Lorne Gunter Column: Gun control myths just won’t die
Date: May 9, 2005 7:32 AM
PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2005.05.09
EDITION: National
SECTION: Editorials
PAGE: A18
COLUMN: Lorne Gunter
BYLINE: Lorne Gunter
SOURCE: National Post
NOTE: [email protected]

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Gun control myths just won’t die

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I have never owned a firearm. Heck, I’ve never even held a real gun,
much less fired one. Still, there are few federal programs that irk me
more than Ottawa’s gun registry.

It’s not just the waste, although that’s atrocious — nearly $2-billion
for a dysfunctional pile of uselessness.

And it’s not just the uselessness. The registry is also one of those
truisms for liberals, one of their articles of blind faith. To a
liberal, universal registration of guns is something all intelligent
people must support or, well, they’re not intelligent. They use gun
control as a litmus test for who is and isn’t sophisticated and subtle
of mind. So that even if you can prove the registry will have no
practical effect — it won’t prevent armed robberies or murders, or keep
enraged spouses from killing one another — a liberal still has to cling
to it for fear of being seen as NOKD (not our kind, dear).

But what troubles me most is what it says about its supporters’ attitude
toward the people and government. Backing most gun laws amounts to
proclaiming trust in government over trust in one’s fellow citizens.

This is especially true of Canada’s gun registry. You really, really
have to have faith in government, and be really, really suspicious of
the gun owner down the block to continue to think our national registry
will ever do any good.

Frankly, I’ll take my law-abiding neighbours over politicians,
bureaucrats, experts and advocates any day.

Believers in our registry like to say that since its inception in 1998
it has helped keep gun licences out of the hands of 13,000 people deemed
unstable or too violent to possess guns. What they never boast about is
that the registry doesn’t even try to track the 131,000 convicted
criminals in Canada who have been prohibited by the courts from owning
guns.

Gee, who do you think is the greater risk?

Still, the fact that 13,000 Canadians — about one-half of one per cent
of applicants — have been refused a licence in the past seven years
might be meaningful if gun-controllers could then point to lowered
murder rates, or show that firearms suicides have declined faster than
suicides by other methods, or demonstrate a significant reduction in
spousal homicides (most of the 13,000 denials have stemmed from
complaints by one partner against another).

But despite these thousands of licence refusals, government ministers
and special interest groups who favour the registry can’t even point to
a reduction in armed robberies.

The registry is not keeping the unfit from getting guns, just licences.
And licences don’t kill people, guns do. Keeping licences out of the
hands of people who shouldn’t have guns is meaningless.

James Roszko, the slayer of four Mounties in Alberta, had been banned
from owning guns for the past five years. But paper gun controls were
useless at keeping him from acquiring the weapons he used in his
murders.

The only meaningful gun control is taking firearms away from criminals.
And since crooks, drug dealers and murderers don’t register their
weapons, the registry is useless in this task.

Consider, too, (from the latest Statistics Canada homicide report), that
68% of firearms murders in Canada in 2003 were committed with handguns,
and handguns have been subject to mandatory federal registration since
1934. Indeed, in the past 15 years, the percentage of total murders
committed with handguns has doubled, despite their being tightly
controlled.

That should tell you all you need to know about the worth of firearms
registries.

Now the Library of Parliament has released a comparison of violent crime
rates in the Northern Plains states versus Canada’s Prairie provinces.
The simple conclusion: Rates of gun ownership among law-abiding private
citizens have no effect on crime.

Despite having nearly twice as many households with guns as their
Canadian counterparts — and similar economic, cultural and social
demographics — Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Idaho have lower
crime rates than Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Researchers
determined “both violent and property crime rates were two-thirds higher
in the Canadian Prairie provinces than in the four border states.”

Murder was 1.1 times higher; violent assaults and attempted murder, 1.5
times; robbery, 2.1 times; breaking and entering, 2.3; and vehicle
theft, 3.2.

Harassing duck hunters, target shooters and gun collectors to register
their firearms will have no effect on crime. But don’t tell liberals.
They take great comfort in their myths.