The Relationship between Firearm Prevalence and Violent Crime
"In the past 12 years, several new studies found that increases in the prevalence of gun ownership are associated with increases in violent crime. Whether this association is attributable to gun prevalence causing more violent crime is unclear. If people are more likely to acquire guns when crime rates are rising or high, then the same pattern of evidence would be expected. An important limitation of all studies in this area is the lack of direct measures of the prevalence of gun ownership.

...In this essay, we examine the empirical evidence on the relationship between firearm prevalence and violent crime, including homicide, domestic violence, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery. Most of the studies we examined used the proportion of suicides that were firearm suicides (FS/S) as a proxy for gun prevalence."

Tories introduce Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act

The Harper government has introduced a major overhaul to Canada's gun laws.

During a press conference at a shooting range in northern Ontario, on Wednesday, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney announced his government's intention to introduce the Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act.

The Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act would:

• Merge the Possession Only License (POL) and the Possession and Acquisition License (PAL);
• Restrict the ability of provincial Chief Firearms Officers to make arbitrary decisions;
• End paperwork around Authorizations to Transport by making them a condition of a license;
• Require mandatory firearms safety courses for first-time gun owners; and
• Strengthen firearms prohibitions for those who are convicted of domestic violence offences.

STUDY: Gun Violence Hospitalizations Cost Over $600 Million In 2010 Alone

Emergency room and inpatient procedures related to firearm injuries cost $629 million in 2010 alone, according to a new study by the Urban Institute. Since a large majority of these injuries afflicted poor males from low-income regions, U.S. taxpayers subsidized over half the costs of the treatments through public insurance programs.

Victims of gun violence are almost exclusively men aged 15 years and older, with American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprising 69 percent of firearm assault injuries. Women constituted just nine percent of gun injuries across all ages.

Researchers found that the average emergency room visit for a gun injury ran $1,126, while an inpatient visit cost $23,497 — $14,000 more than the average cost of all inpatient stays in 2010.

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Here in Canada, we have our own gun madness

We don’t need to wait for a massacre of 20 elementary-school children in Canada to decry the scourge of guns. One dead nine-year-old is enough.

Kesean Williams, a Grade 4 student, of Brampton, just northwest of Toronto, was in his own home at night when he was shot, possibly through a window.

We have our own gun madness here. Kesean is far from the first agonizingly young victim. The names of the others, thankfully, are few and far between – though perhaps not as far between as some might think. And in Toronto, a remarkably safe city that, paradoxically, has occasional wild shootouts in public places, the names of child and teenage shooting victims are remembered.

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This is a Globe editorial.  Tom

More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence?

America now has 300 million firearms, a barrage of NRA-backed gun laws—and record casualties from mass killers.

In the fierce debate that always follows the latest mass shooting, it's an argument you hear frequently from gun rights promoters: If only more people were armed, there would be a better chance of stopping these terrible events. This has plausibility problems—what are the odds that, say, a moviegoer with a pack of Twizzlers in one pocket and a Glock in the other would be mentally prepared, properly positioned, and skilled enough to take out a body-armored assailant in a smoke- and panic-filled theater? But whether you believe that would happen is ultimately a matter of theory and speculation. Instead, let's look at some facts gathered in a two-month investigation by Mother Jones. 

In the wake of the slaughters this summer at a Colorado movie theater and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 60 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun. Moreover, we found that the rate of mass shootings has increased in recent years—at a time when America has been flooded with millions of additional firearms and a barrage of new laws has made it easier than ever to carry them in public. And in recent rampages in which armed civilians attempted to intervene, they not only failed to stop the shooter but also were gravely wounded or killed.

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Gun Stores Can’t Get Guns Fast Enough To Keep Up With Demand From Anti-Obama Paranoia

Last year, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre made the odd claim that President Obama intentionally avoided gun regulation during his entire first term as part of a “massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” While LaPierre’s claim that Obama is simply waiting for a second term so that he can “get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms’ freedom” is more than a little implausible, it’s also proved to be a bonanza for the gun industry. Thanks to gun owners who share LaPierre’s paranoia, gun manufacturers literally cannot produce guns fast enough to keep up with demand:

Royal Oak-based Target Sports normally sells about 10 guns a day, but that has increased to 30 a day this year, owner Ray Jihad said.
He’d be selling even more, if he could get them.
“I don’t have any Rugers. There are a few models we sell a lot of, but I can’t even get them,” he said. Southport, Conn.-based Sturm, Ruger & Co. Inc., which makes rifles and handguns, has been so swamped with orders that it has stopped taking new requests until the end of May. . . .

