GANGS TO BLAME, NOT U.S. GUNS

With Canada's murder rate rising 12 per cent last year and this
year's high-profile rash of gang murders (six shootings two weeks ago
in Toronto and a few in Vancouver recently), politicians are looking
for someone to blame. The bogeyman, as usual, is America: During his
dinner with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Prime Minister
Paul Martin claimed Canada's gun crime problem was being caused by
weapons smuggled in from down south.

But Martin doesn't have the facts to back up the claim. Despite the
$2-billion committed to the Liberals' gun registry, the government
does not even know the number of guns seized from criminals, let
alone where those guns came from. Nor does Martin's government have
any evidence that gun smuggling has recently gotten worse. (In
Toronto, which keeps some data on guns, Paul Culver, a senior Crown
Attorney, claims U.S. guns are a "small part" of his city's problem.)

Martin's larger mistake is that -- like most politicians in Canada --
he puts his faith in gun control as a means to fight crime, and
clearly believes the United States should too. But as Canada's
experience with its registry -- which hasn't solved any crimes --
shows, gun control isn't the answer. Getting law-abiding citizens to
disarm or register their weapons is easy. The hard part is taking
guns away from criminals. Toronto's and Vancouver's gangs have no
trouble getting the illegal drugs they sell. Since they are already
involved in a criminal trade, why should we expect that the law would
keep them from acquiring guns to defend their turf?

The experiences of the U.K. and Australia, two island nations whose
borders are much easier to control and monitor, should also give
Canadian gun controllers pause. The British government banned
handguns in 1997 but recently reported that gun crime in England and
Wales nearly doubled from 1998-99 to 2002-03.

Since 1996, serious violent crime has soared by 69 per cent: Robbery
is up by 45 per cent and murders up by 54 per cent. Before the law,
armed robberies had fallen by 50 per cent from 1993 to 1997, but as
soon as handguns were banned, the robbery rate shot back up, almost
back to 1993 levels. The crooks still had guns, but not their victims.

The immediate effect of Australia's 1996 gun-control regulations was
similar. Crime rates averaged 32 per cent higher in the six years
after the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than in 1995. The same
comparisons for armed robbery rates showed an increase of 74 per cent.

Outside of Canada and Europe, skepticism of gun-control laws'
effectiveness is widespread. It was the major reason why the recent
referendum to ban guns in Brazil was defeated by an almost two-to-one
vote. Despite progressively stricter gun-control laws in that
country, murder rates rose every year from 1992 to 2002. As in the
U.K., the regulations simply tilted the balance of power in favour of
criminals.

During the 1990s, just as Britain, Australia and Brazil were
regulating guns, the U.S. was going in the opposite direction.
Thirty-seven of the 50 states now have so-called "right-to-carry
laws," which let law-abiding adults carry concealed handguns once
they pass a criminal background check and pay a fee. Only half the
states require any training, usually around three to five hours'
worth. Yet the murder rate has fallen faster in these states than the
national average. Overall, the states in the U.S. with the fastest
growth rates in gun ownership during the 1990s have experienced the
biggest drops in violent crime.

It isn't guns that primarily drive violence crime, but drugs (and the
war fought against drugs). Few Canadians appreciate that over 70 per
cent of American murders take place in just 3.5 per cent of counties
- -- these being the inner-city areas where drug dealers are
concentrated. Drug gangs can't simply call up the police when another
gang encroaches on their turf, so they end up essentially setting up
their own armies.

It's foolish to blame the U.S. for the predictable actions of
profit-seeking gangsters: Just as U.S. gangs will always find some
way to smuggle drugs in from Latin America, Canadian gangs will find
a way to smuggle in weapons to defend their turf.

In other words, if you want to get rid of the murders, stop focusing
on the guns and get rid of the gangs.