FIREARMS FACTS - UPDATE

KEEPING VIOLENT CRIME AND GUNS IN PERSPECTIVE

Revised: February 10, 2004

It’s important for all Canadians to keep gun violence in perspective and by extension how ineffective registering firearms is as a policy to reduce the criminal use of firearms.

q       In 2002, Statistics Canada reports:

- Police Reported Violent Crime in 2002 = 303,294

- Violent Incidents Where a Firearm Was the Most Serious Weapon Present = 2.3%. 

- Victims Injured by a Firearm as Proportion of all Victims = 0.9%. 

- Victims Who Were Injured by a Firearm as a Proportion of All Injured Victims = 1.9%

Note: (1) Based on data from 78 police departments representing 45.6% of the national volume of crime.

q       In July 1997, the Commissioner of the RCMP wrote the Deputy Minister of Justice to complain about the department’s misrepresentation of RCMP statistics: “Furthermore, the RCMP investigated 88,162 actual violent crimes during 1993, where only 73 of these offences, or 0.08%, involved the use of firearms.”   

q       In 1999, Statistics Canada reported that a gun was present in 4% of the 291,000 violent crimes committed that year and actually used in 1.4% of them. 

q       In 2000, Statistics Canada reported that of the 21,279 robberies committed that year, handguns were involved in 14% of them and long guns present in just 1%.

q       In 2000, Statistics Canada reported 799 robberies that resulted in major personal injuries to the victim.  Their injuries were as a result of: the use of physical force in 31% of the robberies; the use of a knife in 18% of the robberies; the use of a club in 18% of the robberies; the use of some other type of weapon in 24% of the robberies; the use of a handgun in 9% of the robberies and the use of a long-gun in none of the robberies.

q       In 2001, Statistics Canada reported 554 homicides in Canada: 53% were stabbed and beaten to death and 31% were shot to death.  Sixty-five percent of persons accused of homicide had a Canadian criminal record, and 58% of these had previously been convicted of violent crimes.

q       Despite 70 years of registering handguns, Statistics Canada’s homicide reports have shown a steady increase in firearms homicides committed with handguns from 27% in 1974 to 64% in 2001.  Between 1997 and 2001, 74% of the handguns recovered from the scenes of 143 homicides were not registered.  When Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino was asked recently about the escalation of firearms crime in his city when he said: “A law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them.” 

q       In Canada’s Performance Report for 2002, Treasury Board reported that violent crime is 52% higher than the rate 20 years ago.  Statistics Canada reports show that the number of criminal incidents per police officer in the year 2000 had more than doubled since 1962. 

Seventy years of registering handguns has proven: gun registration is not gun control.  Clearly, violent crime is the problem – not a paranoid preoccupation with the type of weapon used by the perpetrators in a very small percentage of the violent crimes.  More police on our streets and highways is the solution - not a billion dollar gun registry.