Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to address the committee.
I'm a professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University. I am here as an individual criminologist to present facts, not myths; facts, not emotion.
In this presentation I will briefly show how claims made by the opponents of Bill C-391 are blatantly false or misleading. For more details, see my submission, which has already been distributed to members of this committee. It is also on the web at the Social Science Research Network, SSRN.
Suggestions that the long-gun registry is vital to police because authorities consult it 10,000 times a day or more are false. This claim confuses the long-gun registry with the Canadian Firearms Registry On-Line, the CFRO. The Honourable Peter Van Loan, then public safety minister, in November 2009 analyzed the police data and reported that 97% of the time when authorities check the CFRO, they want information about the owner, not the firearm. This concerns licensing, not registration.
Bill C-391 proposes no changes in licensing. The long-gun registry only includes information about the firearm. Contrary to some people who have testified here, it contains nothing about the location of that firearm, nor the owner.
The key question we have to look at is the effectiveness of the registry, not whether guns are dangerous. Focusing on guns is myopic. It ignores the problem of substitution. Murderers are opportunistic. This is particularly true for spousal murderers.
It is disingenuous to claim that the best approach to saving lives was to invent a new bureaucracy for $2 billion merely to track long guns, and then waste more millions every year to maintain the illusion that we are doing something when demonstrably we are not. There is no convincing evidence supporting the claim that the long-gun registry has had any effect on homicide, suicide, or domestic violence rates. On the other hand, screening and training firearms owners, which we have done since the 1970s, has been shown to be effective.
The long-gun registry was not introduced until 2001—not in 1995, as some have led you to believe. Since 2001, homicide rates have been essentially flat, even though homicide rates had been plummeting since the early 1990s. The long-gun registry has not saved any lives.
Few guns involved in violent crime have been stolen. Studies differ, but the numbers are as low as 1% and as high as 17%. This is not the bulk of guns used in crime. Almost all of the guns involved in criminal violence have been smuggled. Smuggling is a problem in Canada, Australia, and the U.K. That is the source of crime guns, not your citizens.
Suicide rates have slowly declined over two decades. Firearm suicides have declined as well, but suicides by hanging have soared. Some call this a success. In 1991, 3,500 people took their own life; in 2005, 3,700. The long-gun registry has not saved any lives.
Sixteen percent of suicides involve firearms. Almost half of suicides involve hanging. You wouldn't know this from some of the opponents' testimony. Hanging, carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning, and shooting all have nearly identical fatality rates. Eliminate one and the rest remain. But oh, we could have a $2 billion bureaucracy for each of those.
Some suggest that the costs of the long-gun registry are minimal, but $4 million a year is a gross underestimate. That would make a massive contribution to programs that are more effective: suicide prevention efforts, community clinics for abused spouses, treatment programs for those with addiction problems. It is disappointing that women's groups, even medical groups, ignore real problems to flog firearm fears.
No jurisdiction anywhere in the world can show that the introduction of new gun laws has been linked to a reduction in murder, suicide, or aggravated assault. See my Harvard paper, which I did with criminologist Don Kates, also available on the web at SSRN. Research by both the National Academy of Sciences and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta back up my claim.
It is difficult to understand why the chiefs of police support the long-gun registry. The CFRO has so many errors that relying upon it puts the lives of rank-and-file police members at risk. This is a classic database problem: garbage in, gospel out. The police should know better.
Millions of entries are incorrect or missing. Most striking, less than half of all long guns in Canada are in the registry. The long-gun registry does worse; it misdirects the police. People who have registered their firearms are less likely to be violent than Canadians who don't even own firearms. They should be. Gun owners have been screened by the police since 1979. We are told that 15% of the guns used in homicides are long guns. What is not said is that virtually none were registered. How does the gun registry help?
When I spoke at the Ontario Police College, one of the instructors told me privately that trusting the registry was a way to get good police officers killed. Consider the four RCMP rookies who were gunned down by James Roszko in Mayerthorpe, Alberta. His firearms were not in the registry. Trusting the registry lulled these young people into a sense of safety. The registry showed no guns present: so there must not be any. When they went to his home they were killed. Poor training contributed to the deaths of these rookies. Experienced front line police officers know that when attending to potentially violent situations, they must always assume a weapon could be present. The registry is no help.
Similarly, when enforcing court orders to confiscate firearms, the registry cannot be relied upon to identify firearms at a residence. The RCMP have testified in court they cannot trust the registry. The registry is no help.
Opponents to Bill C-391 argue that the long-gun registry is important because rifles and shotguns can be used in domestic homicide. This is a red herring. The problem is the murder of family members, not the means of killing. Almost all firearms used by abusive spouses to kill their wives are possessed illegally. They are not in the registry.
It has been illegal since 1992 for a person with a violent record to own a firearm. They are not even in the CFRO. There is no empirical support for the claim that the long-gun registry has reduced spousal murders. Knives are used in almost one-third of domestic homicide. Rifles and shotguns, much less often--18% or so. Why aren't opponents of Bill C-391 concerned about women being killed with other weapons?
Opponents of Bill C-391 claim that spousal murder with guns have fallen threefold since the law was passed, while spousal murders without guns have remained the same. This is false. Spousal murders with and without guns have been slowly declining since the mid-seventies. The long-gun registry, I repeat, was not started until 2001. See charts one and eight in my submission.
Bill C-391 does not change licensing or screening requirements. It only concerns the long-gun registry. Neither the long-gun registry nor licensing is typically useful to police in solving spousal homicides. In almost all cases the accused is immediately identified.
The focus on the long-gun registry is a red herring. It distracts attention from serious problems such as gang crimes. Gang-related homicides have been increasing since the early nineties. In 2008 about one in four homicides was gang-related. Almost all of these were committed with illegally possessed handguns. See my charts two and three in the submission.
In closing, I urge committee members to read my submission in full. They will find my claims to be fully substantiated. My citations are not newspaper clippings.
I support gun laws that are based on what has been shown to work, not those based on perceptions or fears. When a government program isn't working, it should be shut down rather than being permitted to drain funds for no good reason except employment.
Finally, I wish to thank the chair of the committee, as well as the committee members, for allowing me an opportunity to show how the claims of the opponents of Bill C-391 are blatantly false or misleading.
Thank you.