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Old 08-10-2018, 10:30 AM
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Default Crime Guns & Goodale's Misdirection

My commentary is referring to the article linked & pasted below, the article does have some graphs and photos to check though. If the data does not exist, just what is Goodale and company quoting? Of course we all know they're making it up as a red herring to appeal to the uninformed masses, but sadly the masses gobble it up.

Quite alarming was the officer from the Canadian Firearms program's Sgt Marie Damian admitting that the program does not track the origin of crime guns. I'm surprised to see an article on firearms like this from the CBC, what with some actual logic in it and all.

More proof of Goodales team spin-doctoring their 'data' is the absurd graph that they provided with the curious claim that other people claim that crime guns come from 'overseas'. Their claim is the first I've ever heard of someone claiming that. Anyone with half a brain can put together the fact that we share the longest undefended border on the planet with the USA and that the USA is where most firearms available in the North American market are manufactured. Anyone looking at a map while taking note of where the majority of Canada's shootings occur might notice that they happen in the southernmost 'peninsula' of Canada that descends into the USA and is surrounded on three sides by our southern neighbor. They then add a chart adjacent that about break and enters to steal firearms and how those have been on the rise. Curiously, they don't seem to cover anything about how long those criminals committing the break & enters get incarcerated for though. "Lets blame the law-abiding break & enter victims using graphs & charts" said someone on Goodale's team. "Good idea!" said Ralph and his lying cronies.

The straw purchaser argument is quite daft; while I know it has happened, its got to be such a tiny percentage that its effectively irrelevant.



http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada...Vza?ocid=ientp


"It is a fact that the majority of gun-related crimes in our communities are committed with guns that are domestically-sourced," RCMP Inspector Chris McBryan told the Vancouver Sun two years ago.


Insp. McBryan was speaking as head of the Western Canada division of the National Weapons Enforcement Support Team (NWEST) of the Canadian Firearms Program (CFP).

But when CBC News contacted the CFP and asked for the data behind his categorical statement, the RCMP replied that no such data exists.

"Inspector McBryan's statement would have been based on information available to him at that time; however, this information would not have provided a complete, national picture of the sources of crime guns, as no such data exists," says a statement from the RCMP.

"Currently, there is no national repository for this type of information in Canada. The Canadian Firearms Program does not collect or track national statistics with regard to the origin of crime guns," said Sgt. Marie Damian.


Lots of speculation, few facts


Conservative Larry Maguire may have thought his status as a member of Parliament could get him better answers, so he put his question about the national origin of seized guns on the order paper.

He received a detailed accounting of seizures from 2015 to 2017 broken down by year, by province, by firearms class and by registration status. But to his main question about whether the guns were sourced in Canada or smuggled from the U.S., he got this reply: "The Canadian Firearms Information System does not collect the requested information."

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told a guns and gangs summit in Ottawa this year that more and more guns used in crimes in Canada were coming from within the country.


a close up of a piece of paper: This statistic is from figures compiled by the Provincial Weapons Enforcement Unit of the Ontario Provincial Police.© CBC This statistic is from figures compiled by the Provincial Weapons Enforcement Unit of the Ontario Provincial Police.
"With so many crime guns coming from legitimate domestic sources, we need effective firearm measures," he tweeted.

But at the same summit, Lynn Barr-Telford, director-general in charge of justice surveys at Statistics Canada, lamented the "gaps" in her department's data.

"We don't know the origin of firearms involved in gun crime in Canada," she said.


The need for better numbers


It's one of the few subjects on which gun owners and gun control advocates can agree: Canada needs better gun data.

"I remember working on training programs with the national weapons enforcement support team to actually communicate to police why it was important to trace firearms," said Wendy Cukier of the Coalition for Gun Control.

"You can imagine, police often are short-staffed and have limited resources. They're working on solving a murder investigation — focusing on tracing the source of the firearm may or may not be viewed as critical to prosecuting that particular crime.

"And so, typically, tracing firearms has not been a top priority of police agencies across the country."

Cukier said she believes there is convincing anecdotal evidence from police forces to support the idea that more crime guns are coming from within the country.

Former Mountie and gun-rights advocate Dennis Young disagrees with that conclusion — but he said he'd also like to see better tracking.

"Accurate statistics should be collected by the Canadian Firearms Centre, and they're not," he said. "And those statistics should be verified and reported by Statistics Canada, and they're not."


Breaking and entering


Goodale does appear to be able to point to one data set that could support his conclusions: the rise in break-and-enters targeting firearms.

Entering a home or business to steal a gun is a very serious offence that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison — and yet, it's happening more frequently, says Public Safety Canada.

Goodale made the point graphically during the guns and gangs summit in Ottawa this spring:


a screenshot of a cell phone: Public Safety Minster Ralph Goodale tweeted this graphic out after hosting the a summit on gun and gang violence in Ottawa in March.© Twitter Public Safety Minster Ralph Goodale tweeted this graphic out after hosting the a summit on gun and gang violence in Ottawa in March.
But a closer look at Statistics Canada figures raises questions about this argument.

