I am sorry if the member wants to get excited and just throw off a few items, but I stand behind the figures that I read.
The per capita violent crime with long arms was greater than handguns back in 1994-95. The rate per capita of long arm crime actually has decreased by 50% to the end of either 2001 or 2002. It might have been 2001 because of the delay. At the same time, and I am a chartered accountant so I look at numbers a lot, I saw that the violent crime rate per capita with regard to handguns was relatively flat over the same period of time.
My conclusion was that since we have had registration of handguns since 1934 and the incidence of long arm crime per capita was higher than handguns when the first bill on gun control came in, all of the work that has been done by hon. members in this place to educate the public and to require the licensing and registration of long arms in fact has been effective. It is reflected in the reduction of deaths and violent crime by long arms.
The member asked where I got the figure of 10,000 from. I will look for it and I will try to provide him with the information.
One member started talking about absolute numbers. In a growing population, crime by guns will go up simply because there are more people in the country over that period of time. If one continues to show the figures on a per capita basis, and knows the rate per capita at the beginning and knows what the per capita situation is now, one can project what the level of deaths from long arms would have been and it can be compared to what the actual occurrence is.
He asked where I got the figure 10,000 from. My recollection is it was probably closer to 18,000, but I did not have to go that high because even if it was almost 10,000, lives have been saved because of the gun control registry in Canada. It is shown simply by the actual versus the projected per capita crime rate. There it is.