Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International Evidence

The following is an extensive analysis of attempts at gun bans world wide, by two widely respected members of the academic community.

Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International Evidence
By Don B. Kates, Pacific Research Institute, and Gary A. Mauser, Simon Fraser University

Abstract

The world abounds in instruments with which people can kill each other. Is the widespread availability of one of these instruments, firearms, a crucial determinant of the incidence of murder? Or do patterns of murder and/or violent crime reflect basic socio-economic and/or cultural factors to which the mere availability of one particular form of weaponry is irrelevant?

This article examines a broad range of international data that bear on two distinct but interrelated questions: first, whether widespread firearm access is an important contributing factor in murder and/or suicide, and second, whether the introduction of laws that restrict general access to firearms has been successful in reducing violent crime, homicide or suicide. Our conclusion from the available data is that suicide, murder and violent crime rates are determined by basic social, economic and/or cultural factors with the availability of any particular one of the world’s myriad deadly instrument being irrelevant.

Additional papers by Don Kates and Gary Mauser in Resource Library- Analysis.

"32 Children Murderred[sic] at Virginia Tech"

As the Virginia Tech story was unfolding Monday morning, I received the following email, along with one of those charts that compare murder rates around the world, from a reader in the U.S. (who I choose not to name, God knows why...):

"Gun Control Canada


It’s good to know you care as little about your children as we do in the US, because I was beginning to think we were the only retards north of Columbia or Jamaica."

To his credit, he signed it, and because he did, I'm not going to out him. At the time the email came in, I had not yet heard the news [Gun Control Canada's statement on VT is here ].

But "children"? No, as Mark Steyn comments below, not children - fully capable young adults who, had they been raised with an appropriate sense of their own mortality and the means and desire to protect it, this tragedy might have ended sooner, with far fewer casualties.

If there ever was an argument for rejecting the liberal nanny-state view of society, Virginia Tech is it. Apparently, only a teacher and one student had the presence of mind to take pro-active steps to interfere with the killer. The teacher, by offering his life, the student, by barricading a door with a desk. Passivity kills, and if you surrender your security to others, you play the lottery that they value your security as much as you do. Through the passage of its "shall carry" permit law, the state of Virginia gave the citizens of Virginia the tool to ensure their own survival. Virginia Tech took it away.

Mark Steyn:

April 18, 2007, 0:44 p.m.

A Culture of Passivity: "Protecting" our "children" at Virginia Tech.

By Mark Steyn

I haven’t weighed in yet on Virginia Tech — mainly because, in a saner world, it would not be the kind of incident one needed to have a partisan opinion on. But I was giving a couple of speeches in Minnesota yesterday and I was asked about it and found myself more and more disturbed by the tone of the coverage. I’m not sure I’m ready to go the full Derb but I think he’s closer to the reality of the situation than most. On Monday night, Geraldo was all over Fox News saying we have to accept that, in this horrible world we live in, our “children” need to be “protected.”

Point one: They’re not “children.” The students at Virginia Tech were grown women and — if you’ll forgive the expression — men. They would be regarded as adults by any other society in the history of our planet. Granted, we live in a selectively infantilized culture where twentysomethings are “children” if they’re serving in the Third Infantry Division in Ramadi but grown-ups making rational choices if they drop to the broadloom in President Clinton’s Oval Office. Nonetheless, it’s deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself — and, in a “horrible” world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act.

Point two: The cost of a “protected” society of eternal “children” is too high. Every December 6th, my own unmanned Dominion lowers its flags to half-mast and tries to saddle Canadian manhood in general with the blame for the “Montreal massacre,” the 14 female students of the Ecole Polytechnique murdered by Marc Lepine (born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, though you’d never know that from the press coverage). As I wrote up north a few years ago:

Yet the defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lepine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, meekly did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate — an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. The “men” stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.

I have always believed America is different. Certainly on September 11th we understood. The only good news of the day came from the passengers who didn’t meekly follow the obsolescent 1970s hijack procedures but who used their wits and acted as free-born individuals. And a few months later as Richard Reid bent down and tried to light his shoe in that critical split-second even the French guys leapt up and pounded the bejasus out of him.

We do our children a disservice to raise them to entrust all to officialdom’s security blanket. Geraldo-like “protection” is a delusion: when something goes awry — whether on a September morning flight out of Logan or on a peaceful college campus — the state won’t be there to protect you. You’ll be the fellow on the scene who has to make the decision. As my distinguished compatriot Kathy Shaidle says:

When we say “we don’t know what we’d do under the same circumstances”, we make cowardice the default position.

I’d prefer to say that the default position is a terrible enervating passivity. Murderous misfit loners are mercifully rare. But this awful corrosive passivity is far more pervasive, and, unlike the psycho killer, is an existential threat to a functioning society.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone.

Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement.

Originally written in 1999, this analysis by John Lott Jr and William Landes, makes an interesting read in the context of recent events, Virginia's concealed carry law, and Virginia Tech's insistence that it not participate.