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Harper bill to kill long-gun registry could come this week

OTTAWA — The Harper government is poised to introduce contentious legislation as early as Thursday to abolish the long-gun registry.

The legislation is bound to once again spark sharp political debate over whether the registry is a much-needed tool for police to keep Canadian communities safe, or whether it has become a costly intrusion into the lives of law-abiding gun-owners.

Moreover, the bill will likely illustrate the urban-rural divide in Canada, and possibly even cause divisions among members of the opposition party caucuses over which stance their party should take.

The government quietly signalled its intention on Tuesday evening by placing on the House of Commons notice paper a bill that Justice Minister Rob Nicholson will soon introduce.

The bill will amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act and also “make a consequential amendment” to another law, according to the notice paper.

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Harper probably wishes he could keep the registry and continue blaming the Liberals for it. He will lose a big issue in rural ridings. Tom

More Guns, Less Crime? - A Debate

The Case for Arming Yourself

Updated January 12, 2011, 11:39 PM

John R. Lott Jr. is the author of the recently revised third edition of “More Guns, Less Crime.”

One can only hope that Saturday’s horrible attack in Tucson encourages more citizens to carry concealed handguns. Fortunately, one shopper in the Walgreen’s near Representative Giffords’ event was Joseph Zamudio. When he heard the shots he ran toward them because his legally carried 9 mm semiautomatic offered him protection. Joe helped tackle the killer before more harm occurred. Too bad someone like him wasn’t even closer to the crime.

It Takes Laws to Control the Bad Guys

January 11, 2011

John J. Donohue 3rd is the C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith professor of law at Stanford University.

In an ideal world, stable, cautious law-abiding citizens would have access to guns and others would not. Ideally, we would like wise regulation and prudent personal decisions about carrying and using guns. Deciding on the elements of wise laws and consumer decisions ultimately requires extensive data analysis beyond any single episode, like the horrific killings in Tucson. But this tragedy does highlight some relevant issues.

More Guns Means More Guns

Updated January 12, 2011, 11:40 PM

James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University.

On Oct. 16, 1991, Suzanna Gratia Hupp helplessly watched her mother and father die as George Hennard Jr. methodically blasted away at a crowd of stunned customers in Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Tex. In the carnage, she had a clear shot at the assailant and reached for her purse to get her gun. But Hupp soon realized she didn’t have it with her, as state law prohibited citizens to carry guns concealed inside pocketbooks or clothing. As a survivor, she became a forceful advocate for concealed-weapons laws.

A Chance to Fight Back

Updated January 12, 2011, 11:41 PM

David Kopel is the research director of the Independence Institute and an adjunct professor of law at the University of Denver. He is the co-author of “Gun Control and Gun Rights.”

When President William McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, he was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt. The new president promptly started carrying a semiautomatic Fabrique Nationale pistol for protection at public events, and keeping it on his bedside table at night. “I should have a chance of shooting the assassin before he could shoot me, if he were near me,” Roosevelt explained (in "Roosevelt As We Knew Him," by Frederick Wood) When Roosevelt visited Harvard University, the school’s president, Charles W. Eliot, was chagrined to discover Roosevelt strapping on a holster in his room, ignoring the Massachusetts law restricting concealed handguns.

The 'Right to Carry' Fallacy

January 11, 2011

Daniel Webster is a professor and the co-director at the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

When mass shootings occur, many think that, if only one of the citizens at the site had access to a firearm, they could have taken the gunman out and saved lives. That’s an odd argument to make in a state where probably more people carry guns than in any other state.

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Crimbrary is surprised that the New York Times would still give John Lott space in their paper. Crimbrary is surprised that Crimbrary gave John Lott space in Crimbrary. More on John Lott here. Tom

Firearm murders down in Canada: StatsCan

OTTAWA — The number of murders committed using firearms in Canada has dropped considerably for the first time since 2002, new figures suggest.

The latest homicide study released Tuesday by Statistics Canada shows there were 179 firearm murders in 2009, 21 fewer than in the previous year.

This marks a 12% decline, “reversing an upward trend recorded between 2002 and 2008,” according to the agency.

Of the 253 firearms used to commit murder between 2005 and 2009, 69% were found not to be registered with the Canadian Firearms Registry, while 31% were.

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