a 92% correlation between households with guns and firearm death rates both within Canada and in comparable industrialized countries”1 Unfortunately, this factoid and many more like it are driven by selection biases. Researchers can easily find exactly the opposite relationship. For example, guns are many times more common in northern Ontario than they are in Toronto yet violent gun crime is a major problem in Toronto and very rare in northern Ontario. To take another example, in 1973, the American firearm stock contained 122 million guns with 36.9 million handguns. By 1992, there where 221.9 million guns (73.3% increase) with 77.6 million handguns (110.2% increase). However, the homicide rate fell from 9.4 per 100,000 people in 1973 to 8.5 per 100,000 people in 1992. The percentage of murders committed with guns dropped from 68.5% to 62.8%. More guns = less crime. The same mix of relationships can be found internationally. The US has high gun ownership rates and relatively high crime rates. Jamaica has extremely low ownership rates and a much higher crime rate than the US. Finland has gun ownership rates higher than the US and lower crime rates, as does Israel and Switzerland. The reason researchers can obtain any “empirical” relationship they want between gun ownership rates and violence rates is that the causation of gun violence is not the presence of inanimate objects; it’s the presence of violent people. The critical issue nationally and internationally, is not how many guns are there but who owns the guns and what they do with them. A simple examination of Canadian numbers demonstrates how feeble the inanimate objects (guns) equals violence argument really is. There are at least seven million guns in Canada. In 2003 there were 548 homicides (161 with guns). Accordingly, some .000023 or 23 ten thousandths of 1% of the gun stock was used for a homicide. Going after violence (homicide) with a crackdown on guns absolutely guarantees that 99.9977% of our effort will land on guns not used for homicide. Emotionally satisfying or politically expedient as it may be to respond to violence with a “morality crusade” against guns, a policy where 99.9977% of our effort is wasted is not going to work. We might also note that only 29% of these homicides involved a gun, which means that even in the rather unlikely event that gun murders are incapable of using something else only 29% of murders will be prevented. We can expand this examination to crimes of violence. There were 302,000 crimes of violence in Canada in 2003. Statistics Canada's indicates that 5% of these crimes “involved” a firearm (a firearm was present, but not necessarily used in the crime). This works out to (302,000 X .05) 15,100 firearms “involved” in a crime of violence (includes homicides). With seven million guns this means that .0022 or 22 hundredths of 1% of the gun stock was “present” (but not necessarily used) when a crime of violence took place. Accordingly, 99.78% of our effort landed on guns not used in crime or violence. Even with this pathetic return for our efforts and assuming for some unknown reason that the violent cannot substitute something else for a gun, 95% of crimes of violence will remain completely unaffected by our policies. Emotionally, or ideologically satisfying as it may be for some Canadians to go after hunters, gun owners or the “gun culture” this is clearly not a policy that will reduce violence. The simple fact that in Canada only a tiny minority of millions of guns are involved in crime guarantees that even the most absolute and draconian anti-gun policies will have virtually no effect. Another obvious fact is that severe regulatory laws will severely impact law-abiding Canadians peacefully engaged in traditional Canadian activities and disrupt a multi-billion dollar recreational industry. Such laws will have virtually no impact on criminals already unrestrained by felony criminal laws. Ongoing debates have made it clear that some Canadians deeply disapprove of traditional Canadian activities and particular parts of Canadian culture. For some, this disapproval justifies ideology taking precedence over effectiveness. It remains unclear whether the political expediency of emotional appeals or evidence based criminology will drive Canada's policies. 1. W. Cukier, "Firearms Regulation: Canada in the international Context". Chronic Diseases in Canada, April 1998. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on September 17, 2007]