More good press for the Canadian gun registry...

[DoNotRefill]

http://www.canada.com/windsor/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=6ea25320-13d8-49d3-aacf-7175fc35fdae

"OTTAWA - Canada's $1-billion gun registry is being used by a U.S. project-management centre for senior corporate executives as a case study in incompetence and financial mismanagement.

Baseline, a New York-based management centre that conducts case studies on information technology for business leaders, has published an analysis of the gun registry entitled: Canada Firearms: Armed Robbery.

The U.S. study examines how the gun registry developed from a simple $119-million system to track firearm ownership into a large and complex electronic database with a billion-dollar price tag."

[billbuckhead]

1. They raised the capabilities of the system. No big story.

Sounds like Canada got a bargain with the additional capabilites to save lives. Those wily Canadians are so much more civilized than USA for keeping a closer watch on guns and the people who misuse them.

[HEyHEY]

2. I don't know

I think the registry is a joke.

[3trievers]

3. man

have you got that right!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Hoping4Change]

4. The bottomline is that the police use it and like it though I think

it was incredibly mismanaged, which unfortunately isn't a crime.


Public money should be spent wisely not like corporations that like to talk the talk but don't walk the walk.

[DoNotRefill]

5. and how many lives has it saved? Cite please?

eom

[-..__...]

6. Well....

<gun-grabber>

If it only saves one life, it's worth it.

</gun-grabber>

:eyes:

[Township75]

7. Even if it can't be shown to save one life...

it's still worth it...it's gun control :puke:

[iverglas]

8. actually, they boondoggled it

Would you be surprised to hear that the US govt had had a cost overrun on a project, by some multiple of what it was projected to cost? (Do I have to ask *again* about those toilet seats, or hammers, or whatever it was that the US military paid so handsomely for?)

There ya go. The Liberal govt has never been known for its prudence with public money.

What those executive guys need to be studying is the "sponsorship scandal". Advertising agencies with big-time Liberal Party connections being paid hefty commissions by the federal government, to do nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever, except funnel money to porkbarrel projects in Quebec, money that could have been paid directly to the projects without any third party intervention.

The unfortunate thing is that the scam was outed before it managed to reach its obvious logical conclusion: hefty chunks of the commissions being donated back to the Liberal Party in time for the next election.

It sure looks like something along that line was going on in the British Columbia Liberal Party. All those new Liberal Party members at $10 a pop, their membership fees having been paid out of ... hmm, was it drug money? Nobody's talking yet; the RCMP investigation is still in progress. Very neat laundering scheme, if so; buy a few thousand party memberships, and buy yourself control of the party. I wonder whether anybody in, oh, Colombia has thought of this one.

The Firearms Registry is indeed a case study in how to bungle a project.

Big hairy fucking deal.

If responsibility for the bungling can be determined and assigned, good. (I think the Auditor General is still looking at it.)

If anybody has come up with a good argument for throwing babies out with bathwater since last time this non-event, non-story was bruited around this board, I'm sure we'll be told.

It sure is nice to know that folks like DoNotRefill think so highly of Canadians and our government as to be so disappointed when they hear of wasteful govt spending, I must say.

And of course anybody trying to make a big hairy fucking deal out of the story knows exactly what company they're in. That would be the extreme right wing political party in Canada and all its fundie, anti-poor, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-minorities hangers on. Have a party, eh?

[JayS]

9. Thanks for explaining the sponsorship scandal. I was not sure...

...exactly what that was about but heard it mentioned quite often during the elections.

Just out of curiosity, given that Canadian citizens own a lot of guns per capita much like U.S. citizens do, what is your take on why people there don't seem all that big on shooting each other. For that matter, they don't seem all that big on stabbings and whacking each other with blunt objects.

We also jail about seven times more people per capita than y'all do...

[iverglas]

10. differences

First, your "seven times as many people per capita" -- I don't think that's accurate. In fact, we're in the upper ranks of imprisonment per capita among the western liberal democracies, I think.

