Gun Control

[syn]

To claim poverty is at fault here would be offensive to poor people who do not commit crime, wouldn't it? Saracasm aside, it's not just about being poor and its not just about being black, but a big part of gang/ghetto culture is also about being young, urban and black and opting out of mainstream culture/values. To evacuate race out this equation would be incredibly disingenous, and to suggest that we are unable to discuss race in this issue without automatically being racist is simply ridiculous and borders on censorship.

Race has nothing to do with ones propensity for criminal behaviour. A few people have accused me of providing faulty arguments (while ignoring the numerous flaws in ABs arguments). I have yet to see one legitimate piece of evidence, however, linking race and crime. No one has provided any legitimate evidence to support the idea that racially-targeted crime prevention works either.

AB's idea will simply make things worse. Targeting people because of their race will only increase tension, resentment, suspicion and fear in the community. Rather than actually addressing the problem, you're targeting a large group of people who are actually law abiding citizens that contribute to society.

Such an approach would be a huge step back. I can't believe that in 2008 someone would actually suggest it, especially considering all we now know.

The root issues need to be addressed. The money spent on longer jail terms (not that I'm necessarily against longer sentences) would be better spent fighting poverty, improving living conditions and reducing dropout rates. Police need to have a greater presence, but not as instruments of intimidation. They need to partner with the community. The end users of firearms can't just be targeted; there must be a concerted effort to eliminate the people supplying these weapons too.

There will always be lousy parents and thugs with a sense of entitlement who'll fall through the cracks. However, addressing the root causes of criminal behaviour is a lot more cost effective and sensible method than racial profiling, alienating entire communities and then paying huge sums to incarcerate people once they engage in criminal acts.

 

[Hipster Duck]

I'm not convinced that gun control is the answer. Most killings in this country involve stabbings, but there isn't an outcry for knife control. Indeed, the weapon that most Canadian homicide victims die from can be bought easily at just about any army surplus store. A student was just stabbed at CW Jeffery's this past week, but it didn't ignite a furor over knives the way that Jordan Manners' death put gun control on the agenda.

Also, consider that there are countries such as Switzerland where every household that has a male over the age of 18 has an M-16 assault rifle locked up somewhere in the home with a round of ammunition. Does Switzerland have an inordinately high homicide rate, particularly due to deaths accrued from stolen assault rifles? It does not.

The US suffers from an inordinately high homicide rate due to a culture of violence, fear, racial segregation and wealth stratification. In Brazil, where these exact factors are even more pronounced, the level of violent crime is similarly higher. Our homicide rate in Toronto is climbing, albeit slowly, because we are becoming exactly that: a city with a more pervasive culture of violence, fear, racial segregation and wealth stratification.

 

[Hydrogen]

The US suffers from an inordinately high homicide rate due to a culture of violence, fear, racial segregation and wealth stratification. In Brazil, where these exact factors are even more pronounced, the level of violent crime is similarly higher. Our homicide rate in Toronto is climbing, albeit slowly, because we are becoming exactly that: a city with a more pervasive culture of violence, fear, racial segregation and wealth stratification.

I wonder if there is more to it than what you have mentioned. Overall, human society has become generally less violent over time. It's worth exploring what has made that violent crime/murder rate drop over the duration.

 

[Whoaccio]

Two quick thoughts. One, getting rid of TCHC and social housing in general could have some positive effects. I'm not that familiar with the topic, but lets assume that the average TCHC tenant receives (say) 400$ a month in rent assistance of some sort. Instead of grouping these tenants into TCHC properties with essentially homogeneous income levels, just have the city provide a 400$ voucher (or equivalent value) to supplement rent on any unit they want. I see this as beneficial. A major problem, as Hipster Duck alluded to, isn't necessarily that black people, or poor people cause crime, its that groups that are segregated tend to commit crimes. If we allowed greater choice for low income Torontonians to choose where they live, instead of just confining them to "priority neighborhoods", that could help with some of the underlying issues. Low income tenants would benefit by moving to nicer neighborhoods, society would benefit by having less acute pockets of poverty.