"Between 2013 and 2016 ... break-ins for the purpose of stealing firearms went up by 56 per cent," Goodale wrote in an op-ed. That statement is supported by the statistics.

But that statement — like the graph that accompanies Goodale's tweet — fails to capture the fact that, last year, the number of break-ins involving the theft of firearms fell again, by more than 10 per cent, leaving it below the levels of the previous two years.

And statisticians have questioned Public Safety's repeated use of 2013 as a baseline for its year-over-year comparisons, given that 2013 saw the lowest rate of criminal homicides in a half-century, and the lowest rate of fatal shootings ever recorded by Statistics Canada.


'Firearm-related crime'


The problems with Canada's gun statistics don't end with the failure to compile a national database on gun traces. Even the definition of what constitutes a "crime gun" or a "firearm-related violent crime" is problematic.

Most Canadians might assume that a "crime gun" is a gun that has been used in a crime — to shoot, rob or threaten another person. They might assume that a "firearm-related violent crime" is a crime in which a gun has been used, or at least brandished.

Neither assumption is true. As one StatsCan report ( Firearms and Violent Crime in Canada, 2016 ) points out, "for an offence to be considered firearm-related, a firearm need only be present during the commission of the offence, not necessarily used."

Imagine a fist fight between two people in a home: the police are called and, after arresting the guilty parties, they notice a gun cabinet and remove a legally-owned rifle from the home. That fist fight will be recorded as a "firearm-related violent crime."


Found and abandoned


The RCMP's definition of a "crime gun" is also broader than the one used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the U.S. It covers not only guns used (or suspected of having been used) in crimes, but also guns that were illegally acquired or modified by having the barrel cut or the serial number altered, or guns that were "found" or "abandoned."

Most problematic are the categories of "found" guns and illegal acquisition. Say a lawful firearms owner dies, leaving behind a hunting rifle that his widow has no lawful authority to possess. She surrenders it to police; the gun probably isn't a threat to public safety, but it could still be listed as a "crime gun."



It just obscures the reality of what a crime gun is.

- Gun-rights advocate Dennis Young on the gaps in Canada's firearms statistics

Likewise, if a hunter buys a shotgun at a gun show when his license is expired, he's acquired that gun illegally; if it's subsequently seized by police, it becomes a "crime gun." The same designation likely awaits the rusty old rifle discovered in the attic above the barn, even though it may have been forgotten for decades.

Blending those types of firearms with semi-automatic handguns recovered at murder scenes seems likely to reduce the usefulness of the statistics, and of any conclusions gleaned from them.

Gun owners say the breadth of that "crime gun" category risks inflating the number of true crime guns originating in Canada.

"These aren't people that have done anything wrong other than run afoul of red tape that's invented by Ottawa," said Young. "It just obscures the reality of what a crime gun is."


Seized guns rarely have smoking barrels


Statistics compiled by the RCMP's Canadian Firearms Program on seizures of "crime guns" in Western Canada in 2014 suggest that few such weapons are linked to specific violent incidents.

Of 1,140 "crime guns" seized in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, NWT and Yukon that year, only 150 were recovered following specific violent offences, including "disturbance" and "uttering threats."

A far larger number were seized by police executing warrants, traffic stops or Mental Health Act interventions, or were listed as "abandoned/found."


CBSA displays guns and magazines it has seized.© Denis Dossmann/CBC CBSA displays guns and magazines it has seized.
And "crime guns" only make up a subset of the total number of guns seized by police in Canada.

The category of "seized" guns includes large numbers of firearms seized for what might be called administrative offences.

"Examples of such seizures include lapsed registration, improper storage, failure to renew a license and licenses revoked," said Sgt. Damian.

Some of those offences — particularly improper storage and license revocation — do have public safety implications. But those guns probably are still of less concern to the public than the semi-automatic handguns that are already in criminal hands.

It seems the one safe conclusion that can be drawn from Canada's available gun data is that we'd be better off if we had more of it.
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Last edited by CaberTosser; 08-10-2018 at 10:49 AM.
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Old 08-10-2018, 11:48 AM
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Good post, CT. We don't necessarily need more information, just better ways to categorize it. When all that info is lumped together as the article describes it makes it more ambiguous and easy to misinterpret. Sometimes that's intentional.
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Last edited by gunluvr; 08-10-2018 at 11:58 AM.
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Old 08-10-2018, 11:53 AM
32-40win 32-40win is offline
 
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Nice to see the CBC actually publishing this sort of stuff over the last while, nice for our side to actually get some space with some real representation of what the Libs have been doing, and we have been saying, since C71 was initiated. And in the meantime CTV gives Wendy all the time she wants. The Cdn media seems to be coming around to the notion of suspecting the Libs, more so than promoting the hype lately. Libs are doing what seems to be a great job of putting themselves out of office. Hopefully some of the blinders are coming off.
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