Our prison system doesn't distinguish among types of crimes -- all crimes are federal, under the Criminal Code, which is federal legislation. (There are also provincial quasi-criminal statutes, like the Highway Traffic Code, which provide for imprisonment.) The distinction between federal "penitentiaries" and provincial "prisons", or reformatories, is based purely on length of sentence: 2 years or more, federal; under 2 years, provincial. This is why the sentence of "2 years less a day" is common, since it puts offenders in the provincial system, which is regarded as offering better chances of rehabilitation etc., if only by keeping them out of the way of the biker gang types in penitentiaries.

I don't know how accurate this chart is, but ...
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pri_cap
Rates per 1000 people:

1. Russia 6.39
2. United States 6.19
3. Belarus 5.77

9. South Africa 3.86
10. Thailand 3.47

17. Chile 2.10
18. Czech Republic 2.10

25. Hungary 1.54
26. New Zealand 1.49
27. Mexico 1.47
34. Colombia 1.23

37. Spain 1.12
38. Australia 1.10
39. Canada 1.08
40. United Kingdom 1.08
41. Saudi Arabia 0.97
42. Germany 0.96
43. Italy 0.93
44. France 0.85
45. Switzerland 0.78
46. Ireland 0.75
47. Netherlands 0.72

52. Denmark 0.62
53. Venezuela 0.61
54. Slovenia 0.59
55. Finland 0.58
56. Japan 0.48

-- just using some interesting comparables from the list. And according to that one, you're close to correct: the US rate is almost 6 times the Canadian rate. I actually hadn't thought that the disparity was quite that large.

The top four in my abridged version are also countries in which there is remarkable income disparity -- there is a comparatively large gap between rich and poor. Income disparity in the US is remarkably greater than in any comparable nation: the UK and Canada are higher on the scale than the Scandinavian countries and Japan, say, but still well below the US. (The CIA factbook country listings show the "GINI index", which is a measurement of income disparity: the higher the index, the greater the disparity.) And the gap in the US has been growing for quite a few years.

The greater the income disparity, the greater the level of violence can be expected, there is evidence to suggest. There is at least an obvious correlation between violence and income disparity.

Canada does not have the stratified society that is found in the US -- actually physically stratified by income, for instance, in terms of geographic mixing. We have much greater diversity and more mixed-income neighbourhoods in our large cities, for instance. The same is true for ethnicity, generally speaking. The large cities do have some areas where there is a concentration of alienated and disadvantaged groups -- Aboriginal people in the West, black immigrants (e.g. Somalis) and children/grandchildren of immigrants (e.g. Jamaicans) in Toronto -- but the phenomenon just is not as intense and widespread as in the US.

Another big difference is the firearms themselves, and the reasons for which they are owned. Ordinary Canadians do not own handguns, and do not own firearms for "self-defence". The 1/4 or so of households that own firearms legally, own them mainly for hunting/rural purposes, so they are conventional long arms and they are not widespread in cities.

This was the situation in the US 50 years ago. The proportion of firearms owners who own handguns has risen in that time, as has the proportion of firearms owners who own firearms for "self-defence" or other non-subsistence/sporting reasons.

In this big long thread, I posted some facts I'd ferreted out on that point:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=51439&mesg_id=51439

This seems to be the original document: http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/online/guns01.pdf

Table 6. The Ownership of Guns (Continued)
B. Trends in Gun Ownership - Type of Firearm

% of Adults in Households with Handguns
1973 20.3
2001 21.7

% of Adults in Households with Longguns
1973 42.1%
2001 29.1

Trends in Gun Ownership

The proportion of households with a firearm has been in slow decline over the last quarter century (Table 6). In the early 1970s about 50% of adults lived in households that kept a firearm. This now has fallen about 34-35%. Similarly, the percent of adults living in a household with a gun fell from a high of 51% in 1977 to a low of 32-33% in 2000-2001. These declines are partly the result of a decrease in household size.