(EDIT: Plus, Toronto is sitting on a small fortune of real estate in places like Regent Park and St. James town and its 300+ buildings. If we just sold off the properties, the city could benefit substantially. The windfall could be used to do any number of useful things.)

Two, voucher schools could also have a positive affect. I think it is quite well accepted that the quality of education one receives has a major bearing in job performance and income levels. The current school system has some very clear problem schools (C.W. Jeffreys...), in large part caused by a lack of choice. Otherwise normal/average students get dragged down by their surroundings. If there was some kind of voucher system, it would be easier for qualified students to leave caustic schools to more hospitable ones. I understand there are issues with voucher schools, but Sweden has implemented them and now even the socialist party refuses to touch them, so maybe there is something actually worth looking into here.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Two quick thoughts. One, getting rid of TCHC and social housing in general could have some positive effects. I'm not that familiar with the topic, but lets assume that the average TCHC tenant receives (say) 400$ a month in rent assistance of some sort. Instead of grouping these tenants into TCHC properties with essentially homogeneous income levels, just have the city provide a 400$ voucher (or equivalent value) to supplement rent on any unit they want.

An interesting idea, for sure. Would it lead to rent gouging in Toronto, though? I'm know I'm sort of taking the angle of a conservative city councilor here - like the kind that believes that charging $150 a year for trash will lead to illegal dumping in ravines.

I wonder if there is more to it than what you have mentioned. Overall, human society has become generally less violent over time. It's worth exploring what has made that violent crime/murder rate drop over the duration.

Certainly context matters when you look at declining crime rates, overall. In the US, I would imagine the switch from crack cocaine to marijuana as the drug of choice in the inner city in the early 1990s certainly helped. Unlike crack, marijuana is easy to grow and distribute and comparatively much less addictive. Essentially, it significantly lessened the need for a sophisticated and organized criminal gang to traffic an illegal substance imported from overseas. Other factors, including enforcing quality of life crimes and increasing neighborhood gentrification probably helped, too.

One thing's clear and that's the usual culprits had virtually no effect on violent crime trends whatsoever. Video games, rap music and gun control are latent visual symbols to latch on to, but they are just symbols to wrap our reductionist minds around. Consider that the age of gangsta rap and graphic video games started in the early 1990s when violent crime rates were beginning to drop.

 

[kEiThZ]

We get it, you've already said over and over you think my University education in the US makes me an idiot. You remind me of Rudy Guiliani with his noun, verb and 9/11 routine.

If you wanna prove your Canadian bona fides....you might wanna choose non-US examples more often....just a thought....

 

[Admiral Beez]

If you wanna prove your Canadian bona fides....you might wanna choose non-US examples more often....just a thought....

I definitely find our dependence on US statistics and sources tiresome.

Beyond watching many of the same television shows, there are many differences between Canada and the USA. If you wanted, for whatever reason, to stick to the English speaking world for comparisions, I'd say Canada is much more like Britain or Australia.

I think we like to use US stats because they are much easier to find, which I suppose makes us lazy.

 

[Mot]

If you wanna prove your Canadian bona fides....you might wanna choose non-US examples more often....just a thought....

Does Canada have anyone close to the repetitive Rudy Guiliani? I can't think of one. Perhaps as an intellectual equivalent we have Stockwell Day and his Young Earth theory where dinosaurs should be called Jesus horses.

 

[Hydrogen]

Naw, the mythology of Guiliani crosses many borders. Not even Day can come close to matching that kind of folklore.

 

[kEiThZ]

PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
IDN: 091410123
DATE: 2009.05.21
PAGE: A12
BYLINE: JOHN IBBITSON
SECTION: Column
EDITION: Metro
DATELINE: Washington DC
WORDS: 657
WORD COUNT: 631

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AMERICA: GUN CONTROL The American ethos and the right to bear arms

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JOHN IBBITSON WASHINGTON Congress gave final approval yesterday to legislation that will limit abusive practices by credit-card companies. That bill contains an astonishing add-on.

