Ontario’s locked-door policy in schools doesn’t add up

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 14, 2013 at 10:28 AM - 0 Comments

Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Canada is not the United States.

It shouldn’t be necessary to make such an obvious observation. But with the premier of Canada’s largest province apparently overlooking this fact, it seems worth repeating.

In one of his final policy moves before retiring later this month, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty recently announced a “locked-door policy” for all 4,000 publicly funded elementary schools in the province; and a $10-million fund to pay for new security systems so school visitors can be “buzzed in.” This in response to the horrific shooting of 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last December.

“In the aftermath of that tragic event that unfolded in the U.S., I think there’s an important question that we need to ask ourselves: are we taking all reasonable steps to ensure the safety of our kids at school?” McGuinty said in making the announcement. Continue…

Guns, crime and stats in the U.S.

By David Newland - Tuesday, January 1, 2013 at 8:26 AM - 0 Comments

‘Going postal’—committing mass murder in a public place—seems to have become a horrifying symptom of our times. The latest example, the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, has left Americans divided as to how to proceed. Recent data on mass shootings compiled and released by Mother Jones shed some new light on the issues.

The data refer to gun homicides in the U.S., during the past three decades, committed at a single time, away from home, and involving four or more victims. What’s fascinating in these numbers, grim as they are, is that they are often merely the tip of the iceberg: the larger truth lies beneath the surface.

Number of mass shootings in the United States since 1982: 62.

That’s a startling number, to be sure. But what’s truly startling is that despite their dramatic nature, mass shootings together account for “only” 1,007 deaths over 30 years. To put that in perspective, more than 11,000 Americans were killed by guns in 2009. In Chicago alone in 2012, 500 people have been killed in homicides. In the week after Sandy Hook, 100 Americans were killed by guns.

U.S. mass shootings since 1982 in which the shooter, or shooters were men: 61.

Is anyone surprised that the majority of mass shooters were male? Probably not. But that only one of the killers was female must surely be cause for serious consideration. Gun ownership among women in the U.S. as of 2005 was roughly 13 per cent; for men it was 47 per cent. Perhaps more important though, is how likely women are to be victims of gun crime. Harvard Injury Control Research Centre puts it this way: more guns = more female violent deaths.

U.S. mass shootings since 1982 involving semiautomatic or assault weapons: 58.

All but four of 62 shootings included one or more semiautomatic handguns, or one or more assault weapons, or both. There’s a widespread belief that the Second Ammendment to the U.S. Constitution, commonly known as ‘the right to bear arms’, gives carte blanche to gun owners.

Perhaps not: the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 affirmed “The Second Amendment right is not a right to keep and carry any weapon in any manner and for any purpose.” Hence, a ban on semiautomatic and assault weapons might not be in violation of the Second Ammendment.

U.S. mass shootings since 1982 in which shooters used weapons obtained legally: 49.

This figure does not include the two semi-automatics Adam Lanza used in the Sandy Hook shootings. They’re considered to have been illegally obtained because Lanza apparently stole them from his mother—who obtained them legally, and taught him to use them. (An important fact not dealt with in the popular ‘I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother’ post by Liza Long.) In five of the 11 cases of illegally obtained guns in the Mother Jones data set, the weapons were stolen from family members.

Incidentally, in 2004, the makers of a Bushmaster assault rifle similar to the one Adam Lanza stole were sued for allowing their product to fall into the wrong hands after it was used in the Washington, D.C. shooting spree. Since then, the NRA lobbied for, and got Congress to pass a law that protects gun manufacturers from lawsuits seeking to hold them liable for gun crimes.

U.S. mass shootings since 1982 that ended as murder-suicides: 36.

This number may be even higher, because in seven instances, the shooters were ultimately killed by law enforcement officers in scenarios viewable as suicide by cop. For obvious reasons, a lot of attention is being paid to firearm homicides. But did you know firearm suicides are more common?

U.S. mass shootings since 1982 in which shooters had shown signs of mental illness: 40.

This should be the place where gun advocates, and gun control advocates can find common ground. Responsible gun dealers must want to eliminate those who are mentally ill and at risk for violence from their pool of potential customers. But that’s not always possible right now. A mere 12 states account for the vast majority of queries to the FBI database set up for the purpose. Nineteen states have submitted fewer than 100 records each to the FBI database.

One challenge in focusing on mental illness will be not stigmatizing mentally ill people. It’s been duly noted that most mentally ill people don’t commit violent crimes. But it’s also true, as one pundit put it, that “anyone who goes into a school with a semiautomatic and kills 20 children and six adults is, by definition, mentally ill”.

U.S. mass shootings that have occurred since 2006: 25.

Gun ownership is up, way up, in the U.S. since 1982, having outpaced population growth during the period reported by the survey. There are now nearly as many guns in the U.S. as people, which means there’s more than one for every adult American. At least 118 million of those are handguns, according to Mother Jones. And recent mass shootings have caused spikes in gun sales. As gun sales have gone up, so have mass shootings. Coincidence?

