This has been a very depressing conversation for me to listen to for the last half hour, as we've lost focus entirely on why we're here, which is public health and suicide prevention. We've gotten lost in the smaller percentage of criminality, guns and gangs. We may have failed in our opening statement to make it quite clear that the focus of your committee and of this legislation should be primarily on reducing the tragic suicide rate in Canada, which is one of the highest in the western world.
I'm grateful that you comment on Dr. Langmann, because a lot of people like to drag him out in support of their particular views or bias with respect to the relationships between guns and homicide. We're not going to talk about homicide, but I will mention that Dr. Langmann's article was published in a very obscure journal in 2012, when he was a resident. I believe clinically he's an outlier. Some of the evidence that he brought was subsequently addressed by the University of Montreal and found to be incorrect.
By contrast, there is a fabulous amount of direct, incontrovertible science in both The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association that talks about the association between guns and intimate partner violence, homicide, and suicide. There is no reconciliation; the science is very strong.