It will permit people visiting national parks to carry loaded, concealed weapons.

The National Rifle Association and other elements of the gun lobby have been pushing for years for the right of gun owners to visit the Grand Canyon loaded for bear. Republicans and newly elected conservative "blue dog" Democrats, many of them from rural states, were happy to oblige, by adding the provision as a rider to the credit-card legislation.

President Barack Obama frowns on the guns-in-parks law, but considers it the price of getting his cherished credit-card reform through Congress. He'll sign the bill tomorrow.

Advocates for gun control, a weakening minority in Congress, are in despair.

"The NRA is basically taking over the House and the Senate," lamented Democratic congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy. "And if the NRA wins on each and every bill, the American people are the ones who are going to suffer the most." Nothing, perhaps, divides Canadians from Americans like our cousins' determination to preserve their Second Amendment right to bear arms - virtually any arms, anywhere, at any time.

Polls show Americans becoming steadily more conservative on gun-control issues. One example: In 1959, 60 per cent supported a ban on the possession of handguns by private citizens, according to Gallup.

In April, 2009, the number was down to 29 per cent, the lowest figure ever in support of a handgun ban.

Nonetheless, "the American public is supportive of sensible gun laws," argues Daniel Vice, a senior attorney at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Two-thirds of Americans, he points out, do not own guns.

"But certainly we see in the extremes of the gun lobby an argument that we need to be prepared to rise up against the government if we feel that they're being oppressive," he acknowledges. "Most Americans don't support that view, but certainly many in the gun lobby do." To understand America's attachment to guns, it helps to cast back to 1777 and the American Revolution. That summer, General (Gentleman Johnny) Burgoyne - he was generally accounted a better playwright than an officer - led a British army south from Canada with the intention of seizing Albany and control of the Hudson River, severing New England from the rest of the rebellious colonies.

As his troops trudged through upper New York State, they ignored the grim farmers watching them. What Burgoyne and his men didn't realize was that the farmers had their own guns, something virtually unheard of among the European peasantry.

Burgoyne marched into disaster, unaware that citizen militias were streaming toward his army from every direction. Those farmers turned out to be very good shots, and eventually they outnumbered the British forces better than three to one. At Saratoga, Burgoyne surrendered his army, and the republic was saved.

Linda Gordon, a historian at New York University, sees in the American attachment to the Second Amendment "the classic American individualism - a society formed where there never was an aristocracy, where there never was caste or hierarchy in the sense that there was in England, where the very origins of the nationalism in the United States were rebellious against that control and against the communitarian conditions that prevailed in European countries." That ethos prevails today, and finds expression in the defiant insistence on the right to bear arms.

But Prof. Gordon cautions that "we sometimes overestimate the long-term historicity" underlying contemporary debates.

Arguments over gun control may really be based, for example, on increasing resentment by white voters in rural regions toward cosmopolitan cities where support for gun-control laws is strong.

For Canadians, whose forebears embraced loyalty to the Crown over popular sovereignty, such debates are, at a certain level, incomprehensible.

But then we don't have revolution in our genes.

jibbitson@globeandmail.com

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

I'm not convinced that gun control is the answer. Most killings in this country involve stabbings, but there isn't an outcry for knife control. Indeed, the weapon that most Canadian homicide victims die from can be bought easily at just about any army surplus store. A student was just stabbed at CW Jeffery's this past week, but it didn't ignite a furor over knives the way that Jordan Manners' death put gun control on the agenda.

Save for Law Enforcement, hunters and First Nations who use choose to use guns to kill animals for survival, why do we need guns at all in this country? If most stabbings result in the most amount of killings in Canada, why add another weapon to cause more death and injury?

