Early in April I sent each member of Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale’s Firearms Advisory Committee this letter enclosing Dr Langmann’s peer-reviewed research article and my Mackenzie Institute paper.
Who knows? Perhaps this solid research will prove to be an antidote to the pseudo-research favoured by public health activists.
Dear XXXXXXXXXXX:
Congratulations on being appointed to Public Safety Minister, the Honourable Ralph Goodale’s Canadian Firearms Advisory Committee.
In this capacity, you will be called upon to advise the Minister on important issues that involve firearms – both their illegal uses and their legal uses by millions of responsible Canadian firearms owners. I am confident you intend to offer the best advice possible. This is particularly important because the government has repeatedly promised Canadians that any new legislation will be “evidence based.”
I would like to ensure that you have access to the best available information on firearms use and misuse in Canada. Thus, I am including with this letter a study I conducted that the Mackenzie Institute was kind enough to publish, Do Triggers Pull Fingers? This study includes the results of several Special Requests I made to Statistics Canada to access information that had not been published.
Perhaps more important, a study by Professor C. Langmann is also attached: “Canadian Firearms Legislation and Effects on Homicide 1974 to 2008,” published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. It is the most methodologically solid analysis of Canadian firearms legislation ever conducted, yet Dr. Langmann fails to find a beneficial association between firearms legislation and firearm homicide rates.
I am hopeful that these studies will be of value to you in your role as advisor to the Minister.
Respectfully yours,
Gary Mauser, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies
Beedie School of Business
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby BC, CANADA V5A 1S6
604-937-5292
CC: The Honourable Ralph Goodale, PC, MP
Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness,
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6 Canada
Michael Ferguson, Auditor General of Canada
Office of the Auditor General of Canada
240 Sparks Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0G6 Canada
I believe half of the committee are people associated with organizations that are members of rabid anti-gunner Wendy Cukier’s Canadians for Gun Control. While I truly hope this effort will help “educate” those committee members, it may be that they will be resistant to such enlightenment. It was a good effort as it is better to leave no stone unturned in the legal gun owner’s quest for fair treatment.
I doubt your letter will have any effect on the comittee as I believe they were selected because of their existing anti-gun bias, but thanks for the effort.