Tag Archives: Gun Registry

News

Toronto man who is suspected in mall shooting was under “house arrest”

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How ineffective is the justice system in Canada? Well the Conservatives are trying to lock it down, but things like “house arrest” are very popular with liberal elites.

Here’s what you can do in Canada while under “house arrest” for some other crime:

A 23-year-old man was supposed to be under house arrest when police say he opened fire this weekend inside a busy Toronto shopping mall, killing one and leading to injuries to seven others.

The suspect, Christopher Husbands, is now in custody after surrendering early Monday, police said.

[…]He faces one count of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder, according to police. Husbands appeared around 3:30 p.m. in a Toronto courtroom, where he was formally charged, CNN affiliate CTV reported.

[…]The detective described Husbands as a “charged individual (who) was on house arrest conditions, not to be outside his residence” when he was out with people — including Ahmed Hassan, the 24-year-old man police say he shot dead — on Saturday at the Eaton Centre mall in downtown Toronto.

In Canada, as in the UK (and here), criminals are apparently less at risk of being put in jail than law-abiding people who defend themselves.

Excerpt:

Chen owns the Lucky Moose Food Mart in Toronto. When a career thief ripped him off yet again in May 2009, he had had enough. Chen chased down the thug, tied him up with twine and stuffed him into the back of a van, then called police.

When police arrived, however, Chen was the one charged with numerous crimes including kidnapping, forcible confinement and having a concealed weapon. The last count was added because Chen keeps a box cutter in his back pocket for work. 

[…]The senate committee also heard from Joseph and Marilyn Singleton of Taber, Alberta.

When the couple returned home to their rural acreage after a dinner in May 2010, they found a suspected thief trying to flee after he and two others had allegedly broken into their house, trashed their home and stolen their belongings.

When the suspect tried to smash through their garage door with his getaway car, Joseph feared for his wife, who was standing on the other side of it, calling police. Joseph hit the 20-year-old in the head with the butt end of an axe to subdue him. The homeowner was charged with assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm, offences that carry up to 10 years in prison. The charges were later dropped.

The repeat offender, who was on bail after threatening another homeowner with a crowbar, was given house arrest.

“One of the hardest things I have ever had to do is answer questions from my young grandchildren, trying to explain why their grandfather was in trouble for protecting their grandmother,” Joseph told the committee.

Marilyn echoed his feelings. “At the time of our home invasion, I never would have dreamed that Joe would be charged for possibly saving my life. If he did not take action, it’s possible he would have had to explain to our children and grandchildren why he did not take action to protect their mother and grandmother.”

Defending themselves against the charges cost the couple $30,000, draining their retirement savings.

I guess that the jails in Canada are meant primarily for law-abiding people or legal gun owners. Criminals apparently go free, aka “house arrest”. That’s liberal jurisprudence – all very tolerant, you know. Let’s hope the Conservatives can fix the mess the Liberal Party made.

Commentary

Do gun registries solve crimes? Learning from the Canadian experience

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John Lott explains in the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

The D.C. Council will soon vote on a new law that would eliminate several obstacles for gun buyers — a five-hour training course, ballistics testing, a vision test, and a ban on certain types of ammunition. But they will leave unchanged the registration requirement for gun owners. D.C. could learn a lot from Canada’s decision to finally rescind its gun registry in February.

Beginning in 1998, Canadians spent a whopping $2.7 billion on creating and running a registry for long guns — in the U.S., the same amount per gun owner would come to $67 billion. For all that money, the registry was never credited with solving a single murder. Instead, it became an enormous waste of police officers’ time, diverting their efforts from traditional policing activities.

Gun control advocates have long claimed that registration is a safety issue. Their reasoning is straightforward: If a gun is left at a crime scene, and it was registered to the person who committed the crime, the registry will link it back to the criminal.

Unfortunately, it rarely works out this way. Criminals are seldom stupid enough to leave behind crime guns that are registered to themselves.

From 2003 to 2009, there were 4,257 homicides in Canada, 1,314 of which were committed with firearms. Data provided last fall by the Library of Parliament reveal that murder weapons were recovered in fewer than one-third of the homicides with firearms. About three-quarters of the identified weapons were unregistered. Of the weapons that were registered, about half were registered to someone other than the person accused of the homicide.

In only 62 cases — that is, nine per year, or about 1 percent of all homicides in Canada — was the gun registered to the accused. Even in these, the registry does not appear to have played an important role in finding the killer. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Chiefs of Police have not yet provided a single example in which tracing was of more than peripheral importance in solving a case.

Note that the data provided above cover all guns, including handguns. It isn’t just the long-gun registry — there is also no evidence that Canada’s handgun registry, started in 1934, has ever been important in solving a single homicide.

In parts of the United States where registration is required, the results have been no different. Neither Hawaii, D.C., nor Chicago can point to any crimes that have been solved using registration records.