VIII. Conclusion
The results of this paper support the hypothesis that concealed handgun or shall issue laws reduce the number of multiple victim public shootings. Attackers are deterred and the number of people injured or killed per attack is also reduced, thus for the first time providing evidence that the harm from crimes that still occur can be mitigated. The results are robust with respect to different specifications of the dependent variable, different specifications of the handgun law variable, and the inclusion of additional law variables (e.g., mandatory waiting periods and enhanced penalties for using a gun in the commission of a crime). Not only does the passage of a shall issue law have a significant impact on multiple shootings but it is the only law related variable that appears to have a significant impact. Other law enforcement efforts from the arrest rate for murder to the death penalty to waiting periods and
background checks are not systematically related to multiple shootings. We also find that shall issue laws deter both the number of multiple shootings and the amount of harm per shooting. Finally, because the presence of citizens with concealed handguns may be able to stop attacks before the police are able to arrive, our data also allows us to provide the first evidence on the reduction in severity of those crimes that still take place.

The Unfortunate Irony of "Gun Control"

By now, most of the world has heard about the tragedy of a mass shooting at Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia, this morning. I won't re-iterate the known details here, any media outlet will have their report and spin on the tragedy.

But an interesting debate is about to begin, about this:

Gun bill gets shot down by panel: HB 1572, which would have allowed handguns on college campuses, died in subcommittee.
By Greg Esposito Tuesday, January 31, 2006

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.

House Bill 1572 didn't get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.

The bill was proposed by Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, on behalf of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. Gilbert was unavailable Monday and spokesman Gary Frink would not comment on the bill's defeat other than to say the issue was dead for this General Assembly session.

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

Del. Dave Nutter, R-Christiansburg, would not comment Monday because he was not part of the subcommittee that discussed the bill.

Most universities in Virginia require students and employees, other than police, to check their guns with police or campus security upon entering campus. The legislation was designed to prohibit public universities from making "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit ... from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun."

The legislation allowed for exceptions for participants in athletic events, storage of guns in residence halls and military training programs.

Last spring a Virginia Tech student was disciplined for bringing a handgun to class, despite having a concealed handgun permit. Some gun owners questioned the university's authority, while the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police came out against the presence of guns on campus.

In June, Tech's governing board approved a violence prevention policy reiterating its ban on students or employees carrying guns and prohibiting visitors from bringing them into campus facilities.

States which have enacted concealed-carry permit legislation have seen a reduction in confrontational crime. Virginia issues concealed-carry permits, but Virginia Tech chose to fight this particular statute for the campus.

It cannot be known for a certainty, but had some students, or teachers, been armed this day, this tragedy might have come to a quicker end with fewer deaths. Locking down students in these events is not showing to be a complete, perhaps not even desirable, solution. Murderers seem to be able to proceed at their leisure with a captive victim pool. Pro-active self-defence would seem to be preferable to passive compliance.

The state cannot protect everyone from harm. Police agencies exist to investigate and bring to justice the evil-doers. 911 is a crap-shoot at best, and 30 cops standing outside the building do little to end the tragedies within.

Tragedy at Virginia Tech: Media Statement From Gun Control Canada

We at Gun Control Canada.org stand with all Canadians in our horror and shock at the events that have unfolded this morning at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. This is a massive and unfortunate tragedy, and our sympathy and concerns go out to all of the direct and related victims of this terrible event.

While the details are yet to be understood, we know that once again Canada and the US will embroil themselves in the debate over gun control. But gun control is not the issue in extreme tragedies such as these, and the history of gun control has never been able to define a legislative agenda concerning firearms that could ensure such tragedies don’t occur.

Tragedies such as this one, and the ones to which it has been already compared: Columbine, Texas, Dawson College, Oklahoma City (the latter being a bombing), are events shaped by a deranged mind, and this is where the answers must surely lie. In most of these involving young adults and children, the events are mostly about young adults killing peers.

The focus in the future needs to concentrate on how these young individuals come to view the murder of their colleagues as so acceptable, and how we as a society have contributed to this. There have always been firearms in modern society, but the use of them by young adults and teenagers to commit large scale horrific acts is a recent phenomenon. Rather than diluting our resources on the endless debate about the tools, its time to focus on the souls of those who would use them against their fellows.

Government seeks comments on Amnesty: Deadline April 21, 2007

You all know who Professor Gary Mauser is, and the work he's done for the firearms community in our efforts to replace the Liberal's Firearms Act.

Blair Hagen
Vice President, Communications
National Firearms Association
www.nfa.ca

A MESSAGE FROM PROFESSOR GARY MAUSER, RE: PROPOSED FIREARMS AMNESTY

I'm asking you to help me get as many people as you can to sign and
send in a letter saying we support the proposed amnesty.

The government is proposing to extend the current amnesty for
registering long guns but it will do so only if it can get enough
public support.

Public comment must be received by April 21, 2007.

This proposed extension depends upon receiving public support. We
only have a few days to reply. For letters sent by Canada Post to get to
Ottawa by the 21st, they will have to be mailed from BC by this Wednesday night.
Of course, you'll have a few more days to dilly dally if you use email or phone.

I know that some of you have already written the RCMP to urge them to
extend the current amnesty for registering long guns. I appreciate
your help.

But we need to do more; we need to flood them with letters because we
know Wendy Cukier and her anti-gun friends will be working hard to
frighten people that this amnesty will unleash the mad dog gun owners.

