The creation of lesser offences for would-be shooters is unlikely to have much effect on the body count bottom line. But, why let common sense be your guide, when there are so many willing to study such matters!
The panelists considered 51 published studies examining seven different kinds of laws, including bans on specific firearms, restrictions on who may own a firearm, and waiting periods for gun purchases. They “found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws.”
In other words, after more than half a century of local, state, and federal gun control legislation, we still don’t know whether these laws do what they’re supposed to do. The report’s most consistent finding was inconsistent findings: Sometimes gun control is associated with reduced violence, and sometimes it’s associated with increased violence.
The world is messy, and it can be difficult to control for all the relevant variables when you’re trying to determine the impact of a particular law. Not surprisingly, the CDC panel calls for more and better research, and it cautions that “insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness.”
But it’s scandalous that politicians have been legislating in the dark all these years, promising that the gun control solution du jour would save lives when there was no evidence to back up such claims. If gun control laws have any positive effect at all, it must be pretty modest to have escaped documentation so far.
Read it all. Via Glenn Reynolds who observes; “If a drug company were as cavalier about science as these people are, its executives would all be in jail.”.
To which I’ll add – if the news industry that reports these studies were as cavalier about … oh, nevermind.
Media, cavalier ??
How about outright biased. And misleading. And slanderous. And perhaps, liable.
Is it criminal to create panic by yelling ‘fire’ in a movie theatre ?? What about ‘the sky is falling’ ??
Perhaps the only thing saving the Leftstream Media from liable suits is knowing who the judges are in Canada and who appointed them.
The “gun control” laws enacted since the late 1980’s are, to this era, what the Jim Crow laws were to the post American civil war era. The object has always been to make gun owners, mainly white males, second class citizens, and to destroy any credibility they may have.
No thought, or common sense entered into the making of these laws, just knee jerk reactionism to placate a loudly vocal minority who were capable of swaying the emotions of the masses.
In Heidi Rathjen’s book, she describes how she and Wendy Cukier met with then Justice Minister Allan Rock, and demanded new gun laws. They claimed to speak for all women in Canada.
Rock was reluctant, and said he didn’t think it would do any good. Rathjen and Cukier threatened that if he didn’t, they would attack him in the media, and, like a typical politician afraid of losing votes, he relented.
We need another study, this time to determine how many friends of government have benefitted financially from the new gun laws, and how big is the bureaucracy that oversees them.
long gun control was in response to the outrage over Marc Lepine’s madness.
no such response to the Mayerthorpe mountie killer. that was the direct affect of poor Judge-ment.
the latest fad is ….global warming, oops, er, climate change…or whatever it’s called, oh yeah… weather. and the media never gets that right either.
How many young people have been killed by guns in Wendy’s Toronto. Where is the outrage in the media, as more cdns have been killed in Toronto than Mexico. Do all those toronto victims get the media coverage, numerous autopsies, grieving parents, high priced lawyers etc. No, and I don’t see parents of those dead ont kids demanding the foreign affairs dept to issue a travel warning not to visit Toronto, because you could get killed.
~~ ALERT ~~
David Suzuki is doing a series of interviews on The Weather Network. http://www.theweathernetwork.com/twn/releases/20070112.htm
The big news here is, Chris Sinclair invites our feed-back.
E-mail: dlangton@pelmorex.com (the boss at TWN)
and
E-mail: jsmallbridge@davidsuzuki.org (some person)
Now, back to the ‘punish law-abiders and reward the criminals liberal way’ topic.
every room in my house has a weapon, in some it is a length of re-bar one end of whch I used my bench grinder to file to a point. In others it is kitchen knives and upstairs we have things to crush those who would rush the stairs. We’re good.
Why have the MSM/feminists worked so hard, so long, to cover-up Gharbi’s true identity: the son of a Muslim? …-
Gamil Rodrigue Gharbi, aka Marc Lepine.
26 Oct 1964 Gamil Rodrigue Gharbi born to Algerian [Muslim] Liess Gharbi and former nun Monique Lepine.
1999 The Toronto Star reports that Lepine’s original name was Gharbi, a fact which had somehow escaped the attention of the Canadian public to this point. …-
No news
a good comprehensive study of gun laws is
GUNS AND PUBLIC HEALTH: EPIDEMIC OF
VIOLENCE OR PANDEMIC OF PROPAGANDA?
at
http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html
the CDC study was commissioned by the Clinton Administration and staffed by anti gunners, among other things is dramatically understates the effect of guns for self defense
I believe this “Gamil Rodrigue Gharbi, aka Marc Lepine” has been mentioned here and in MSM, and “almost” totally ignored.
I don’t like it either.
It is almost as an afterthought when this is mentioned. I think the entire tilt of media coverage in this event changes when the article in question starts with, “Gamil Rodrigue Gharbi, aka Marc Lepine bla bla..” I’m sure there are many who wished he had changed his name to “Mark Lepine”.