Two quick thoughts. One, getting rid of TCHC and social housing in general could have some positive effects. I'm not that familiar with the topic, but lets assume that the average TCHC tenant receives (say) 400$ a month in rent assistance of some sort. Instead of grouping these tenants into TCHC properties with essentially homogeneous income levels, just have the city provide a 400$ voucher (or equivalent value) to supplement rent on any unit they want. I see this as beneficial. A major problem, as Hipster Duck alluded to, isn't necessarily that black people, or poor people cause crime, its that groups that are segregated tend to commit crimes. If we allowed greater choice for low income Torontonians to choose where they live, instead of just confining them to "priority neighborhoods", that could help with some of the underlying issues. Low income tenants would benefit by moving to nicer neighborhoods, society would benefit by having less acute pockets of poverty.

(EDIT: Plus, Toronto is sitting on a small fortune of real estate in places like Regent Park and St. James town and its 300+ buildings. If we just sold off the properties, the city could benefit substantially. The windfall could be used to do any number of useful things.)

Two, voucher schools could also have a positive affect. I think it is quite well accepted that the quality of education one receives has a major bearing in job performance and income levels. The current school system has some very clear problem schools (C.W. Jeffreys...), in large part caused by a lack of choice. Otherwise normal/average students get dragged down by their surroundings. If there was some kind of voucher system, it would be easier for qualified students to leave caustic schools to more hospitable ones. I understand there are issues with voucher schools, but Sweden has implemented them and now even the socialist party refuses to touch them, so maybe there is something actually worth looking into here.

$400 would never begin to cover a fraction of rent in most market rentals let alone how do low income earners come up with first and last months rent, moving costs and do many of these folks even have a credit score that would get them into a market rent building? A substandard building in Scarborough east starts at $800 for two bedrooms.

I do agree strongly that low income earners and homes for assisted living should not be ghettoized to neighbourhoods like Regent Park, St. Jamestown, Jane/Finch etc. The smaller TCHC buildings going up now would ideally be spread throughout the city in all neighbourhoods.

 

[Long Island Mike]

Gun Control and a view on the US/Canada differences...

Keith: Good article from today's G&M-it seems to me that here in the US the NRA is taking a strong hold even with the Democrats in power.

I am very famaliar with US rep Carolyn McCarthy-she is from here on LI and she ran for Congress in the aftermath of a personal tragedy concerning guns:

Her husband and son were shot in the December 1993 LIRR Massacre - her husband died of his wounds and her son is permanantly paralyzed.

I am for common sense gun control-national license and registration similar to car ownership to close loopholes but the NRA crowd is paranoid to any restrictions like these because they think that the Government wants to take away the so-called "Right to Bear Arms".

That text includes the words "Well-Regulated" meaning common sense rules and regulations should apply to gun ownership.

I am also a realist and I feel that any effort to for example ban handguns would NOT work in the USA.

- Opinions and insight by Long Island Mike -

 

[Whoaccio]

$400 would never begin to cover a fraction of rent in most market rentals let alone how do low income earners come up with first and last months rent, moving costs and do many of these folks even have a credit score that would get them into a market rent building? A substandard building in Scarborough east starts at $800 for two bedrooms.

I just threw that number out. At the end of the day though, the approach I suggested and the current approach aren't very different. Its just moving from a producer subsidy to a consumer subsidy. I can't actually suggest what the optimal subsidy would be or currently is. Subsidizing the consumer directly would be more efficient in a number of ways, not least by giving the consumer the choice of where they want to live though.

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

I just threw that number out. At the end of the day though, the approach I suggested and the current approach aren't very different. Its just moving from a producer subsidy to a consumer subsidy. I can't actually suggest what the optimal subsidy would be or currently is. Subsidizing the consumer directly would be more efficient in a number of ways, not least by giving the consumer the choice of where they want to live though.

OK, I actually agree with you on this point then.

 

[Rational1]

keithz:

There is absolutely no reason why anyone, rural or urban, has any need for handguns.

AoD

How about competetive shooting? Thousands of responsible gun owners in Canada shoot in organized, highly regulated competitions run by sanctioning bodies like IPSC, ODPL, IDPA and so on.
How about for self defence in your home, I personally have 2 female friends, unrelated, who were victims of home invasion kidnappings.
When seconds count, the Police are only 9 minutes away.