Canada's gun registry does so work

Apparantly, someone thinks Canada's gun registry is actually working...

Quoted By most standards, Canada's gun-control program is a success: More than 2 million firearm owners (90 per cent) are now licensed and almost 7 million firearms (85 per cent) are registered. More than 9,000 people have been denied firearm licences under the new program.

OK, let's see here. 2 million firearm owners registered, with a totally made up 90%. That leaves 10% "known" unregistered firearm owners -- about 200,000 people. And how many unregistered firearms? 7 million registered, estimated 85% coverage... leaving about 1 million unregistered firearms. This is after 2 years and at least two missed deadlines. The people who haven't registered by now aren't going to. And the criminals never were going to, and their ranks are probably not counted in those official estimates.

All this at a cost of nearly $1 billion (Canadian), which is at least a 5x cost overrun from estimates of 200 million. And given the hideous mess the system was in for the first couple years, who knows how accurate those records are?

But this is a success because 9,000 people have been denied firearm licenses under the new program? Hmm. 2 million owners and not even 10,000 denials. How do you know those who had their applications denied did not simply go and acquire one of the 1 million unregistered firearms? That's right -- you don't. In fact, you don't even know that their firearms were collected and taken away. They just don't have the legal piece of paper that says the gun is registered.

Personally, though, I don't consider any program a success just because it signs people up. There needs to be a measurable effect on the problems you're trying to solve -- in this case, crime rates.

Quoted Police officers use the system more than 1,500 times a day and report many cases where the system has allowed them to remove guns from people who were a risk to themselves or others. Canada's laws do not prevent people from using firearms responsibly, but they do increase accountability.

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is straight out of Minority Report. Canada's police agencies have officially implemented the doctrine of precrime. If you look at a police officer the wrong way, or spit on a Mounties' mount, then they'll take your guns away and count it a crime prevented and a success of the program.

Would it be impolite to ask what has happened to Canada's crime rates? Any change? Hmm?

Quoted Because of the virulent opposition of the gun lobby, the firearms program has been subjected to a burden of proof absent from other public-policy debates. Nevertheless, the facts, when accurately reported, speak for themselves. Firearm death, robbery and injury rates are the lowest they've been for more than 30 years. While it is too early to assess the impact of the licensing and registration system, the results are encouraging, particularly where rifles and shotguns are concerned.

Ah, here we go. Straight out of "How to Lie with Statistics", we have the attempt to redefine terms in a manner that supports your argument. Suddenly, it's not crime that's important: it's firearm death, robbery, and injury rates. When you start taking away firearms, obviously you reduce the rate of firearm-related crime. But what about overall rates? Strangely silent on those.

This journalist at least has the decency to admit that it's too soon to assess the impact of the program... right after implying that the program is responsible for those 30-year lows in firearm crime. Not to be outdone, she immediately follows up by assessing the impact of the program as "encouraging". Impressive intellectual rigor there.

Quoted Public-interest test: Police, public-health officials and groups representing victims of violence continue to support the law. According to the last Environics poll, three-quarters of Canadians continue to support licensing gun owners and registering guns, despite the controversy. In Quebec, the levels of support are the highest in the country - 85 per cent. While it is true only 45 per cent of gun owners support the legislation, 77 per cent of people living with gun owners support it.

Let's rephrase this with something a bit more illustrative. Let's replace the term "gun owners" with "Jews" and the term "gun" with "Torah" (which is, I think, what Christians would call the books of the Old Testament; but I am no expert on Judaism). Go ahead and read the quoted paragraph again, making those substitutions.

If that doesn't make my point clear, nothing will, so you might as well stop reading here.

Quoted Role-of-government test: Governments have a duty to protect their citizens from harm and to regulate dangerous products. The United Nation's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has said countries that fail to protect their citizens adequately from firearms through effective regulation might be failing their obligations under international Human Rights Law.

In Canada, governments may have a "duty" to protect their citizens from harm (they do not in the US), but they certainly don't have the ability. It's unclear if the author hasn't thought it through or just doesn't realize that not everyone lives within 30 seconds of a police station.

As for regulating dangerous products, firearms (when used properly) are remarkably safe... for the user. They tend not to be safe for people on the wrong end of the barrel, but that is, as they say in software development, "A feature, not a bug." In any case, it's hard to equate "firearms safety regulation" with "nationwide registration scheme", because the firearm doesn't get any safer once the government knows it exists.

And claiming that lack of a firearms registration system might run afoul of human rights laws is ... well... laughable. Or would be, if she wasn't serious.

Quoted Value-for-money-test: The introduction of the new program has required significant investment to address gaps identified in the old system. In spite of the rhetoric, two-thirds of the money was spent on screening and licensing gun owners, not on registering guns.

