Canada Blames Us

[FWiedner]

August 19, 2005, 8:17 a.m.
Canada Blames Us

Gun-control folly here, up north, across the pond...

By John R. Lott Jr.

If you have a problem, it's often easier to blame someone else rather than deal with it. And with Canada's murder rate rising 12 percent last year and a recent rash of murders by gangs in Toronto and other cities, it's understandable that Canadian politicians want a scapegoat. That at least was the strategy Canada's premiers took when they met last Thursday with the new U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, and spent much of their time blaming their crime problems on guns smuggled in from the United States.

Of course, there is a minor problem with the attacks on the U.S. Canadians really don't know what the facts are, and the reason is simple: Despite billions of dollars spent on the Canada's gun-registration program and the program's inability to solve crime, the government does not how many crime-guns were seized in Canada, let alone where those guns came from. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported in late July that they "cannot know if [the guns] were traceable or where they might have been traced." Thus, even if smuggled guns were an important problem, the Canadian government doesn't know if it is worse now than in the past.

Even in Toronto, which keeps loose track of these numbers, Paul Culver, a senior Toronto Crown Attorney, claims that guns from the U.S. are a "small part" of the problem.

There is another more serious difficulty: You don't have to live next to the United States to see how hard it is to stop criminals from getting guns. The easy part is getting law-abiding citizens to disarm; the hard part is getting the guns from criminals. Drug gangs that are firing guns in places like Toronto seem to have little trouble getting the drugs that they sell and it should not be surprising that they can get the weapons they need as well.

The experiences in the U.K. and Australia, two island nations whose borders are much easier to monitor, should also give Canadian gun controllers some pause. The British government banned handguns in 1997 but recently reported that gun crime in England and Wales nearly doubled in the four years from 1998-99 to 2002-03.

Crime was not supposed to rise after handguns were banned. Yet, since 1996 the serious-violent-crime rate has soared by 69 percent; robbery is up 45 percent, and murders up 54 percent. Before the law, armed robberies had fallen 50 percent from 1993 to 1997, but as soon as handguns were banned the robbery rate shot back up, almost to its 1993 level.

The 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey, the last survey completed, shows the violent-crime rate in England and Wales was twice the rate of that in the U.S. When the new survey for 2004 comes out later this year, that gap will undoubtedly have widened even further as crimes reported to British police have since soared by 35 percent, while those in the U.S. have declined 6 percent.

Australia has also seen its violent-crime rates soar immediately after its 1996 Port Arthur gun-control measures. Violent crime rates averaged 32-percent higher in the six years after the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than they did in 1995. The same comparisons for armed-robbery rates showed increases of 74 percent.

During the 1990s, just as Britain and Australia were more severely regulating guns, the U.S. was greatly liberalizing individuals' abilities to carry firearms. Thirty seven of the fifty states now have so-called right-to-carry laws that let law-abiding adults carry concealed handguns after passing a criminal background check and paying a fee. Only half the states require some training, usually around three to five hours. Yet crime has fallen even faster in these states than the national average. Overall, the states in the U.S. that have experienced the fastest growth rates in gun ownership during the 1990s have experienced the biggest drops in murders and other violent crimes.

Many things affect crime: The rise of drug-gang violence in Canada and Britain is an important part of the story, just as it has long been important in explaining the U.S.'s rates. (Few Canadians appreciate that 70 percent of American murders take place in just 3.5 percent of our counties, and that a large percentage of those are drug-gang related.) Just as these gangs can smuggle drugs into the country, they can smuggle in weapons to defend their turf.

With Canada's reported violent-crime rate of 963 per 100,000 in 2003, a rate about twice the U.S.'s (which is 475), Canada's politicians are understandably nervous.

While it is always easier to blame another for your problems, the solution to crime is often homegrown.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/lott200508190817.asp

*FW Note:

A lesson in what happens when liberal bureaucrats assume that disarming the law-abiding will reduce crime.

In the old days they called this "chickens coming home to roost"...

 :lol:

[tallyho]

As a Canadian, now happily living in the U.S.A. I can only say that Canada's government blames virtually everything it can on the U.S. They encourage a classic "victim" society, and the biggest villain is the US.

