No Evidence That Canadian Gun Laws Affect Safety, Research Shows
17 Dec 2019
  
(Update Dec. 18: Adds that lead researcher disagreed with this article.)
TheGunBlog.ca  — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other activists hostile to  hunters, farmers and sport shooters never cite any evidence linking gun  laws to safety for a very simple reason: There isn’t any.
 Researchers  at Western University in Ontario couldn’t find a single scientific  report showing improved safety from Canada’s firearm laws after having  analyzed every study they could find between 2000 and 2018.
The lead author disagreed with this summary by TheGunBlog.ca.
The 
literature survey by Lorna Ferguson and Jacek Koziarski, Ph.D. students in Western’s 
sociology department, comes at a critical time.
They published it in October, less than two weeks before Trudeau was elected 
promising to criminalize hundreds of thousands of honest firearm owners unless they surrendered their gear.
	
	
	
		
		
		
		
	
	
Lorna Ferguson. Source: Western University
General Review
The  informal report analyzed studies into restrictions on gun ownership in  general, not only the types of mass prohibitions and confiscations  sought by Trudeau against lawful and legitimate firearm users.
‘Not One’
“Concerning  the impact of firearm legislation on crime rates, there is not one  independent, peer-reviewed, empirical study on Canadian firearm  legislation that demonstrated a significant decreasing effect on firearm  crime,” Ferguson and Koziarski said.
Contradictory Findings
“Notably,  certain information highlighted in this paper, such as an increase in  firearm-related violence, contradicts the suggestion that policy  restricting firearm ownership may be the answer to curtail  firearm-related harms,” the authors said in their paper. “This is  because many firearms used in these scenarios are already heavily  restricted and/or banned, but yet these incidents still occur,  nonetheless.”
Translation: The law already bans  Bad Guys from having guns, but it’s irrelevant because Bad Guys don’t  obey the law. So new laws won’t make any difference to personal or  public safety.
Update Dec. 18: “This entire blog is framed contrary to our research report,” Ferguson 
said  on Twitter in reply to TheGunBlog.ca. “We state very clearly that there  is no research on the matter, not that legislation doesn't effect  safety. Two sentences on this and an entire blog writing the opposite.  What a disservice.”
Ferguson didn’t respond to an e-mail from TheGunBlog.ca seeking clarification.
Guns Are More Canadian Than Hockey
Hunting and sport shooting are at the heart of Canadian culture, heritage and tradition.
- About 2.2 million men and women have a federal firearm licence, more than play golf or hockey.
 
- In  addition, millions more family and friends of all ages also hunt and  shoot safely and responsibly under the control of permit holders.
 
- Firearm ownership keeps rising to records year after year.
 
Broken Promises
Trudeau promised the biggest mass gun confiscations of almost any democracy in history in the Oct. 21 election.
The research findings mean he will need to break at least one campaign promise.
- If he keeps his commitment to “evidence-based policy,” he’ll need to scrap his plans to seize guns from hundreds of thousands of honest families.
 
- Or he could keep his evidence promise and drop his promise of unjustified confiscations.
 
Zero Evidence
Dennis Young, an independent advocate and researcher in Alberta, has also published many government memos and reports showing 
zero evidence for government claims and plans. Young is a former RCMP officer.
Ferguson is Director of Operations at the 
Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing. Koziarski is affiliated with the group.
Education Vs. Legislation
It’s  important to note that just because there isn’t any evidence of a link  between legislation and safety, it doesn’t prove that there isn’t a  link. (“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.”)
Some analysts speculate that education and training have improved safety much more than new laws.
New  owners, hunters and target-range members must all demonstrate basic  knowledge and proficiency. Clubs and ranges also refuse people unless  they demonstrate the shooting community’s values of safety,  responsibility and good citizenship.
‘Very Little Research’
Ferguson and Koziarski said that, before they wrote their research paper, they “were approached  by a Canadian firearms organization that asked us to voluntarily write a  report on all Canadian firearms literature to assist with informing  their future intervention/prevention strategies.”
They found “very little research.”
Only  34 papers during the 19 years under review passed their selection  criteria. The most of any single year was four publications. Three years  had zero.
Limited, Dated, Speculative
“Overall,  much more research is required on firearms in a Canadian context as  there are significant gaps in existing literature. Most of it is limited  in scope, dated, over-reaching, speculative and lacks concrete findings  backed by evidence,” Ferguson tweeted.
https://thegunblog.ca/2019/12/17/no-evidence-that-canadian-gun-laws-affect-safety-research-shows/