So it's a good value to spend two-thirds of a billion dollars to identify under 10,000 "precrime" suspects? Interesting math there.

Quoted Under the old system, firearm owners required firearms acquisition certificates (FACs) only to acquire firearms, not to own them. Only a third of gun owners had valid FACs and only handguns were registered. Now all firearms owners must be licensed and all firearms registered. Police have immediate, on-line access to information, which is essential to taking preventative action.

Betcha thought I was kidding about the precrime stuff, huh?

Quoted The old system cost approximately $30 million a year to operate. The new system will cost $70 million a year, but public-safety experts maintain it is a good investment. The costs of firearm injuries and deaths have been estimated at $6.6 billion a year, more than $1.5 billion in Quebec alone.

How exactly will either system reduce those costs? Firearm injuries and deaths can be divided into several categories:

Accidents
Crimes
Suicides

Will the criminals stop committing crimes because they would have to register their firearm? Not likely. Will the people who legally own firearms, registered or otherwise, injure themselves at a lower rate now that the government knows they have firearms? Unlikely. Will people who plan on committing suicide balk at registering a gun to do it -- or simply choose another method, perhaps even a gun they have already owned? Doubt it.

So we have a system that costs $70 million per year. Even taking that at face value rather than multiplying it by 5, is it worth that much to buy absolutely no reduction in the $6.6 billion price tag? You would be better off spending the money buying firearms for the poor in high-crime neighborhoods -- then you might actually see a reduction in crime!

Quoted Efficiency (and effectiveness) test: Concerns about management and efficiency issues have been addressed over the past year. And as important as efficiency is, effectiveness is a critical issue. The preliminary evidence is strong Canada's approach to gun control is contributing to public safety. The rate of homicides involving firearms continues to decline in Canada, from 0.8 per 100,000 in 1989 to 0.48 per 100,000 in 2002. The overall homicide rate has also fallen, from 2.41 per 100,000 in 1989 to 1.85 per 100,000 in 2002 - but not as quickly as the firearms homicide rate.

Here, we have a couple points to make. First, note the switcheroo -- suddenly we're talking about "firearm" rates rather than overall crime rates. It helps make up better numbers, don'tchaknow. Second, the "preliminary evidence" is in regards to a program which you just admitted earlier is "too soon to assess". But you love to assess it when you can handwave the results! And, of course, let's not miss the fact that (in the US at least, and presumably in Canada) the period around 1990 was a very high crime period, and around 2002 was a very low crime period. Assuming Canadian crime rates followed the same trend, what proof do we have that any firearms registration program had any effect whatsoever?

Quoted The most dramatic decline has been in homicides involving rifles and shotguns. In 1989, 218 Canadians were murdered with firearms, compared with 149 in 2002. While murders with handguns have increased slightly (owing largely to problems with smuggled guns), murders with rifles and shotguns have plummeted, from 131 in 1989 to 32 in 2002. In 1989, 74 women were murdered with guns; in 2001 that number was 32.

More statistics, and more ways to lie with them. Note that the absolute numbers of homicides are compared between 1989 and 2002, without regard to changes in population. Note that we're talking about "firearm" homicides. And then we get to the kicker; murders with handguns have increased! Remember, under the "old system" (if I understand correctly), only handguns were registered, and under the new system they added rifles and shotguns. So, even though firearm homicides fell, crimes committed with the type of weapon that was now being registered increased. Crowing about the reduction in rifle and shotgun murders is meaningless when the registration programs for those firearms did not even begin until the end of the sample period.

Oh, and what is with the special line-item for "women"? Are murders of women somehow more evil?

Quoted

Affordability test: It's difficult to measure the benefits of prevention programs, until it is too late. More than 1,000 people die every year in Canada as a result of guns, compared with 3,000 killed in automobile crashes.

The costs of Canada's firearms program are dwarfed by the money governments invest in trying to keep our highways and roads safe. The government spent almost half a billion dollars to widen a New Brunswick highway after 43 people died over five years. Over the same period, more than 5,000 Canadians were killed with guns. The question is not can we afford to license gun owners and register guns, but can we afford not to.

The missing element in this analysis is what effect licensing gun owners and registering guns will have on the costs being cited. Unfortunately for the author, there is reasonable way to postulate reduced costs from licensing and registration of gun owners and their firearms. Money spent on those programs will have no practical return.

Quoted Wendy Cukier is a professor of information-technology management and of justice studies at Ryerson University in Toronto and co-founder and president of the Coalition for Gun Control.

I'm ashamed to admit that anyone teaching information technology could make such a poorly-reasoned analysis. But I think the other half of her title explains much about this article.

Posted on 2003-12-31 04:59:00.0 by matthew@triggerfinger.org

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