Canada, United States and Gun Violence: Global Edmonton Questions If Gun Laws Explain the Difference

Global Edmonton offers an excellent article probing the role gun control laws have on the different levels of gun-related violence in Canada and the United States.  In short, "guns laws are not necessarily the cause," at least according to Ottawa defense attorney Solomon Friedman.

From the article:

Friedman, who has expertise in gun laws, said he “runs a comprehensive criminal defence practice, and I represent people charged in gang shootings, where these individuals never would have qualified for a firearms licence in the first place. Bad people want to do bad things; they find a way to do them.”

According to Statistics Canada, this country had a firearms homicide rate of 0.5 per 100,000 in 2011. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the rate in the U.S. in 2010 – the most recent data available – was 3.6, or more than seven times the most recent rate in Canada. 

Friedman said each U.S. state has varying degrees of gun control but, in general, laws are looser in the U.S. in terms of what kinds of weapons people can have. And while Friedman did not dispute that the U.S. has a bigger problem with gun violence than other western countries, including Canada, he said gun laws are not necessarily the cause.

“We’ve been looking for a long time for a correlation between civilian gun ownership and gun crime . . . and it’s my understanding that the research has not borne out that type of correlation, that the correlation is with socioeconomic factors, with poverty, with mental health.”