I would very much appreciate if you would help me with this task. If
each of you can get just 5 additional people to sign and send in
these letters, it could make a big difference.

Never give up!

Gary

Send Letters to:

Legal Services,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
Canada Firearms Centre,
10th Floor, 50 O'Connor Street,
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1M6,
or by calling 1 800 731-4000, ext 7799.
e-mail: Amnesty-amnistie@cfc-cafc.gc.ca

PUBLIC SAFETY CANADA NEWS RELEASE
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/media/...0070411-en.asp

Proposal for firearms amnesty

OTTAWA, April 11, 2007 - The Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety, today announced that the Government of Canada is seeking comments on a proposal to extend the firearms amnesty for one more year.

An Amending Order, pursuant to Subsection 117.14(1) of the Criminal Code was pre-published in the Canada Gazette Saturday April 7, 2007. The Public can comment on the proposed amnesty until April 21st, 2007. If approved, the extension would be in effect until May 16, 2008 and would provide an additional period for non-restricted firearm owners to become compliant with licensing and registration requirements. The current amnesty expires on May 16, 2007.

The Firearms Act, which has been in place since 1995, and the Criminal Code require that all firearms owners be licensed and all firearms be registered. According to the current law, in order to legally retain firearms, owners must hold both a valid licence and a registration certificate for those firearms.

An online version of the Canada Gazette is available at:
http://canadagazette.gc.ca/partI/200.../regle3-e.html

Information:

Media Relations
Public Safety Canada
613-991-0657

Lisa Leclerc
Director of Communications
Office of the Honourable Stockwell Day
Minister of Public Safety
613-991-2863

Email: amnesty-amnistie@cfc-cafc.gc.ca

Parsing the Intellectually Challenged Toronto Star

Convergence is truly a wonderful thing when elements of politics, blatant media bias, and sloppy research come together in a connect-the-dots geewhiz sort of way. A Canadian blogger, Canadian Blue Lemons picked up an obvious and gross pair of errors on the increasingly no-longer-ready-for prime-time Toronto Star. Neal Boortz, a blogger in the U.S., did up a funny on "why liberals write columns and editorials...and suck at talk radio", the lead of which was a Second Amendment sendup on a fictitious radio conversation with a liberal gun-grabber. Canadians familiar with the current firearms debacle in Canada could be forgiven if they thought Neal's sendup was a Canadian story. This could have been written about most all Canadian Liberals and Liberal media hanger's on.

And then along comes the Toronto Star, again. Having been recently chastised for journalistic sloppiness (no, its worse than that), it has the temerity to print the editorial below, concerning the government's intention to extend the registration amnesty for Canadian firearms owners who have unregistered firearms, or who have had registrations revoked due to a lapse of their Possession and Acquisition Licence. There is so much wrong with the content of this editorial, we decided to look at it, paragraph by paragraph.


Editorial: Sneaky gun amnesty
Toronto Star, Apr 12, 2007 04:30 AM

Canada's gun laws are hardly burdensome. Gun owners have to be properly licensed and must register their handguns and "long" guns, such as rifles and shotguns. At the moment, Ottawa is even handing out licence renewals free.

The opening line is raising guffaws from coast to coast. A 2 billion dollar fiasco that isn't, and can't keep track of duck guns, let alone criminal hardware. Costs at least $110 million a year to maintain. Employs some 1200 people. None of this drain on the taxpayer existed 12 years ago, and massage the numbers from Statscan all you want, hasn't altered the statistically insignificant gun-crime landscape in Canada one iota. Hardly burdensome? Because of C-68, firearms owners now are required to pay for and take one or more weekend courses, pony up upwards of $80 for a licence (possession and acquisition licence, or PAL), subject themselves to a litany of charter violations, beg for permission to even take some of their firearms to the range (authorization to transport), keep track and carry with them through swamp and bush, paperwork (registration certificate), without which their property may be seized. My paperwork folder for my 20 odd firearms is 4 inches thick. Even my pre War of 1812 flintlock pistol reproductions are papered, for God's sake. When was the last time a Toronto gangbanger settled a score with a 1730 Queen Anne pistol?

Licences are handed out free presently because the Conservatives recognize that the requirement for a renewal every 5 years is just ridiculous. To beat the proverbial dead horse, gangbangers don't have the requirement, because they just skip the licencing thingy.

Even so, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives have never met a gun law they would not like to soften. To that end, they introduced Bill C-21 in Parliament last year to kill the long-gun registry by repealing the requirement to register firearms that are non-restricted, such as hunting rifles and shotguns.

Bill C-21 has not yet been passed, so technically long-gun owners still need to register their guns.

The last part is true. C-21 has not passed, and frankly, most firearms owners hope it never does. There are egregious policy errors in C-21, and while the requirement to register non-restricted firearms ends, the burden of approving transfers falls to the Chief Firearms Officers in the provinces (something that is happening increasingly already). Ergo, registration has merely passed from the Feds to the provinces. This is "softening the gun laws"? This is a political nightmare waiting to happen in McGuinty's Ontario.

