PUBLICATION: Edmonton
Journal
DATE: 2002.02.10
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Opinion
PAGE: A14
COLUMN: Lorne
Gunter
BYLINE: Lorne
Gunter
SOURCE: The
Edmonton Journal
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Dead is dead, and safe is safe: Liberals' registry is
targeting the least dangerous guns in the country
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You'd
never know it from reading my stuff, but I was once a member of the University
of Alberta's writing skills committee. Among our tasks was reviewing freshman
essays. One I'll never forget advocated strict gun control, and contained the
memorable non sequitur "Gun control is needed more in the 20th Century than
in previous centuries, because being killed with a bullet is more fatal than
being killed by a sword."
Hey,
dead is dead. Medically, one kind of "killed" is no "more
fatal" than the others. But I've often wondered if that freshman graduated
and went on to a stellar career designing Canada's firearms regulations.
Certainly the illogical obsession with the evils of guns was already present
some 20 years ago.
Last
Sunday I wrote how the Liberals' gun control will be useless at preventing
robberies. Firearms are only the third most common weapon used in robberies,
well back of both fists and knives, and tied with clubs and blunt instruments.
Moreover, nearly 90 per cent of the firearms used in robberies are already
illegal or should have been registered even before the new firearms law.
Handguns,
for instance, account for 82 per cent of firearms robberies, even though
handguns have been subject to compulsory registration since the Depression.
Robbers now smuggle them instead.
This
week, even more firearms-robbery statistics came available, thanks to the
determined digging of Saskatchewan Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz and researchers
at the Library of Parliament.
As
with last week's figures, this week's lead to pretty much the same conclusion:
Legal guns aren't the biggest problem in crime. Therefore, all the gun control
in the world isn't going to have much impact on crime.
In
2000, 800 victims of robbery suffered major injuries from their attackers. Only
nine per cent of those (about 70 people) suffered major injuries from firearms,
and nearly all of those injuries were inflicted with handguns, which, as I
pointed out before, are already supposed to be registered.
Fists
-- technically "physical force" -- accounted for the largest
percentage of major injuries (31 per cent), clubs and blunt instruments 18 per
cent and knives 18 per cent. And just as dead is dead, a major injury is a major
injury. StatsCan makes no distinction between one caused by a gun and one
inflicted by a boot or switchblade.
So
it's no use to counter that a gunshot wound is more serious than a stab wound;
there is an empirical definition of "major," and only wounds that
exceed that threshold count, regardless of which kind of weapon inflicted them.
So
fists and feet and clubs and knives all injure more Canadians seriously each
year than guns. But are guns still more dangerous? Guns are used in fewer robberies, so while their percentage
of inflicted-injuries is smaller, perhaps in the robberies in which they are
used, they are used more often to wound. Not
so. To begin with, the chance of receiving any injury -- major, minor or
indeterminate --if your assailant robs you with rifle or shotgun is so small
StatsCan doesn't even register it. Of
course, it's rifles and shotguns the Liberals are currently trying madly to
register. Futile, futile, futile.
If
a robber uses a sawed-off rifle or shotgun (already an entirely illegal class of
gun), you stand a one-in-four chance of suffering an indeterminate injury, but
again a statistically insignificant chance of a major or minor one.
If a handgun is used, the victim has a one-in-three chance of being
injured. But with a knife, the ratio is one in two. With a club or a fist, the
chances are high --four in five -- you'll end up hurt in some way.
The
chance of receiving a major injury in a robbery is just about the same no matter
what weapon (except one) is used. A
knife gives a one-in-11 chance, a handgun a one-in-12 chance and physical force
about one in 15. The exception is a
club, bat or other blunt instrument. If you are attacked by a club-wielding
robber, you're more likely to get hurt than not. You run a one-in-four chance of
suffering a major injury, too.
Put
another way, if you're robbed by a guy with a club, there's a 25-per-cent chance
he's going to hurt you badly. If he has a knife there's a nine-per-cent chance;
a handgun, an eight-per-cent chance and his fist, a five-per-cent chance.
If he has a hunting gun there is virtually no chance you'll be hurt
badly, or at all.
But
instead of cleaning our streets of baseball bats, hidden knives and smuggled
handguns (or better yet, of the criminals who use them), the Liberals are
pouring $12 million a month, or more, into their registry of the least dangerous
guns in the country. And you won't be one jot safer for it.