What do we ban next?

Re: Taking hand guns to task

A hand gun is no more designed to kill than the steak knife sitting in your utensil drawer.

The overall homicide rate in Canada as reported by Statistics Canada was 1.62 for every 100,000 population in 2010 (a 44 year low).

Of the 170 homicides committed with a firearm, a large portion of these were probably due to the 124 gang related homicides in the same year.

It is probably safe to assume most of these were committed with firearms that were obviously stolen, not registered and/or improperly transported.

Of overall homicide numbers, one should note that stabbings accounted for 31%, beatings 22%, strangulation another 8% and other means such as motor vehicles and poisoning for the remainder.

How do we fix this problem?  By banning hand guns?

Actually, let's ban all firearms. We should probably ban all swords while we are at it.

Archery equipment? Banned. Sling shots? Banned. Poison? Banned. Blunt objects? Banned. Cutlery? Banned.

Next we need to implement a multi-billion dollar tax-payer funded program to ensure that all Canadian citizens are in compliance.

We wouldn't want any crazies walking around with anything dangerous such as a rock or a pointy stick in their pocket.

There is virtually no empirical evidence to correlate hand gun ownership to homicide rates when viewed at a global level.

Jon David