Most Canadian gun owners are law-abiding people who have done so. Nearly 2 million Canadians are licensed to own 7 million registered guns. There is 90 per cent compliance with registration.

The 90 percent statistic was generated by McLellan et al, and parroted to no end by Wendy Cukier and her cohorts as a means to sell the program, years ago. Its never been proven, is truly unknowable, and based on the assumption that the Canadian Firearms Centre had estimated the firearms population at a certain low number, had registered 90% of that number, so geewhiz, 90% compliance. Estimates of firearms numbers in Canada run as high as 20 million. There are certainly way more than the 7 million tossed around in the editorial. These stats have never withstood scrutiny. Two million owners would be a very conservative estimate. Practically every gunowner knows someone who has not registered...

But in a spring hunting season gift to gun scofflaws, the Harper Tories have just quietly given a one-year reprieve, until May 16, 2008, to long-gun owners who let their licences expire after Jan. 1, 2004, and have failed to renew them or who have not registered their guns at all.

These gun owners are breaking the law, and police can seize their guns, but the amnesty makes it less likely they would be charged with a crime.

Hmm, scofflaw... a quaint 19th century term for one who laughs or flaunts the law... Hardly describes the typical gun owner who chooses civil disobedience over compliance with an ideologically driven political agenda. Maybe would apply to all those fine upstanding citizens packing heat in Miller's Toronto, but be assured, Canadian firearms owners are hardly laughing. The amendments to the Criminal Code that accompanied bill C-68 have seen to that. The recent decisions of the Supreme Court that upheld charter protections for alleged terrorists gave that group more rights than firearms owners in Canada presently enjoy.

As to the "gift to spring hunting season", beyond the fact that its pejorative, this statement is just silly. The current amnesty ends in May, 2007. Since the government has the stated intention of ending the registration of non-restricted firearms, it only makes sense to extend the amnesty until such time as it can get the enabling legislation by the opposition ideologues in parliament. The previous Liberal government was not shy about promoting amnesties in order to get guns registered. We don't recall the Star having much to say about those at the time. Selective political bias, er, memory?

The issue of lapsed licences is more serious than might be understood. The Canadian Firearms Center is doing a terrible job processing licence renewals. Stories are plentiful of licencees not receiving their renewals, even after applying months in advance, before they expire. The expiration of the licence carries with it an automatic revocation of certificates registered in the name of the licencee, which carries with it Draconian Criminal Code penalties for those caught in the bureaucratic catch-22. This is clearly abuse of process, and should not be tolerated by any group in a democratic state. These are the stories Canadians normally associate with faraway banana republics. Of course the government has to include these individuals in the amnesty. Its the right thing to do.

This pandering to a minority who flout the law was announced Saturday on page 866 of the little-read Canada Gazette, on Easter Weekend no less, under a title only a lawyer could love: Order Amending the Order Declaring an Amnesty Period (2006). There was no official statement or press release.

Without a doubt, this is one initiative that "Canada's New Government" was not eager to trumpet.

My, could the editorial writer have oozed more sanctimony in a paragraph? "Pandering to a minority..." Odd choice of phrase for a Liberal mouthpiece paper. The Liberal party's entire modus operandum is about "pandering to minorities" - all kinds of them . They even built the constitution around "pandering to minorities". Caledonia is "pandering to a minority". Creating amnesties for individuals caught up in a bureaucratic morass when the stated intention of the government is to scrap ill-conceived legislation and policy is good governance, not "pandering". Curious that the Star sees the Conservative's acknowledging an inappropriate weight of government on a constituency as pandering, whereas, the Liberal support of the Coalition for Gun Control and its ideologues within and without the party, was not.

It may come as a surprise to the editors of the Star, or maybe this is just more pissy left MSM whining a la Parliamentary Press Gallery, but the government doesn't have an obligation to issue press releases just so the Star can keep up. Announcing legislative intent is precisely what the Canada Gazette is for. Publication in the Canada Gazette is the official statement. Just because the Star is too lazy to do research is hardly the fault of the government. The news of the pending amnesty extension was all over the internet by the end of the Easter weekend. What, did the Star have to read about it on a blog?

As to the title, what else would you call it? The government needs to make an order to amend an existing order, so the title is an "order amending the order...". Too hard for the Star's editorial brain trust?

And then there's the grand flourish - "Without a doubt...not eager to trumpet"... Did the writer just have an epiphany? It is Easter, after all. The government just did the arcane task of doing what government bureaucracies are supposed to do - be attentive and respond with appropriate policy at the appropriate time. No fanfare needed. No great public pronouncements like PMPM liked to do. No show over substance. Just governance. Had the writer been a gun owner, and done some research, he would have known that the "scofflaws" had been wanting to know for awhile what the government's intention was on this matter.

Clearly, Harper hopes to kill off the long-gun registry by getting Bill C-21 passed, and does not want to aggravate hunters or any other armed voters in the election that many expect.

