Wow, Wow, Wow.....No Gun Zones, Gun Registration, Background Checks and now Micro-stamping again!

[spin]

78. Your link is dated 3/5/2000. Bill Clinton was POTUS at that time.

From page 1 of your link:

Gun Control Laws in Canada

Dateline: 3/5/2000

In his Jan. 27, 2000 State of the Union Address, President Clinton proposed a law requiring the licensing of all American handgun owners.

"Now, specifically, I propose a plan to ensure that all new handgun buyers must first have a photo license from their state showing they passed the Brady background check and a gun safety course, before they get the gun." -- President Clinton, 1/27/2000

The proposal was immediately opposed by American firearms owners, dealers, and manufacturers, as well as many members of the U.S. Congress.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa030500a.htm

More recent statistics published on: 2/23/2012 are on this page http://www.statisticbrain.com/national-rifle-association-nra-statistics/ state that in 2010 there were 300 million firearms in the U.S., 100 million of which are handguns.

Comparing crime statistics from nation to nation is a fools game but I will admit that I also often play that game in posts that I make.

Homicide rates
Murder most foul

Oct 6th 2011, 13:18 by The Economist online

A global picture of homicide rates

IT IS famously tricky to compare crime statistics across frontiers. Murder figures are the best of the bunch because the offense is usually reported. According to the first global study on homicide by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, most of the world’s 468,000 intentional homicides in 2010 were in Africa (36%) and the Americas (31%), where the murder rate was 15-16 per 100,000 people, more than twice the global average of 6.9 per 100,000. Homicide in most parts of the world has been falling since 1995, but it has risen recently in Central America and the Caribbean. (There are no reliable data for Africa.) The study suggests two broad trends. The first is a link between development and crime. Countries with low scores on the United Nations Development Programme’s human-development index tend to have high murder rates and vice versa. But exceptions to this reveal a second trend. Organised crime, drug trafficking, violent gang culture and the prevalence of firearms are also correlated with higher murder rates, even in relatively developed countries. Honduras and El Salvador, which have the highest and second-highest murder rates in the world (82 per 100,000 and 66 per 100,000 respectively), are the prime examples of this. One worrying final thought: sudden dips in economic performance have also been known to increase the homicide rate, usually with a lag.

One driver for firearm violence is the illegal trafficking of drugs. The violent crime rate in Canada is increasing because of this problem.

Drug war on another border: Canada

Mexico's crackdown puts the squeeze on cocaine dealers in British Columbia. Up here, as the violence grows, bodies pile up.
By Kim MurphyJune 30, 2009

Reporting from Abbotsford, Canada—
The latest mayhem started at the end of March, when 21-year-old Sean Murphy, a popular former high school hockey player, drove into a withering blast of gunfire near Bateman Park. He was probably dead before his car coasted to a stop in the weeds.

That same night, Ryan Richards, 19, abruptly left a friend's house after getting a cellphone call. His body was found the next morning behind a rural produce store. The stab wounds on his hands told the tale of a furious fight for his life. The undertaker apologized to his family for not being able to conceal them.

***snip***

"Let's get serious. There is a gang war, and it's brutal. What we have seen are new rules of engagement for the gangsters," Vancouver's chief police constable, Jim Chu, told reporters in March.

***snip***

The Lower Mainland has become a playground for young up-and-coming gangsters, who speed around town in armor-plated Cadillac Escalades, Porsche SUVs and BMW sedans.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-vancouver-gangs30-2009jun30,0,961295.story

Some Canadian Health Experts Have Noticed The Drug War and "Tough on Crime" Things Not Working So Well

Lucy Steigerwald | March 28, 2012

Portugal gets it; the president of Guatemala gets it; Now some Canadians are noticing that the whole be-like-the-U.S. and declare war on plants and people is not the best policy idea.

The chief medical officers of three Canadians provinces, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Saskatchewan have written a new paper for Open Medicine called "Improving community health and safety in Canada through evidence-based policies on illegal drugs." Its conclusions are a cautious version of the above; law and order harshness does nothing to sate appetites for drugs, marijuana in particular is not terribly bad for people, and U.S. policies are just awful so why emulate them?

***snip***

It's worth noting that Canada has a reputation for being looser about marijuana than the United States (and is certainly not known for quite the same level of draconian punishments doled out to users and sellers) but the level of support for legalization is almost exactly the same in both countries.

Here's hoping our friends to the North ignore the U.S.'s awful, inhumane example and skip over the 40 years of misery part and get right to the tentative talk of legalization. Maybe they'll get there faster than us.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/03/28/canadians-notice-drug-war-and-tough-on-c

There is no doubt that criminal gangs cause a high percentage of crime in the United States.

2011 National Gang Threat Assessment – Emerging Trends


***snip***

Gang-Related Violent Crime

Gang-related crime and violence continues to rise. NGIC analysis indicates that gang members are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions and much higher in others. Some jurisdictions in Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Texas report that gangs are responsible for at least 90 percent of crime. A comparison of FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) 2009 violent crime data and 2010 NGIC gang data illustrates that regions experiencing the most violent crime—including southern California, Texas, and Florida—also have a substantial gang presence (see Figure 1 and Map 1). Street gangs are involved in a host of violent criminal activities, including assault, drug trafficking, extortion, firearms offenses, home invasion robberies, homicide, intimidation, shootings, and weapons trafficking. NDIC reporting indicates that gang control over drug distribution and disputes over drug territory has increased, which may be responsible for the increase in violence in many areas. Conflict between gangs, gang migration into rival gang territory, and the release of incarcerated gang members back into the community has also resulted in an increase in gang-related crime and violence in many jurisdictions, according to NGIC reporting.
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/2011-national-gang-threat-assessment

Are Canada's gun laws effective and should we adopt similar laws? Since criminal drug gangs do not obey laws and can easily smuggle firearms into our nation, I would suggest that stronger gun laws would only effect honest citizens and do little to combat violence.

Far better would be to legalize some drugs such as marijuana in order to take some of the profit motive out of smuggling and dealing in such drugs. Our drug war was lost long ago and we are faced with a serious crime problem because of that failure. It's time to change our course and develop a more rational approach.