Justin Trudeau’s proposed gun ban is not likely to be effective.
Banning what is already illegal does not sound like a smart way to keep guns out of the hands of gangsters. Despite Canada’s strict controls on firearms, gangsters still seem to be able to get what guns they need.
So where do criminals get their guns?
Real “assault rifles” are already prohibited and handguns have been illegal to own or to carry (unloaded, of course) since the 1930s unless the owner has lawfully registered them.
The police focus on lawful firearms owners (PAL holders) as a key source. Unfortunately, they cannot produce any empirical supportfor their claims that thefts and “straw purchases” are major conduits for guns used in violent crime.
Previous gun bans were ineffective.
Handgun murders did not decrease after the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien banned over half of all legal handgunsin 1995.
In February 1995, even though handguns had been required to be registered since the 1930s and had been tightly controlled ever since, Allan Rock (then-Justice Minister) decided to ban over half of all legally registered handguns by re-classifying them as “prohibited” when the government introduced Bill C-68 in the House of Commons. To avoid paying compensation, the government “grandfathered” the owners of the newly prohibited guns, allowing them to keep their firearms, but they could no longer take them to shooting ranges.
Unsurprisingly, the handgun ban did not reduce handgun homicide. Despite the continued decline in the use of firearms in homicides during the next decade, handgun homicides increased (from 46% to 51% of homicides involving a firearm).
Handgun homicides increase
| %handguns/firearm homicide | %firearms/total homicide | |
|---|---|---|
| 1990-1994 | 46% | 33% |
| 1995- 1999 | 51% | 31% |
| 2000-2016 | 62% | 30% |
Handguns continue to be the preferred type of firearm for committing murder, even though firearm homicides have declined as a percentage of homicides.
In fact, for the past 10 years (2007-2016), knives were used more often to commit homicide than firearms (1,723 total knife victims to 1,579 total firearm victims over the decade).
The reason that the handgun ban was counterproductive is not hard to find: gang-related homicides more than doubled.
Firearms used in homicide are overwhelmingly illegally held, so bans are irrelevant. Enforcement might work, but, for many “progressive” reasons Canadian police and courts are reluctant to enforce the law.
Gang-related homicides drive gun crime
| %gang killings/total homicides | %gang killings/gun homicides | |
|---|---|---|
| 1991-1994 | 3% | 9% |
| 1995-1999 | 7% | 22% |
| 2000-2004 | 12% | 41% |
| 2005-2009 | 19% | 60% |
| 2010-2015 | 16% | 56% |
| 2016 | 23% | 63% |
Recent analyses of current Statistics Canada data confirms what StatsCan researcher Orest Fedorowitz pointed out in Homicide in Canada – 2000:
“The data suggest that most firearms used in handgun-related homicides were not registered and the suspects were not licensed firearm users.”
Great article! I have an idea, if new legislation can’t be supported by statistics, as likely being effective, it can’t be introduced. That will reduce the amount of costly, virtue signaling, unethical, vote buying, policy making.
And in this case of proposed policy, every time a person, or family dies in their home, at the hands of an intruder, clearly because they were unable to effectively protect their children, the Canadian government is sued.
The Liberal’s and their supporters don’t get it. Banning guns does not work.
It is all for the vote, nothing else.
By doing this it will only make the price of illegal firearms skyrocket. It will not make them any less available. The weapons used in crimes usually are not visible and have entered this country illegally anyway. You have to have a license to buy any firearm over the counter at any gun store in Canada and that is not changing. Rifles that look “ominous” are the ones being targeted. Snowflakes in our society find these weapons “scary” and want them taken away. A bullet is a bullet no matter what rifle it is fired from and will do exactly the same damage.