Nor is there any evidence that registration has reduced homicides. Research published last year by McMaster University professor Caillin Langmann in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence confirmed what other academic studies have found: “This study failed to demonstrate a beneficial association between legislation and firearm homicide rates between 1974 and 2008.” There is not a single refereed academic study by criminologists or economists that has found a significant benefit. A recent Angus Reid poll indicates that Canadians understand this, with only 13 percent believing that the registry has been successful.

The problem isn’t just that the $2.7 billion spent on registration over 17 years hasn’t solved any crimes. It is that the money could have been used to put more police on the street or pay for more health care or cut taxes.

We have been trying all kinds of things since Obama was elected that were already tried in other countries. Green energy, stimulus spending, green jobs programs, socialized medicine, printing money to pay off record deficits, and so on. We need to start learning from the experiences of other countries. If something hasn’t worked in another country, then we shouldn’t be trying it here. We should do what has been known to work. Gun registries don’t solve crimes.

News

Could Obama have done better? He could learn from Canada’s success

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Here’s an editorial from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Away from the low growth and high regulation of an America under Washington’s thumb, our northern neighbor is economically strong. As 2011 ends, Canada has announced yet another tax cut — and will soar even more.

The Obama administration and its economic czars have flailed about for years, baffled about how to get the U.S. economy growing.

In reality, the president need look no further than our neighbor, Canada, whose solid growth is the product of tax cuts, fiscal discipline, free trade, and energy development. That’s made Canada a roaring puma nation, while its supposedly more powerful southern neighbor stands on the outside looking in.

On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that he will slash corporate taxes again on Jan. 1 in the final stage of his Economic Action Plan, dropping the federal business tax burden to just 15%.

Along with fresh tax cuts in provinces such as Alberta, total taxes for businesses in Canada will drop to 25%, one of the lowest in the G7, and below the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development average.

“Creating jobs and growth is our top priority,” said Minister Jim Flaherty. “Through our government low-tax plan … we are continuing to send the message that Canada is open for business and the best place to invest.”

It’s not just that Canada’s conservative government favors makers over takers. Harper’s also wildly popular for shrinking government. “The Harper government has pursued a strategic objective to disembed the federal state from the lives of citizens,” wrote University of Calgary Professor Barry Cooper, in the Calgary Herald.

Harper also has made signing free trade treaties his priority. Canada now has 11 free trade pacts in force, and 14 under active negotiation — including pacts with the European Union and India, among others.

“We believe in free trade in Canada, we’re a free-trading nation. That’s the source of our strength, our quality of life, our economic strength,” Flaherty said last month.

Lastly, Canada has pursued its competitive advantage — oil. And it did so not through top-down “industrial policy,” but by getting government out of the way.

Harper has enacted market-friendly regulations to accomplish big things like the Keystone Pipeline — and urged President Obama to move forward on it or else Canada would sell its oil to China.

These policies have been well-known since the Reagan era. But in a country that’s been institutionally socialist since the 1950s, Harper’s moves represent a dramatic affirmation for free market economics.

For Canada, they’ve had big benefits.

Canada’s incomes are rising, its unemployment is two percentage points below the U.S. rate, its currency is strengthening and it boasts Triple-A or equivalent sovereign ratings across the board from the five top international ratings agencies, lowering its cost of credit.

Is it too much to ask Washington to start paying attention to the Canadian success story?

These sound principles work every time they are tried, and they have led to a transformation in Canada.

Although this article doesn’t mention it, Stephen Harper is also the most solid statesman on foreign policy issues as well.

And here’s a view from up north from Canadian journalist Brian Lilley.

Excerpt:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has put out his own list of accomplishments for the year that just ended but here are a few of the key conservative minded actions that spring to mind for me.

  • Ending political welfare. The per-vote subsidy that made political parties lazy and unresponsive to the voters of this country and insulated them from angering their core supporters will be gone by 2015-2016. Legislation ending the subsidy has already passed but the parties are slowly being weaned off the money and will get smaller amounts each year until the subsidy is gone.
  • They saw the light of common sense and released the names of those on their wanted list of suspected foreign war criminals. These were people that officials admitted should not be in the country, had been ordered out but that were still in Canada. At first officials would only admit there was a list of suspected war criminals but not say who they were. After much pressure, common sense won the day.
  • Ending the insane rules that would see farmers from certain provinces jailed for daring to sell their wheat to the customer of their choice. The Canadian Wheat Board still exists for those that want to use its centralized system. For those that want freedom, they now have that choice.
  • While much attention has been paid to Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, the government has passed C-2 (the mega-trials bill), this bill will make it easier to conduct the mega-trials now associated with organized crime without infringing on the right to a fair trial.
  • While the bill to end the gun registry has not been passed yet, it has been introduced and will pass early this year.
  • Immigration. On this file the Conservatives continue to push for ever higher numbers of newcomers while keeping those skeptical of high immigration onside by cracking down on fraud, cleaning up the system and putting Canada first.

Another thought for those, often myself included, that like to say this government is not conservative enough.

Lilley also notes that electing Harper presented a national day care program (which punishes families with stay-at-home), increasing unemployment benefits (which encourages people not to work), etc.