As the Liberals discovered in the last election, constituents don't like governments that abuse the public trust or fail to deliver on their promises. At a minimum, the constituency of firearms owners in Canada is at least 2 million or more voters. More than twice as many as exist in First Nations. For any government to not listen to a constituency of that size, is to ignore the needs and wishes of its citizenry. That the Star editorialists do not fall into that constituency is irrelevant. As firearms owners, we find the the phrase "any other armed voters" to be insulting, demeaning and inappropriate in a national paper, especially from its editorial board. There are no armed voters in Canada, except those of the various police agencies who show up to vote in uniform. Attending a public meeting in Canada, armed, is a violation of the Criminal Code. The allusion was intended to be an insult. Trust us, it was.

Still, the Conservatives' Bill C-21 is misguided, and so is this reprieve. All gun owners and guns should be licensed and registered. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Professional Police Association are strong supporters of a data base.

Guns that are registered and known to police are likelier to be safely stored and disarmed, kept out of criminals' hands, and not "loaned out" to unlicensed people. That makes for safer communities.

A consistent Star characteristic - broad all encompassing statements without substance, supportable argument, or truth. Bill C-21 is misguided, but not for the reasons the Star has been alluding to. The fact that CACP and CPPA are supportive of the registry is pretty much meaningless. Neither has been able to put forward a defensible argument for the maintenance of the registry, based on facts, and neither has the support of a large percentage of the rank and file in this matter. Both organizations exist largely to lobby for consideration and to steer political agendas to the benefit of their members. The greater good is not a significant component of the activities of either organizations. Associations are what they are: promoters of vested interests.

The Star can provide no evidence that registered firearms are "likelier to be safely stored". In fact, the dearth of evidence that registries have any impact whatsoever on the safe use and disposition of firearms is the most telling reason why there is no basis to keep it going. Safe handling and storage of firearms is an educational and cultural matter, not a legal one, best accomplished by the encouragement of training, safe use and respect for the tool that it is, not the constant demonization presented by papers like the Star. The FBI recently confirmed in a study that criminals obtain their firearms by, surprise, criminal activity, not "borrowing" them (unless you can call theft, a form of "borrowing"). The same study found that no legal ordinance had any impact on the criminal use of guns. In other words, draft all the laws you want to abuse legitimate owners and users, but you won't impact the criminal element at all.

Harper should crack down on the gun scofflaws, not pander to them.

The Star should employ editorialists that can park their ignorance and biases at the door, if they want to actually contribute to the public good in Canada.

H/T SDA for the opening links...

Conservatives Plan To Extend Long Gun Amnesty

The conservative Government of Canada has announced ad itention to extend the amnesty period for registering long guns until May, 2008. The current amnesty, set to expire in May 2007, gives long gun owners a respite from registering their previously unregistered long guns without the risk of prosecution for failing to do so. The Government intends to dismantle the ineffectual long gun registry at its first legislative opportunity, however, opposition parties continue to block the move in spite of no evidence that the registry has any material benefit in controlling the criminal use of firearms.

The registry has been implicated in stolen firearms cases as being a possible source of information for the criminal theft of guns. An uproar was created among firearms owners when the Ottawa Citizen published a website containing registry information obtained from the Canadian Firearms Centre through an Access to Information request. Many firearms owners were individually identified on the public site, and many more maintain that with little additional information, the location of their guns could be ascertained. Complaints to the Privacy Commissioner have not so far resulted in the information being removed.

Backgrounder for media and journalists:

There remains much confusion amongst media writers and commentators as to how Bill C68 establishes the rules for owning firearms. The following points are universally misunderstood and incorrectly reported on:

1) A LICENCE, the Possession and Acquisition Licence (or PAL), is REQUIRED before one can buy, own, register, or use, a firearm. The licence is obtained by taking a course and passing a prescribed examination. There are separate examinations for the ownership of non-restricted and restricted firearms. There is NO EXAM allowing one to acquire prohibited firearms. All prohibited firearms are grandfathered to PAL holding owners, and MAY NOT be traded or sold to ANYONE not similarly grandfathered.

2) A firearm must be REGISTERED ("registration certificate") before it may be sold, or traded, AND it may ONLY be sold or traded to someone with a PAL.

3) ALL firearms are currently required to be REGISTERED. There are three broad registration classes: Prohibited, Restricted, and Non-Restricted. ALL handguns are restricted and some may be prohibited. SOME rifles and other long guns are restricted and may also be prohibited. MOST long guns are non-restricted. ALL firearms require a PAL to possess.

4) The amnesty is a bar to prosecution for possessing an unregistered non-restricted long gun ONLY. The requirement to register unregistered firearms remains in place. The amnesty DOES NOT APPLY to restricted or prohibited firearms of any kind, nor does it waive ANY licencing requirements of owners.

5) Registration (the gun) is NOT licencing (the owner).

Below is the website text of the amnesty order (official text is here):

Vol. 141, No. 14 — April 7, 2007
Order Amending the Order Declaring an Amnesty Period (2006)

Statutory authority

Criminal Code

Sponsoring department

Department of Justice

REGULATORY IMPACT ANALYSIS STATEMENT

(This statement is not part of the Order.)

