Gunter: Gun bans don't prevent murder

Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, October 27, 2008

There is no one more persistent than a liberal with a bad idea. He knows his intellectual and moral superiority make him infallible, so he easily convinces himself there is nothing wrong with his idea; it is the world that is mistaken Even the facts cannot be the facts when they disagree with his idea. So he forges ahead against all reason, attempting to remake the world until it accepts he was correct all along.

Which brings me to the subject of gun bans. As useless as bans have proven, liberal politicians will raise the subject over and over. Thankfully new, unconnected reports from Statistics Canada and Chicago once again point out the futility of banning guns as a way of lowering crime.

This week, Chicago took over as murder capital of the United States. There are several cities that have higher murder rates per 100,000 population, but no city with more total murders.

Even with a population of just over 3 million, Chicagoans can expect more murders -- 500 -- in their city, than in New York (400 murders and 5 million population) or Los Angeles (300 murders and 3.8 million people).

Chicago is also the gun-confiscation and voluntary hand-in capital of the U. S. Over the past decade, Chicago police have confiscated or had surrendered to them an average of 10,800 guns per year. Chicago has also had a complete ban on handgun sales and possession since 1982.

How come there are so many handgun murders and so many confiscations in the Windy City if handguns are banned?

The answer is simple: Criminals ignore laws against handgun ownership more contemptuously even than they ignore those again robbery, assault, rape, drug-dealing and murder.

Crusading politicians may keep law-abiding citizens from possessing guns, but that will do nothing to stop firearms crimes because law-abiding citizens aren't shooting down their rival meth pushers outside strip clubs at 2 a. m.

Statistics Canada reported this week that "while the overall rate of homicides committed with a firearm has generally been decreasing since the mid-1970s [see the top line in the attached chart], the use of handguns has been on the rise. In 2007, handguns were used in two-thirds of all firearm homicides, up from about one-quarter 20 years ago."

This is significant for two reasons.

First, firearms homicides, like total homicides, have been falling since beforeOttawa's initial attempts at gun control in the late 1970s. The cause is demographic, not legislative.

The three major gun control laws passed since 1977 have had little or no effect on gun crime. The decline has been the result of a shrinking population of murdering-age individuals.

There are fewer murders because there are fewer males aged 16 to 30.

The one statistical area stubbornly resistant to decline has been youth homicides. Last year witnessed "the second highest youth homicide rate since data were first collected in 1961," StatsCan reported. If we had more youths, we'd have more murders -- gun control laws or not.

The decline in firearms murders has mirrored the drop in the overall murder rate. If the rate of murders with knives, clubs, fists and other non-firearms has been falling at the same pace as firearms murders, then it is impossible to say gun control laws are behind the fall, unless we also want to assert that gun controls are behind the drop in stabbings, bludgeonings and strangulations, too.

The second reason it is significant that StatsCan's revealed handgun murders have "more than doubled over the past 20 years," is that it has been the law in Canada since 1934 that all handguns be registered. Moreover, after the Liberals implemented their most recent controls in 1998, they confiscated nearly two-thirds of the legally held handguns in the country -- without paying their lawful owners a dime in compensation.

And yet, in Canada, handguns are far and away the most popular type of firearm used in murders.

A handgun is the weapon of choice in twice as many murders as all other gun types combined. In urban areas, according to StasCan, "81% of all firearm-related homicides were committed with a handgun."

If registration and confiscation worked, we would see it in our own handgun murder stats. Instead, we see what an utter failure it has been (and always will be) to take guns away from law-abiding Canadians.

lgunter@shaw.ca