From 1980 until 1997 the proportion of adults personally owning a gun held steady at about 29%. However, since then even this level declined to about 22-24% of adults personally owning a gun.

There has also been a shift in the types of firearms that people own. As hunting has declined as a recreational pursuit (Smith, 1997), the proportion of adults in households with longguns has decreased from about 42% in the early 1970s to about 27-29% today. Partly compensating for this drop, the proportion of adults living in a household with a handgun rose from about 20% in the early 1970s to 24-25% in the mid-1990s. However, this number is also now be waning with only 21-22% reporting living in a household with a handgun in 2000-2001. Likewise, the proportion ever having bought a handgun increased from 21% in 1996 to 25% in 1997-98 and then fell to 20-21% in 1998/99 (Smith, 2000).

So ... comparing firearms ownership rates in Canada and the US is a bit of the apples and oranges (not that I'm saying this is what you were doing, since you weren't using the comparison to draw some unfounded conclusion).

The firearms are different, the purpose for which they are owned is different, the circumstances in which they are owned and used are different.

The rates at which we stab and whack one another are indeed lower than in the US, but by a much smaller factor than the rates at which we shoot one another. This comparison is slightly out of date (1998), but good for historical info: http://www.cfc-ccaf.gc.ca/en/research/other_docs/notes/canus/default.asp

It also points out that in fact Canadians do *not* own firearms at nearly the rate that USAmericans do (and I have to get around to re-watching Columbine to say whether Moore really does say we do, because if so he's way off).

Worth looking at the whole list, but here are some salient points:

The rate of crime involving firearms is much lower in Canada than in the United States.

There are more than 30 times more firearms in the United States than in Canada. <There are 9 times more people in the US than in Canada.> There are an estimated 7.4 million firearms in Canada, about 1.2 million of which are restricted firearms (mostly handguns). In the U.S., there are approximately 222 million firearms; 76 million of the firearms in circulation are handguns.

<my note: there are seven times more handguns per capita in the US than in Canada>

A much higher proportion of homicides in the United States involve firearms. For 1987-96, on average, 65% of homicides in the U.S. involved firearms, compared to 32% for Canada.

Firearm homicide rates are 8.1 times higher in the United States than in Canada. For 1987-96, the average firearm homicide rate was 5.7 per 100,000 in the U.S., compared to 0.7 per 100,000 for Canada.

Handgun homicide rates are 15.3 times higher in the United States than in Canada. For 1989-95, the average handgun homicide rate was 4.8 per 100,000 in the U.S., compared to 0.3 per 100,000 for Canada. Handguns were involved in more than half (52%) of the homicides in the U.S., compared to 14% in Canada.

Rates for non-firearm homicides are nearly 2 times higher in the United States than in Canada. For 1989-95, the average non-firearm homicide rate was 3.1 per 100,000 people in the U.S., compared to 1.6 per 100,000 for Canada.

Random thoughts ... but the biggie is: handguns. You have 'em, we don't.

[JayS]

11. Thanks for that information. I think further study of the differences...

...between the justice systems in both countries would be beneficial, as would a closer look at the extreme stratification of people in this country. This examination does not strike me as something politicians would be too excited to perform.

If I lived in Canada I doubt I would be all that concerned about self-defense as your criminals seem, by comparison, somewhat on the lame side, not that there is anything wrong with that. :) I would love to see a plot of the GPS coordinates of shootings of all types in Canada to see if the concentration is heaviest around the cities but fairly random within them. Here such a graph would produce some random dots on the map but extremely tight groupings within cities and covering a relatively small area. At least in the cities these areas are already easy to identify, just wait until 2:15AM (fifteen minutes after the bars close) and watch where the police helicopters are shining their spotlights and listen for where the sirens are the loudest.