It is also the case that a large number of Canadians do not have this attitude, but a substantial percentage do, and they tend to be (as in the US) members of the "Establishment".

Ask any member of the Canadian establishment how to describe being "Canadian" and within the first 30 seconds you will hear the phrase "We are not like Americans."

However, I must say, since the billion dollar boondoggle that is the Canadian Firearms Registry, many who supported it originally have realized that much money and many resources have simply been poured down a bureaucratic sewer, without much of it sticking to their fingers.

If it weren't so frustrating, it would be amusing that hoplophobic feminists and power hungry police chiefs are at the very least, now becoming po'd at the government for the huge expenditure of time, money and resources that they might have tapped into.

When I still lived in Canada, I was actively involved in the "gun rights" issue, and this was one of the things we pointed out, the resources were simply going to be wasted. We were patted kindly on the head and told it wasn't going to cost as much as we claimed. Canadians were told that even though there were 20 times the number of long guns as handguns, it was going to cost much less to register a long gun than it did to register a handgun. (Well Duh!) I can only guess Canadian politicians went to different schools than I for their basic education in arithmatic.

And of course since Canadians actually do not have any gun rights, we were beaten before we started anyway, at least on a political level... but many of us felt a need to at least make the effort to put up some logical, practical resistance.

Violent crime in Canada, like most other places, is not resolved with more firearm legislation. And though this fact has been proven time and time again (particularly in CCW states here in the US) the Canadian establishment continues to parrot the line: "We are not like Americans" and in order to be "not like Americans" no thought is given to the possibility that the experience of those 37 US states may actually be looked at as an alternative to more useless legislation.

You might be interested to know that it is in fact legally allowed in Canada to purchase a handgun for self protection. However there is no way local police authorities will actually approve a permite for such a reason, and even if they did, some provincial or federal power holder would stop it. My guess is that there are fewer than a couple of hundred people in posession of such a "self-protection" permit in a country of 30 million. And most of those are likely surveyors, prospectors, and such who spend much of their time in bear country.

The criminals, (I know, I am preaching to the choir here) as would be expected do not apply for permits from the police. And if they did (hah!) they would simply apply as target shooters.

And that is a bit of irony in my opinion, 'cause generally, criminals and othe bad guys seem to lack a certain knack for accuracy. The irony is that it was required (maybe still is) for shooting clubs to keep records of pistol shooters so that the authorities could check whether a permit holder for a handgun actually used it for target shooting... target shooting being the main reason for approved handgun ownership in Canada.

So here's my fictional scenario: Mr Bad-Dude doesn't want the 5 extra years in the slammer he'd get for packing an unregistered handgun (yeah right!), so he joins a club, gets his favorite shooter registered, and actually practices with it (because that is one of the conditions of his permit) and lo, a bad guy that is actually able to more often hit what he aims at! Gotta love that!

Aside: I've often wondered why such focus by the powers that be on people having registered handguns only. Is there some kind of special dispensation in Heaven for a victim shot by a registered gun versus a non-registered one?

To illustrate: You may have heard that in Albuquerque a couple of days ago, a 72 yr old CCW permit holder shot and killed a man in a Walmart. The (now) deceased was busily stabbing his ex-wife at the deli when the CCW gentleman drew his piece and put a stop to the activity. The lady suffered many stab wounds, was hovering between survial and death, but is now out of danger. The CCW gentleman will not be charged with anything. (This in itself would be considered a miraculous event in Canada!)

One of the first thoughts I had upon hearing of this happening was "How will a dedicated, radical feminist, anti-gunner handle this in his/her own head?" Seems to me like an insurmountable paradox for them.

Let's see: A man carrying a gun, uses it to stop another man from savagely attacking a woman. Can that be possible on this planet? Well, don't forget, it DID happen in a Walmart, that is pretty much like another planet.

No, it must be a worm hole or time warp or something, into another universe! Don't we believe that men with guns have no other focus than to oppress women? Well yeah, but don't forget, a gun is also a symbol men use to enhance their less than adequate male equipment.. which, remember ALSO has only one purpose, the oppression of women.

The poor liberated dears must be so confused! :eek:

Anyway, thanks for the chance to rant.    

Cheers
Kerry