Description

The proposed Order Amending the Order Declaring an Amnesty Period (2006) [the Amending Order] would extend for one more year the amnesty period created under the original order, the Order Declaring an Amnesty Period (2006) [Amnesty Order 2006]. The Amnesty Order 2006 came into force May 17, 2006, and will end on May 16, 2007, unless it is extended by the Amending Order. The Amending Order would be made pursuant to subsection 117.14(1) of the Criminal Code, just as the original order was. Also like the original order, the Amending Order would apply to owners of non-restricted firearms (commonly known as ordinary rifles and shotguns or long guns) whose licences expired or will expire during the period from January 1, 2004, to May 16, 2008, and/or owners who have not obtained registration certificates for these firearms. It would allow these owners to take positive steps, as set out in the Amnesty Order 2006, to come into compliance with the Firearms Act without, while doing so, attracting criminal liability for being in unauthorized possession of the firearms in question.

The purpose of extending the amnesty period for an additional year would be to enable the Government, through renewed public communications efforts, to clarify the scope of the protection provided by this extended amnesty period, to explain what individuals must do in order to avail themselves of the time-limited protection, and to underline the potential consequences for non-compliant long-gun owners, during and after the extended amnesty period, if they do not take the necessary steps to bring themselves into compliance with the law. Questions and comments from stakeholders (owners of non-restricted firearms) since the Amnesty Order 2006 took effect suggest that some members of the public are confused about the protection that this Order actually provides. The extension of the amnesty period would provide time to clarify misunderstanding of the Amnesty Order 2006 and to allow law-abiding long-gun owners to take advantage of the protection from criminal liability that would only be available for the duration of the extended amnesty period.

Alternatives

The Amnesty Order 2006, declaring an amnesty period under subsection 117.14(1) of the Criminal Code, was the only means for individuals to bring themselves into compliance with the Firearms Act without attracting criminal liability during the amnesty period. The only means to extend the time-limited protection offered by the Amnesty Order 2006 would be to extend the time period provided for in that original order.

Taking no action to extend the Amnesty Order 2006 is an alternative. However, the benefits of the Order would expire with the Order.

Benefits and costs

Those individuals who could be protected from criminal liability for unauthorized possession of a non-restricted firearm under the Amended Order will only benefit from that protection during the extended amnesty period if they take the necessary steps, outlined in the Order, to renew their licence and/or obtain a registration certificate for their non-restricted firearms or if they take advantage of other options to become compliant with the Firearms Act that are set out in the Amnesty Order 2006. Individuals who are not in compliance, and who do nothing during the amnesty period to become compliant, will be subject to Criminal Code illegal possession offences in sections 91 and 92, as well as offences and enforcement measures available under the Firearms Act.

A positive contribution to the Canadian firearms licensing system is achieved whenever non-compliant long-gun owners renew their licences and thereby support this important aspect of firearms regulation. In addition, by registering their non-restricted firearms, as is currently required by law, or by taking other steps as provided for in the Amnesty Order 2006, these individuals are acting within the law. Furthermore, by obtaining licences and/or registration certificates they increase the accuracy, and add to the completeness, of firearms program data in the Canadian Firearms Information System.

The Amended Order would not affect the authority of a chief firearms officer to refuse to issue a licence to a person who is considered not to be eligible. So the public benefits that licence eligibility requirements have for public safety would continue to be unaffected.

Consultation

Feedback from the public suggests that the application, scope and purpose of the Amnesty Order 2006 has not been well-understood by some stakeholders (potential beneficiaries of the amnesty period) or the public at large.

Correspondence sent to the Minister of Public Safety and calls from the public to the Canada Firearms Centre since the Amnesty Order 2006 took effect suggest that many owners of long guns have been confused about the protection that the Amnesty Order 2006 provides to them. Owners of long guns whose licences have expired after January 1, 2004, or for which the registration certificate has expired, in a number of cases seem to have failed to understand that police can seize any long guns for which the owner does not have a valid licence or registration under the Firearms Act. They do not seem to have realized that the only protection that the Amnesty Order 2006 provides to them is protection from liability for certain offences under the Criminal Code and that even that protection is only available if they are taking certain steps to bring themselves into compliance with the Firearms Act.

Compliance and enforcement

Under federal legislation currently in force, to be in lawful (authorized) possession of a non-restricted firearm, an individual must hold a licence issued under the Firearms Act as well as a registration certificate for each non-restricted firearm. In June 2006, the Government tabled a legislative proposal in the House of Commons to remove the requirement to register non-restricted firearms (Bill C-21, which received first reading on June 19, 2006). That Bill proposes to amend the Firearms Act to repeal the requirement to obtain a registration certificate for firearms that are non-restricted (i.e. for firearms that are neither prohibited nor restricted) as well as the related illegal possession offences in the Firearms Act and the Criminal Code. Bill C-21 remains before the House of Commons, and should it come into force in the future, there would no longer be a legislative requirement to register long guns. The current legislation remains validly enacted. The Amending Order does not have the effect of suspending the requirement in the current legislation, which requires long-gun owners to be licensed and to hold registration certificates.

Possession by an individual of any firearm without a licence or without a registration certificate for each firearm is an offence contrary to sections 91 and 92 of the Criminal Code. The proposed Amnesty Order extension would continue to only protect individuals against criminal liability for unauthorized possession of non-restricted firearms. At the same time, however, those owners would be able to take positive steps, as set out in the Amnesty Order 2006, to come into compliance with the Firearms Act and would do so without attracting criminal liability.