[iverglas]

12. feast your eyes

Statistics Canada publishes annual analyses of crime overall, and separate analyses of homicide, violent offences, robbery, etc.

http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/031001/d031001a.htm

That's the 2003 issue of "The Daily" analyzing 2002 homicides.

The highlights include:

Homicide rate, 1961 to 2002 (graph and analysis)
Shootings as a percentage of all homicides, 1961 to 2002
Handguns account for two-thirds of firearm homicides
Drop in gang-related killings
Most homicides committed by an acquaintance or a family member
Most people involved in homicide have a previous criminal record
Homicide rates higher in the west
Homicides by province or territory (numbers, rates)
Homicides by census metropolitan area (numbers, rates, by population size)

You may have seen me mention one anomaly in particular that affects the year-to-year homicide rate comparison. A single person in British Columbia is apparently responsible for a large number of homicides over several years; this was only recently determined, and the bodies of women who had gone missing over a period of several years were all located within a two-year period (there may be more). Because homicides are counted in the year they are reported as homicides, statistics for 2002 and 2003 are skewed upward, and some earlier years downward. Small numbers can make a difference when aggregate numbers are low:

Police services reported 582 homicides in 2002, 29 more than in 2001. ... Part of the increase in 2002 is a result of 15 homicides that occurred in Port Coquitlam in previous years and that were reported by police in 2002. Homicide counts reflect the year in which police file the report.

If the US homicide rate were equivalent to Canada's, and if we knock out those 15 homicides, the US total in 2002 would have been roughly (9 x 567) 5,100.

If I lived in Canada I doubt I would be all that concerned about self-defense as your criminals seem, by comparison, somewhat on the lame side, not that there is anything wrong with that.

But in fact ... are we not often reminded here that most homicides are committed by people whom the victim knew, and most people who commit homicide had criminal records -- just like in Canada?

We've had our share of really bad criminals. During the cigarette-running operations of a dozen years ago, when high taxes provided an incentive for smuggling, small towns on the St. Lawrence River were being strafed with machine-gun fire. Literally. The biker gangs in Quebec, and to a lesser extent Ontario, were very much more hell than angel. A kid bystander was blown up in a car bomb, a minivan dad was shot in a case of mistaken identity, a journalist was shot but survived. It has taken some draconian and constitutionally questionable anti-gang legislation, and some major show trials, to make a dent in the situation.

Here's a random source of info, from York University in Toronto:
http://www.yorku.ca/nathanson/CurrentEvents/Oct_to_Dec_2002.htm#Gangs

On the west coast, and also in major cities in Ontario, in particular, like Toronto, "Asian gangs" are a growing problem. In prairie province cities, low-level but intense gang activity is a problem among Aboriginal youth. I live in the old "little Italy" of a largish city, and 20 years ago we still had street shootings here from time to time. There was one shooting - revenge-shooting - revenge-shooting cycle that made it to about 7 victims shortly after I moved here, as I recall.

We also have the abducted and murdered children. One of our big three wrongfully-convicted cases involved the killing of a little girl some years ago. That was Guy Paul Morin, exonerated by DNA evidence I believe; he, with Donald Marshall and David Milgaard, are the three big reinforcements for anti-death penalty sentiment in Canada. Hurricane Carter lives here now, too.
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-70-713-4228/disasters_tragedies/milgaard/clip10
There have been a couple of child-abduction-murder cases in Toronto fairly recently.

And the trial of one of the then-teenaged participants in the killing of an "unpopular" teenaged girl in British Columbia a few years ago has just resulted in its third mistrial.

I would love to see a plot of the GPS coordinates of shootings of all types in Canada to see if the concentration is heaviest around the cities but fairly random within them.

Actually, there are the two types, very distinct. The common or garden, family/friend/partner impulse shootings, and the hardcore criminal shootings, and the latter can often be tracked with some accuracy by geography.