If it had been reported, “A moslem shot and killed 14 defenseless women in Montreal today after ordering the meek men in the room leave…”
not that anything that factual would ever be printed.
a moslem killing 14 people, choosen by him to die, in the name of hate? is this an act of terror? what is the qualifing standard for “an act of terror”
The next time someone in the MSM suggests that Canada has not had an act of terror commited against it, should he be corrected?
“Gun control” legislation as it is practised today has not produced one single statute which applies to established criminal activity. Of the 700 plus pages of Canadian firearms law and respective regulations and administrative guidlines I have read….not one line is devoted to the criminal use of a fire arms.
I was illegal with criminal code penalty to point a gun at anyone, or endanger ayone with a weapon or rob, assaut, murder and commit breach of the peace with a gun long before so-called “gun control” was a twinkle in a bureaucrat’s eye.
What the gun law statutes/regulations/administrative directions ARE dedicated to is creating criminal and pseudo-criminal acts of minor regulatory breeches by those responsible civilians who are legally complying with the gun control systems.
Murder, armed assault attempted murder, rape, armed robbery, armed threats, and all the other legitimate criminal law censures in the criminal code are neither touched nor enhanced By the Canadian civilian firearms control acts.
For instance; it is now a federal criminal charge for a duck hunter to allow his gun licence expire without renewal….or for a deer hunter to have a magazine not blocked to hold 5 rounds…or for target shooters to have 10 round pistol clips in IPSC competition….also “Long Guns are in the same registry sysem of control as Handguns yet the use of sporting rifles, shotguns and collectors antiques in commission of crimes is unheard of……now you can see how all this control on civilian arms will directly impact “Mustaffa” from the Jane Street projects who is taking his smuggled 33 round Glock 26 out to “bust a cap” on the “crack head bitch” who ratted him out on his 3rd drug possession sentence.
However an armed robber who kills in the commission of his crime recieves no extra charge from the firearms act if he uses a knife or other weapon and no extra time for his act..If he does use a gun he may be charged for not having a licence and registration but this misdomenor is always plea bargained away…..in all the criminal cases I have seen go to trial involving violent armed crimes I have yet to see a firearms act charge add a day to the sentance of a perpetrator.
People have to learn to face reality and separate the concept of “gun control” (which only effects the law abiding) and “gun crime” which is largely the realm of confirmed criminal class culture.
The dyslexic justice of this is best displayed by exposing the rediculous misdirection of Government force and criminal liability….the injustice of looking to control criminal activity by punishing law abiding people with undue criminal liability.
You will not effect the rate of gang shootings in Toronto by making an Alberta rancher register his gopher gun and threatening him him with undue criminal liabilities for forgetting to renew.
There is no valid corelation between the legitimate ownership and use of sporting/utility firearms by responsible civilians and the crime rates…there is no rational way to link peaceful use and ownership to gun crime.
The people who make a living from computing odds from statistical data is the insurance industry….and here you will find the actuarials bear out the fact that common responsible ownership and use of civilian firearms is neither prone to crime,violence, public damage or accident. Home owner’s liability insurance premiums do not increase where there are insured firearms in the house. Firearms users can get liability insurance of 5 million dollars against loss due to mishandling their firearm for less than $10 a year….can you get liability insurance for your motorcycle or sport activity for this type of premium? It’s a matter of what the odds on a claim are and for an average firearms owner they are low enough to be covered by a $10 premium and for common household “accidents” a $1500 premium. Obviously you have more chance of being hurt in a household activity than hunting or sport shooting.
Of the dozens of friends, family and acquaintences I know who own fireams no one has been robbed for their guns, no one has gone on a rampage or threatened people, no mass killings or suicides..no drive by shootings or crack turf killings…pretty dull people all in all…except when it comes to putting very small holes in paper targets at long ranges 😉
Truth is, most of the “research” that gun control is based on was bought and paid for by a small number of liberal trust funds, such as the Pew Charitable Trust. You see their name on quite a few really bad papers.
Guess they had to spend the money somewhere…
These guys read 51 studies. I read about 100 (including the ones they read, incidentally), maybe six of which were actually acceptable science and four of which did not include comments not supported by the data. None of the six found a positive effect for gun control laws, or much of any effect one way or the other.
Truth is, most of the “research” that gun control is based on was bought and paid for by a small number of liberal trust funds, such as the Pew Charitable Trust. You see their name on quite a few really bad papers.
Guess they had to spend the money somewhere…
Heres some interesting facts for JESSIE JACKASSON the first gun control in the natio were made to keep the newly freed slaves from obtaning firearms and despite all the bluster the cities with the most strict gun control have the highest crime rate and since gun were banned in england their crime rate is far worse then ours