Contact

Legal Services, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada Firearms Centre, 10th Floor, 50 O'Connor Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1M6, 1-800-731-4000, extension 7799 (telephone), amnesty-amnistie@cfc-cafc.gc.ca (email).

PROPOSED REGULATORY TEXT

Notice is hereby given that the Governor in Council, pursuant to subsection 117.14(1) (see footnote a) of the Criminal Code, proposes to make the annexed Order Amending the Order Declaring an Amnesty Period (2006).

Interested persons may make representations concerning the proposed Order within 15 days after the date of publication of this notice. All such representations must cite the Canada Gazette, Part I, and the date of publication of this notice, and be addressed to Legal Services, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada Firearms Centre, 10th Floor, 50 O'Connor Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1M6 (tel.: 1-800-731-4000, extension 7799; e-mail: amnesty-amnistie@cfc-cafc.gc.ca).

Ottawa, March 29, 2007

MARY O'NEILL
Assistant Clerk of the Privy Council

ORDER AMENDING THE ORDER DECLARING AN AMNESTY PERIOD (2006)

AMENDMENTS

1. (1) Subparagraphs 2(1)(b)(i) and (ii) of the Order Declaring an Amnesty Period (2006) (see footnote 1) are replaced by the following:

(i) that expired during the period beginning on January 1, 2004 and ending on May 16, 2006, or

(ii) that will have expired during the period beginning on May 17, 2006 and ending on May 16, 2008.

(2) Subsection 2(3) of the Order is replaced by the following:

(3) The amnesty period begins on May 17, 2006 and ends on May 16, 2008.

COMING INTO FORCE

2. This Order comes into force on the day on which it is registered.

[14-1-o]

Footnote a

S.C. 1995, c. 39, s. 139

Footnote 1

SOR/2006-95


NOTICE:
The format of the electronic version of this issue of the Canada Gazette was modified in order to be compatible with hypertext language (HTML). Its content is very similar except for the footnotes, the symbols and the tables.

Guns, Fraud, and Big Numbers in Canada

[ The following essay won the Letter of the Week award on 2004-02-24 at Mark Steyn's web site, http://www.marksteyn.com . In honour thereof, Mr. Steyn graciously sent me a copy of his "The Face of the Tiger", autographed: "Congratulations. A Great Letter." ]

My Fellow Canadian ~

I once read an excellent Isaac Asimov non-fiction essay on really big numbers. Humans are in general really bad at understanding big numbers. Because of my math / science / engineering background, I'm maybe a bit better than average, but I'm no Asimov. I have though learned a few ways to help me better understand big numbers, so that I can better deal with them when I need to. This essay shows how some of those methods work.

The initial Government of Canada estimate for the gun registry database system was $1 million. Technically, I think that's probably a bit low. Based on my on three decades of work in the field of distributed multi-user database transaction processing systems like the registry, and on some systems I'm currently working on which are of that type, I think $3 million would have been a better estimate.

If someone from the Government of Canada can provide me with a simple accounting showing some component of the system that I've missed, I'd be more than happy to adjust my analysis of the situation to take that data into account. My current analysis is based on the numbers I have collected from the public media over the last few years. The rest is here....

Vitruvius, The Sagacious Iconoclast,

comments regularly on SDA, currently, on "innumeracy":

The following is from the introduction to John Allen Paulos's 1988 book Innumeracy - tinyurl.com/2klh4k

"Innumeracy, an inability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of number and chance, plagues far too many otherwise knowledgeable citizens. The same people who cringe when words such as "imply" and "infer" are confused react without a trace of embarrassment even to the most egregious of numerical solecisms.

"I remember once listening to someone at a party drone on about the difference between "continually" and "continuously". Later that evening we were watching the news, and the TV weathercaster announced that there was a 50 percent chance of rain for Saturday, and and 50 percent chance for Sunday, and concluded that there was therefore a 100 percent chance of rain that weekend.

"The remark went right by the self-styled grammarian, and even after I explained the mistake to him, he wasn't nearly as indignant as he would have been had the weathercaster left a dangling participle. In fact, unlike other failings which are hidden, mathematical illiteracy is often flaunted: "I can't even balance my checkbook", "I'm a people person, not a numbers person", or "I always hated math".

/End Excerpts

I think that one of the biggest problems that is posed by innumeracy is the inability of the innumerate to reason with big numbers. For example, some time ago some people were complaining that the oil patch uses 330,000,000 liters of water a year from the Red Deer River. 330,000,000 liters! Ohh, be vewy afwaid!

But wait just a minute, how big is 330,000,000 liters in the Red Deer River context? Well, the river flow rate varies from 10 to 100 cubic meters per second. Assuming only 10 cubic meters per second, that's still 10,000 liters per second. Which means the oil patch uses 33,000 seconds, or about 9 hours, or about 0.1% of the river's annual flow.

Why weren't those people complaining about the oil patch wanting to use 0.1% of the river flow? Why do they say 330,000,000 liters instead? Are they trying to hide a fraudulent agenda behind big numbers?

