NOTE:
Dr Gary Mauser of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, was awarded the Sterling
Prize on October 17, 2001 for stimulating controversy with his work.
The week of November 19, 2001 , the Simon Fraser University campus
newspaper (SFU Week) published a brief version of the speech Professor Mauser
gave the night he was awarded the Sterling Prize.
Will gun control make us safe? Debunking the myths.
Gary A. Mauser
Sterling
prize winner, 2001
The treacherous
attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th opened our eyes. Canadians
now realize that we haven’t done much to fight violence. Worse: Our previous
efforts had been badly misdirected. It was not wise to freeze the RCMP budget
for a decade, slash CSIS, eliminate the Vancouver Port Police. And for what? To
create a massive bureaucracy to register the guns of ordinary Canadian citizens.
It’s not easy
telling the Emperor he has no clothes. Not many of my colleagues at SFU have
supported me during the past 15 years that I have pursued my research into gun
control. A few have though, and I cherish them.
When I started, I knew little
about guns. What I did know, I’d learned from television: guns were scary, and
gun owners were dangerous. I remember thinking that tighter gun laws would
probably help to reduce gun crime. The results of my research, first, made a
skeptic of me about the usefulness of gun control laws, and then, later,
convinced me that firearm ownership was a social ‘good.’ Here are some of
the facts that helped change my mind.
Myth #1: The
typical gun crime is a man using a gun to terrorize a woman.
The image in the media is that murderers are normal and
anyone could suddenly attack you. Consider the facts. Most (two-thirds) homicide
victims are male, and less than one-third (30%) of homicides involve a firearm.
In
1999, Statistics Canada asked about criminal records, and we discover that
murderers are not normal people. A typical homicide is committed by a drunk or
drugged criminal. About two-thirds of those accused of homicide have violent
criminal records. The majority also has a history of alcohol or drug abuse.
Almost 3/4 of the spousal murderers had a history of spousal abuse prior to the
killing. At the least, these statistics suggest that firearm registration
won’t be useful in stopping violent crime.
Myth #2:
Canadians do not use guns in self-protection.
I’ve
conducted three surveys of the public in Canada and my studies find that between
60,000 – 80,000 Canadians report using firearms annually to protect
themselves, their families or their property. Between 19,000 and 35,500 of these
cases involved defense against criminal violence; the rest (more than half)
involved defense against dangerous animals.
Self-defense
incidents are all but invisible to authorities. The participants have no motive
to report them to the police, and indeed every reason to keep them quiet.
Defensive gun use doesn’t mean Hollywood-style shoot-outs. Surprise: TV
doesn’t reflect real life. Research in the US shows that over 95% of the times
a gun is used in self-protection, the gun is not fired but merely displayed.
There is no victim.
My
three surveys had three different sponsors: the National Rifle Association, the
Canadian government, and the Langley Symposium. All three found roughly the same results. How could this be?
In judging the quality of a scientific research studies their methodology is
much more important than the sponsor.
Myth #3:
Canadian gun laws keep us safe.
Little
empirical support can be mustered for such a claim. American criminologists
widely admit that solid empirical research showing that any gun law has had a
significant effect on crime rates is lacking. Shocked? Many researchers are very
disappointed.
Handguns
have been registered for over 60 years in Canada, but handgun crime is
increasing. At the same time that homicides have been declining, handgun
homicides have increased from around 25% to over 50% of gun homicides. The
Solicitor General admitted in Parliament that handgun registration has never
been useful in solving a crime.
Canada has long had strict gun laws. Nevertheless, each new law is introduced as if there had never been any previous firearm legislation. A number of studies, including my own, have evaluated Canadian gun laws. These researchers vary considerably in their position on gun control. In finding no significant effect, my research is consistent with all other academic studies of Canadian firearm legislation. The only exceptions are unpublished governmental studies with flawed methodologies.
I have tried to
debunk some of the “urban myths” about firearms and gun laws. Many people
have warned us that, in fighting terrorism, we shouldn’t wage war on Islam,
but only on terrorists. Islam isn’t the problem, terrorists are. It is
particularly important to distinguish between the terrorist minority and the
majority of Muslims. Not only on the grounds of basic fairness, but also on
important strategic grounds. It is crucial to isolate the terrorists in order to
get help from the rest of Islam.
Unfortunately,
we have not been so thoughtful when fighting crime in Canada.
Rather than aiming at violent criminals, the federal government launched
a cultural war against traditional Canadians. Gun owners aren’t the problem,
criminals are. Canadians have owned firearms for centuries; and done so
responsibly. Firearm registration fails the test of good police strategy.
In order to stop violent criminals – society needs the support of gun
owners.
Firearm
registration may have won votes for Chretien in Toronto and Montreal, but it
alienated the rest of the country. Opponents include most provincial
governments, all territorial governments, and many aboriginal bands. At least
one-quarter of all gun owners have decided not to comply.
Canadian
taxpayers will not support open-ended government spending. Perhaps it would be
wiser to beef up border security, keep terrorists and violent criminals in jail,
instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on trying to register the
firearms that have been used for decades by ordinary hunters.
The new bill to
fight terrorism is déjà vu. The government is exploiting the current
tragedy to grab more power. Civil libertarians point out that the government
already has enough power to fight terrorism; there is no need for us to throw
away the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Conservatives add that the current laws
are un-enforced. If the government is afraid to deport those linked to
terrorism, or to keep violent criminals in jail, what’s the point of passing
more laws?
September 11th
frightened and confused us all. Nevertheless, it is important not to panic. We
shouldn’t surrender our cherished individual freedoms in a rush to buy safety.
We need to fight terrorism, but we also need to retain what we rightfully pride
ourselves about our Western Civilization: our individual liberties. The
terrorists will win if they can get us to abandon our liberties and our
freedoms.
There is a need to tell the Emperor he has no clothes. Thanks to Nora and Ted Sterling, SFU has a more supportive environment for dissenters than is found at many other universities. That is no small accomplishment.