DATE:
2002.02.03
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Opinion
PAGE:
A14
COLUMN:
Lorne Gunter
BYLINE:
Lorne
Gunter
SOURCE:
The Edmonton Journal
There were 21,279 robberies in Canada in 2000. That may seem a lot, but it's not a remarkable number; neither astonishingly above average nor impressively below. Like most crimes, robberies have been trending downward for the past decade as the last of the Baby Boomers leave their crime-committing years.
The robbery statistics bear closer examination, though. Along with murder, rape and assault, robbery is one of the four major violent bodily crimes; burglary is the most significant property crime.
By far the most common weapons in robbery are bare hands or booted feet. Thirty-four per cent of robberies (7,321) were committed with a punch, a grab or a kick -- or at least the threat of one.
After "physical force," a knife was the most frequent weapon. Nearly 5,000 robberies (4,669) were performed at the sharp end of a blade. That's 22 per cent.
There was a virtual tie between firearms and "Other." Firearms were used in 3,575 robberies, and bats, wrenches and broken bottles were the weapons of convenience in 3,567. Each accounted for about 17 per cent of the total.
Nearly 3,600 firearms robberies is a lot. Not as many as fists, knives or feet. But it's still a lot of robberies, and every robbery is traumatic for its victim. So, if gun control could reduce the number of robberies, it might be worth registering every gun and licensing every owner in the country.
It might not be worth three-quarters of a billion dollars (which is what Ottawa has spent since 1995 on its Canadian Firearms Program), unless gun control could be shown to reduce the number by, say, half. I am not an adherent of the, "if only one (insert name of bad event here) is prevented" school; the cost has to produce a proportionate benefit.
But let's put the costs aside for the time being. Gun control might be worthwhile if it reduced robberies by some significant amount.
The trouble is, there is no evidence in StatsCan's numbers that licensing law-abiding gun owners and forcing them to register their guns with Ottawa could force down robberies by even a fraction, let alone a significant amount.
In fully 82.2 per cent of firearms robberies, the gun used is a handgun. Handguns are restricted weapons. It has been a requirement of Canadian law since 1934 that their owners -- or at least, their law-abiding owners -- register every handgun they possess. In other words, it has been a criminal offence to possess an unregistered handgun for the past 68 years. Yet, in 2,940 of Canada's 3,575 firearms robberies in 2000, the perpetrator still chose to use one.
On top of that, 58.5 per cent of firearms homicides in 2000 were committed with handguns, up from just 26.9 per cent in 1974. That's a 117 per cent rise in handgun murders in 26 years. If mandatory registration of handguns has done nothing to deter their use in murders and robberies, what would make any logical person believe the registration of duck guns would be any more successful at combating crime?
On top of the nearly 3,000 handgun robberies, another 243 firearms robberies were committed with illegal or prohibited guns -- sawed-off shotguns and rifles, machine-guns and so on. In all, 3,183 of the 3,575 firearms robberies involved guns that will never be detected by Ottawa's registry. Thus, 89 per cent of the guns used in robberies are
already illegal guns and no registry of law-abiding owners or their firearms could ever prevent these robberies.
Just 392 robberies were committed with what might be called "legal" guns. StatsCan has no way of knowing how many of these guns were in the possession of their legal owner at the time of the robbery -- police departments don't fill out crime reports that way. But we can assume a large percentage, likely half or more, were not in the hands of their lawful owner.
This might provide some justification for safe-storage laws. Make law-abiding gun owners lock up their firearms so criminals can't steal them to use in robberies and murders. But we know most of the handguns used in
major crimes are not stolen, but smuggled. If criminals can't steal their guns, that doesn't stop them from committing crimes. It merely forces them to seek a smuggled weapon instead.
So maybe -- maybe -- around 200 robberies (five per cent of firearms robberies and less than one per cent of total robberies) involve guns that might be traceable through Ottawa's registry. Say registration could prevent one-fifth of those, and perhaps one-fifth of legal gun murders. At most that's 40 robberies and 20 murders. More of these would be prevented if Ottawa spent the $140 million it wastes each year on the registry by stationing a police officer outside every convenience store and every home of women afraid of their ex-partners.
For crime control, the gun registry is useless.