U.S. mass shootings since 1982 prevented or ended by armed bystanders: 0.

The NRA’s notion, that schools should be armed to prevent massacres like the one at Sandy Hook, is not borne out by the record. Mother Jones found that an armed bystander played a role in only one of the 62 mass shootings examined—by shooting the perpetrator after he had already fled the scene.

Politically, the issue of mass shootings is a highly visible, volatile one, for obvious reasons. No one wants another Sandy Hook, any more than anyone wanted another Aurora, another Virginia Tech, another Columbine. People keep “going postal,” and the horrifying results are plain to see.

But “going postal,” however common it appears, however visible its impact, remains relatively rare—mass shootings account for a tiny fraction of the deaths associated with guns in the United States today.

Put bluntly, mass shootings are not the problem. They are a symptom of the problem. The problem is as simple as the numbers; the solution is as complicated as the politics that surround it.

The long-gun registry’s value is only symbolic

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, September 10, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

KEVIN FRAYER/CP

One thing all the parties agree on is the vital importance of the long-gun registry. Whether it’s a costly and intrusive waste of time, as the Tories maintain, or an effective tool of law enforcement, as the Liberals insist, or both, as I gather is the NDP’s view, it’s widely seen as a critical, make-or-break issue.

And like most critical, make-or-break issues in politics, it’s of little actual importance to anyone. Whether the registry lives or dies will have no impact whatsoever on the vast majority of Canadians, and scarcely more on the minority that pay it close attention.

Take the cost, first. It is certainly true that the costs of setting up the registry were substantial, and outrageous. If the issue were whether it was worth spending $2 billion just to draw up a list, not of handguns or newly purchased rifles (both are subject to separate procedures), but of the rifles people already owned, I doubt there’d be many takers.

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Megapundit: The Royal Bananadian Mounted Police

By selley - Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 2:37 PM - 4 Comments

Must-reads: Ian Mulgrew on the Robert Dziekanski fiasco.

Canadian justice
Shameless cops, creepy hockey coaches and random urban gunfire. What a country.

The Vancouver Sun‘s Ian Mulgrew believes the RCMP may have blood on its hands in the death of 21-year-old motorcyclist Orion Hutchinson, who was struck and killed Saturday night by an off-duty RCMP officer who happened to be inebriated, and who happened to have been one of the four officers who so professionally dealt with Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport. Those officers “have had a horrible cloud over their heads and their careers” while the RCMP dithers over what to do with them, he argues, and it’s not tough to imagine that stress leading to “self-destructive judgements.” As for the RCMP’s refusal to name the officer, on grounds he hasn’t yet been charged in either Dziekanski’s or Hutchinson’s death, Mulgrew says he can’t believe they “have the audacity to pull a stunt like this.” It really is staggering, the third-world depths to which the RCMP is capable of sinking.

The Globe and Mail‘s Christie Blatchford and the Toronto Star‘s Rosie DiManno report on yesterday’s developments from the David Frost trial, where a 28-year-old woman testified as to the various acts of depravity Frost forced her and his players to perform. DiManno’s is a little more in-depth when it comes to the legalese, but you won’t want to read either piece with a full stomach. (Interestingly, we note the Star seems to have reversed course and is now only identifying the female witnesses by their first names, just like the Globe.)

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Megapundit: Let's talk about climate change in 2010

By selley - Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 1:29 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Vaughn Palmer on abortion in BC; Dan Gardner on the benefits of running out of oil; Jeffrey Simpson on the political future of climate change.

The politics of climate change
The New Democrats are at sea, the G8′s all talk, and the apocalypse is coming.

Jack Layton’s New Democrats are currently “advancing the cause of climate change by waging war on the Liberals at a time that party is winning kudos from much of Canada’s environment movement for its Green Shift plan,” the Toronto Star‘s Chantal Hébert writes. Not only that, she says, they’re pushing a cap-and-trade approach as if it’s a “mutually exclusive” idea from a carbon tax when it isn’t—something Jean Charest, Gordon Campbell, Dalton McGuinty and even Dion recognize—and complaining about carbon taxes disproportionately impacting Canada’s most vulnerable when the Green Shift promises to redirect revenue to exactly those groups. This, Hébert concludes, “is what passes for strategy for the federal NDP these days.”

The Globe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson offers environmental protestors at the G8 an avuncular pat on the head and suggests they run along home for milk and cookies. “No serious climate-change negotiations will get under way until George W. Bush leaves the White House,” he writes—perhaps “some time in mid-2009, … but no one will be surprised if that date slips into 2010″ while the new administration strategizes and compares notes with “key congressional leaders.” All this is good news for Canada, Simpson suggests. Since both the Conservative government and its predecessor have set emissions targets that they can’t, and won’t, achieve, “extra time will be needed for Canada to bring some credibility to its incoherent position.”

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