Release Date: February 6, 2006

ANOTHER GUN CONTROL FAILURE:  CANADIAN GUN LAWS MOTIVATE CANADIAN GUN OWNERS TO VOTE OUT LIBERALS

Frustrated gun owners reacting to the Liberals' party’s gun registry boon doggle and Paul Martin’s proposed handgun ban helped the Conservatives win last Monday's election in Canada.  Preliminary polls indicate that gun control was a large factor in the result, particularly in Alberta and many parts of British Columbia. 
 
The Canadian people sent a strong message. The immediate effect from Monday's election is the death of the Martin proposed handgun ban, but the focus will now turn to the gun-registry fiasco, which has been mired in technical snafus, has cost Canadians billions of dollars, and hasn’t prevented a single crime.
 
Canada’s gun control scheme has not just failed, it has failed disastrously. Clear evidence of that can be found in a comparison of the crime rates for Canada and the U.S. Canada’s per capita crime rate is skyrocketing, while overall crime is declining in the U.S..
 
The situation is so bad that in the Jan. 3 edition of Canada’s National Post, writer David Frum startled readers by revealing that “Canada’s overall crime rate is now 50% higher than the crime rate in the United States.” He further noted, “Since the early 1990s, crime rates have dropped in 48 of the 50 states and 80% of American cities. Over that same period, crime rates have risen in six of the 10 Canadian provinces and in seven of Canada’s 10 biggest cities.” In 2003, the violent crime rate in the United States was 475 per 100,000 people, while up north, there were 963 violent crimes per 100,000  people. The figure for sexual assault in Canada per 100,000 people was more than double that of the United States, 74 as opposed to 32.1, and the assault rate in Canada was more than twice that of states, 746 to America's 295. In 2005, Toronto had 78 murders; that's a 28 percent increase in homicide since 1995. 
 
Moreover, this shift in per capita crime rates between the two countries has occurred while dozens of U.S. states have adopted "right-to-carry" and "shall-issue" handgun laws. During the same period, Canada's gun laws have gotten more restrictive, with the national gun registry being implemented.
 
Canadian Prime Minister Martin tried to blame the United States for Canada’s dramatic increase in violent crime. But the problem isn't Americans illegally running guns to Canada, its Canadian criminals illegally importing guns from wherever they can get them.  Canada's experience simply demonstrates that no matter what kind of gun control law a government passes, that law is doomed to failure because instead of keeping guns out of the wrong hands, it disarms the wrong people and eliminates a powerful deferent to crime.