Ok, now let's consider the case of atmospheric CO2 vapor. Humans produce about 50 giga-tonnes of atmospheric CO2 vapour per year. Be vewy afwaid!
[...]

Follow the thread at SDA

The Sunshine State Gets It....

Title XLVI: CRIMES
Chapter 790 WEAPONS AND FIREARMS

790.335 Prohibition of registration of firearms.--

(1) LEGISLATIVE FINDINGS AND INTENT.--

(a) The Legislature finds and declares that:

1. The right of individuals to keep and bear arms is guaranteed under both the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and s. 8, Art. I of the State Constitution.

2. A list, record, or registry of legally owned firearms or law-abiding firearm owners is not a law enforcement tool and can become an instrument for profiling, harassing, or abusing law-abiding citizens based on their choice to own a firearm and exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed under the United States Constitution. Further, such a list, record, or registry has the potential to fall into the wrong hands and become a shopping list for thieves.

3. A list, record, or registry of legally owned firearms or law-abiding firearm owners is not a tool for fighting terrorism, but rather is an instrument that can be used as a means to profile innocent citizens and to harass and abuse American citizens based solely on their choice to own firearms and exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed under the United States Constitution.

4. Law-abiding firearm owners whose names have been illegally recorded in a list, record, or registry are entitled to redress.

(b) The Legislature intends through the provisions of this section to:

1. Protect the right of individuals to keep and bear arms as guaranteed under both the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and s. 8, Art. I of the State Constitution.

2. Protect the privacy rights of law-abiding firearm owners.

The rest of the statute is here.

Unlike the Canadian government under the Liberals, the Florida legislature knows that targeting law-abiding hunters and sport-shooters, does nothing to deter criminal use of firearms. A recent study by the FBI confirms criminals pay no attention whatsoever to the law regarding firearms, and acquire their guns the same way they live their lives, by committing crimes.

Worry About the Right Things

Worry About the Right Things
by John Stossel (More by this author)
Posted: 04/04/2007

For the past two weeks I've written about how the media -- part of the Fear Industrial Complex -- profit by scaring us to death about things that rarely happen, like terrorism, child abductions, and shark attacks.

We do it because we get caught up in the excitement of the story. And for ratings.

Worse, because many reporters are statistically illiterate, personal-injury lawyers get us to hype risks that barely threaten people, like secondhand smoke, or getting cancer from trace amounts of chemicals. Sometimes they even con us into scaring you about risks that don't exist at all, like contracting anti-immune disease from breast implants.

Newsrooms are full of English majors who acknowledge that they are not good at math, but still rush to make confident pronouncements about a global-warming "crisis" and the coming of bird flu.

Bird flu was called the No. 1 threat to the world. But bird flu has killed no one in America, while regular flu -- the boring kind -- kills tens of thousands. New York City internist Marc Siegel says that after the media hype, his patients didn't want to hear that.
"I say, 'You need a flu shot.' You know the regular flu is killing 36,000 per year. They say, 'Don't talk to me about regular flu. What about bird flu?'"

Here's another example. What do you think is more dangerous, a house with a pool or a house with a gun? When, for "20/20," I asked some kids, all said the house with the gun is more dangerous. I'm sure their parents would agree. Yet a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a gun accident.

Parents don't know that partly because the media hate guns and gun accidents make bigger headlines. Ask yourself which incident would be more likely to be covered on TV.

Media exposure clouds our judgment about real-life odds. Of course, it doesn't help that viewers are as ignorant about probability as reporters are.


To demonstrate that, "20/20" ran an experiment. We asked people to put on blindfolds and then to pick up a red jellybean from one of two plates that held a mixture of red and white jellybeans. We offered $1 to anyone who could pick up a red bean.

Here's the catch: While one plate held 20 jellybeans and the other 100, the plate with 20 beans had a higher percentage of red ones. We put up signs that told people this clearly: "10 percent red" of the small plate and just "7 percent red" of the big plate.

Surprisingly, even with the percentage signs in front of them, a third of the people picked the plate with 100 beans.

What people saw overwhelmed their ability to think abstractly about probability. They saw more red on the big plate. It's one reason people obsess about things that have a small chance of hurting them but ignore real threats.

Another is the illusion of control. People who fear flying are comfortable driving because they think they're "in control." Yet driving is probably the riskiest thing most of us do. Think about it: We drive at 65 mph, a few feet from other cars -- some of which are driven by 16-year olds! And our cameras have caught people curling their eyelashes and reading while driving.

A hundred people die on the road every day. But the media are much more likely to do scare stories about plane crashes than car accidents.

So take our reporting with heavy skepticism. Ignore us when we hyperventilate about mad cow disease and the danger of asbestos hidden behind a wall.

Instead, worry about what's worth worrying about: driving, acting reckless, smoking cigarettes, drinking too much, and eating too much. "What is your blood pressure, what are you eating; are you exercising?" is what patients should think about, says internist Marc Siegel. "But obesity is boring. Heart disease is boring. So we tend to not think of the things that can really get us."

The media make it worse. Instead of educating people to real dangers, we scare them about things that hardly matter.


Mr. Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20" and the author of "Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel -- Why Everything You Know is Wrong".