Canada Blames Us

NRO ^ | August 19, 2005 | John R. Lott Jr.

[neverdem]

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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.

— John Lott, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and The Bias Against Guns" (Regnery 2003).

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

[Spyder]

We think alike - I saw this thread but didn't have time to search for lyrics. That's the first thing I thought of though. Thanks for the ping.

[BurbankKarl]

Can't they trace the guns from the ATF? Or have they pissed them off too?

[surely_you_jest]

Gee. Perhaps Canada needs to start securing her borders in order to prevent the import of evil firearms.

And maybe we should securing our borders in order to prevent the ingress of undesirable aliens.

And then both of us should be happy.

Eh?

[Feiny]

I never knew all the lyrics....now I am singing at mt desk.....

[eleni121]

The US is doing its darndest to identify, insulate, imprison, expel, and otherwise make terrorists' lives miserable...what is Canada doing? Nothing besides making it easy for Mooslem terrorists to operate gradually allowing sharia to exist?

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/002944.php

The Making of Canadian Terrorists

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/August2005/15/c0028.html

[Brian Allen]

<< Been a red letter year for Canuk's here, shopping, going to the doctor, driving badly, saying "aay" and displaying a superior attitude to the [Anti] colonists. >>

Pity, for them, that they go aboot so sanctimoniously supercilliously showing off said supposed superiority in such an inferior manner, though, eh?

WA bumper sticker: I'm not a Canadian! I just drive like one!

[MaxMax]

I like the pic and love the caption. Heh.
/Salute

[Jorge]

This almost makes Canada not seem so terminally boring.

[skinkinthegrass]

love your tagline, too. :D

[skinkinthegrass]

Canmore Alberta, Street gang....LOL! HA! HA! :D

[RightWhale]

No leash law in Canada?

[ExSoldier]

Thank Benjamin Franklin. HE said it first. But thanks anyway for your kind comments and for your freepmail. I read your about page, too. DUDE! Formatting is our friend! LOL

[skinkinthegrass]

WA bumper sticker: I'm not a Canadian! I just drive like one!...HA! LOL! :D

[skinkinthegrass]

I read your about page, too. DUDE! Formatting is our friend! LOL

...HA! LOL!...I'll do that...later, reading FR now. :D

[MontanaBeth]

WA bumper sticker: I'm not a Canadian! I just drive like one!

Good one!

[concrete is my business]

Glad ya liked it.

It is funny how many stories that black grizzly bear street gang photo goes with.

I received the pic and caption from a Canadian cousin last spring and I know Canada has an abundance of bears and comedians.

I think the photo shows a mama grizzly with three one year old cubs who probably were out on their own shortly after this family pic was take.

I assume the photographer was in a car and not on foot or else we would have heard more about it. :0)

[2ndreconmarine]

A nice article, thank you. It is a particularly nice summary of recent gun ownership and crime consequence data (you have provided excellent links).

The result is important because recent data have provided an unequivocal argument in favor of gun ownership.

Previously, pro-gun ownership arguments centered around the data that showed that countries, states, even municipalities that banned firearms had higher crime rates than those that did not (even though the gun banners would argue that this was counter-intuitive).

Unfortunately, the counter-argument was that the locations where guns were banned had high crime rates for other reasons; typically demographics and average income level were cited (ignoring the obvious racist overtones of such an argument). The classic example was Washington DC, which banned guns and had a high crime rate. The mitigating factors that were sited was the ease of purchasing firearms in Virginia and the relative poverty in DC.

Although there are many problems with these arguments (they are obvious and I won't repeat them), the fundamental issue was that this social issue was a multi-variate problem. How could one, in general, tell what the cause was when there were so many different possibilities??? The argument went: "Because of these other factors, the crime rate in DC would have been even worse without gun control."

This argument has been obliterated by the nice data, which you have linked to, from Australia, the UK, and also New Zealand (which you did not link to).

In all three cases guns were banned and confiscated. Moreover, they were confiscated precipitously. The loss of guns by the general population ocurred on very short time scales (i.e. a year or so). In all three cases the crime rate went up and it went up precipitously and by a considerable amount. These three countries provide a differential measurement of the effect of gun control. No other variables could be involved in the change in crime rate because no other variables could have changed that quickly (or at all). Same country, same people, same income levels, same criminal justice system, same everything. The only change was the gun restrictions. The problem is no longer multi-variate; it is single variate.

All of the gun control arguments become manifestly invalid with these data.

You can extend the analysis (although it is unecessary). The idea that guns could be brought in from neighboring countries is also manifestly nonsense. If that were the case then effect would be only to vitiate the effect of the gun ban law. Namely, crime rates should have merely stayed the same. However, they increased. Moreover, in the case of three island nations, the notion of easily importing firearms is a bit of a stretch.

The same rationale applies to Canada. Again, if the US were exporting "our" violence and guns to Canada, then the effect should only have been that violent crime rates stayed the same because our access to firearms would have undermined their law. However, their crime rates went up. Moreover, their crime rates are higher than ours, so the gradient is in the wrong direction.

Paradoxically, the article's authors are probably right about one thing. Access to firearms in the US probably means that Canadians can get guns from the US. However, the effect of that illicit gun trade is to reduce the violent crime rate in Canada.

[neverdem]

ukman, please read comment# 77 on this thread.

Shooters seek handgun law change (UK). All, look at comments# 17 and afterwards on this link to see where ukman is coming from.

2ndreconmarine, your critique that the precipitous imposition of gun prohibition makes it a single variate analysis is spot on. My only disagreement is with your last paragraph.

Paradoxically, the article's authors are probably right about one thing. Access to firearms in the US probably means that Canadians can get guns from the US. However, the effect of that illicit gun trade is to reduce the violent crime rate in Canada.

I don't think law-abiding sheeple will take advantage of the black market for the right of self defense until the sh@t hits the fan. At that point, it's probably too late for most of them.

[ukman]

Sorry, but I'm really not interested in Canada, nor have I read anything in No.77 that's convincing. Thanks anyway.

[rasblue]

>Just points up the absolute stupidity of the left - in >Canada, the U.S., in the U.N, and everywhere. They really >think "banning" firearms will produce a... happy, peaceful >society. Just like outlawing bank robberies has eliminated >them. (There are no bank robberies anymore, are there? I >mean, they're against the law, aren't they?).

There are a few other countries that you would expect who have rejected gun ownership limitations. Switzerland and Croatia are two countries where they have "US style" gun laws. Switzerland of course had (has) such a strong militia it even frightened Hitler, and Croatia learned a hard lesson in the last Balkan War and learned an armed populace is a safe and alive populace.