In Toronto, it's Scarborough, lovingly known as Scarberia. As in Paris, it's the outlying "faubourgs" where ethnic/economic factors contribute to non-random crime and killings, in this case a former borough of Toronto, an area of strip malls and highrises.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1083276612957&call_pageid=971358637177&col=Columnist1050919322274
What the hell ... why not a prayer walk to solve the violence problem?

"Prayer works," she said earlier this week at Rhema Christian Ministries, a church that is planning to introduce regular prayer walks through some of Toronto's troubled areas.

Beginning tomorrow in Malvern, in northeast Scarborough, the church will launch a crime-fighting initiative that it's calling Community Patrol 24, although, admittedly, the around-the-clock part is a longer-term goal.

"We will be unleashing 600 prayer warriors," Pastor Orim Meikle said. "Our message is simple: prayer works. The church has been doing it for years, but we've been just doing it within four walls ... so we're seeking to bridge the spiritual void in our community, in a non-intrusive, non-disruptive fashion."

Participants plan to meet at noon at Malvern Town Centre, at 31 Tapscott Rd. From there, the praying walkers will break into groups and fan out through Malvern. The area's boundaries are roughly Sheppard Ave. E., Markham Rd., Finch Ave. E. and Morningside Ave. Future walks are planned for Jamestown in Etobicoke, the Chester Le area in Scarborough, Jane and Finch, and Regent Park.

The two last-mentioned areas are long-time problems, Jane & Finch one of the original desolate ex-urban blight areas, and Regent Park a really bad early low-income housing project idea in the central core of Toronto.

Other Toronto crime/police articles by that reporter:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Render&c=Page&cid=971358637177&ce=Columnist&colid=1050919322274

Nightclubs are way disproportionately the scene of shootings, and "after hours clubs" in particular, and unsolved shootings (19 so far in Toronto this year) in even more particular:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1088719827217

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1085695810305&call_pageid=971358637177&col=Columnist1050919322274
(keep in mind that Toronto has a population something vaguely like 5 million)

The year Moore was killed, 2002, nearly half the city's 60 homicides were caused by firearms. Then, as now, the majority involved some aspect of gangs, guns and drug activity.

But the slaying of Martin Colin Moore was different in several key respects, according to the crown.

It was not a dispute between rival gangs. It was not a drug deal gone bad. It was sparked, Crown Attorney Robin Flumerfelt told the jury, by a dispute over a $10 cover charge. Moreover, there were lots of witnesses willing to step forward - in contrast to many nightclub shootings where fear lets killers get away with murder, the prosecutor said in his final summation this week.

... Police who investigate homicides say they are dealing with a new breed of killer today. They're young, armed and can be set off over something as inconsequential as a perceived "dis" or being searched before entering a club. Disputes once settled with fists are now finalized with guns, with lethal consequences.

[JayS]

13. A few observations...

The criminal justice system there appears to work quite differently from ours. Our sentencing model rests more on the "time served" type of punishment and not on the "continuing danger to society" type. I'm not sure just yet how true this comparison is. I know our reasons for jailing someone are supposed to rest on the following justifications: retaliation, retribution, resocialization, rehabilitation, revenge. Anything dealing with reforming criminals has taken a backseat these last few decades.

Canada appears to act "swiftly and surely" in dealing with prohibition issues and the violence they create. Maybe this could be called a Nip It In The Bud approach, to borrow a legal term from The Andy Griffith Show. :)

Canada appears concerned with all homicides equally and not on the methods used to carry them out. Your total homicide rate is also so low that just a few square miles of the Houston MSA would easily outpace Canada in total homicides. As I am not a drinker and have no friends that turn into violent drunks after too many beers, the chances that I would be attacked in your country is too small to give much consideration to.

I'm not sure what kind of War On Drugs y'all have there, but it does not appear to be flourishing so I'll assume y'all don't have a war, perhaps just a skirmish.

Your homicide by gun rate is so low that I can't see why y'all even bothered trying a gun registry. That is an awful lot of money to spend on such a small problem, not that it is not a serious one.