Translated from Le Devoir, March 17, 1999, p. A-9; original in French also available on this site.

 

Health Insurance and Pistols
by
Pierre Lemieux

 

In his reply to the studies cited and the arguments advanced by Claire Joly, Marie Latourelle, Maryse Martin and Karen Selick in favor of self-defense and the right to bear arms (Le Devoir, 19 février 1999), Robert Dôle only puts forward a few anecdotal odds and ends ("La contribution des pistolets à la barbarie américaine", Le Devoir, March 6, 1999, p.A-11). Because he has lived in the United States, he knows that ... he has heard hear-say ... and everybody is expected to take this on faith, straight from the oracle.

For example, Mr Dôle implies that Vermont (the only American state where it is legal to carry a concealed firearm without government authorization) is not the peaceful place we all know. And yet the official statistics are easily available (www.dps.state.vt.us/cjs/homicide.htm): in 1997, there were nine homicides in Vermont, a rate of 1.53 per 100,000 inhabitants. In Quebec, the corresponding rate was 1.78 (www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/State/Justice/legal12b.htm).

We would have appreciated some details from this scholar on the "plague" of drive-by shootings that he claims occurred in Vermont "three years ago" -- a plague that nobody else seems to have heard of. A search through the Washington Post database did not turn up anything either.

The literature of criminology is full of studies that contradict Mr. Dôle's faith. I will not go into the references cited by Joly et al., or Colin Greenwood's classic work on the situation in England, or the research by Professor Gary Mauser in Canada. Let's stick with the epidemiological study by Brandon Centerwall, "Homicide and the Prevalence of Handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976 to 1980" (American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol.134 (1991), No.11, pp.1245-1260).

Instead of making a sweeping comparison of Canada and the United States, and in an effort to minimize cultural differences, Professor Centerwall analyzed the correlation between availability of handguns and rates of violent crime in Canadian provinces and their American border states. He found there was no correlation at all. There are proportionately more murders in Quebec and New Brunswick than in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont; more in Manitoba than in Minnesota or North Dakota; more in Saskatchewan than in North Dakota; more in Yukon than in Alaska.

The same absence of a correlation between availability of firearms and violent crime rates can be seen internationally as well. There are countries where possession of firearms is very common and the crime rate very low (Switzerland and Israel are examples), and others where possession of firearms is virtually banned and the crime rate is very high (Mexico, Jamaica and Northern Ireland are examples).

These findings are not particularly surprising -- on the one hand because weapons are only an instrument, and not an agent, of crime, and on the other because (as Joly et al. noted) they also serve to protect honest people against criminals.

To be convinced that guns do not cause crime, there is no need to seek out comparison from the far corners of the earth. All we have to do is look at Canada's recent history. Up to the end of the 19th century, the possession and carrying of arms was pretty well unregulated in Canada, while the racialist American states had already experimented with controls. Until the federal legislation of the 1930s, handguns were more easy to come by in Canada than in New York City. Until 1978, shotguns and hunting rifles could be bought without a permit at Eaton's, and women were not liable to ten years in prison for carrying pepper spray in their handbags. Was the country more violent then?

Apart from their being founded on sober fact, another difference separates the opinions of the four women Mr Dôle attacks and his own statist instinct. All they want is the freedom to defend themselves against criminals; they do not propose to force other people, on pain of a prison sentence, to own or carry a firearm. Mr Dôle, on the other hand, calls for laws under which his armed men will arrest women (and men as well, with no discrimination) who simply own means to exercise their age-old right of self-defense.

To complete his dazzling demonstration of learnedness and humanitarianism, Mr. Dôle defines Quebec as "a French-speaking country north of New Hampshire where everybody has health insurance and nobody carries a pistol" ("un pays francophone au nord du New Hampshire où tout le monde a une assurance maladie et personne n'a de pistolet". In French, the generic term for a handgun is "revolver," not "pistolet" ("Passez-moi votre revolver," Tintin asked Captain Haddock), but let's be tolerant of people who have read too much sentimental Anglo-American literature.

There is a small flaw in this description of the former homeland of the coureurs des bois. You don't need to come to Canada to find places where everybody has health insurance, and nobody has a revolver. In almost every country in the world there are such places, with wall-to-wall social security, and board and lodging as well: at best, they are called convents; at worst, they are known as prisons. à mur avec gîte et couvert assurés : ça s’appelle, au mieux, un couvent ; au pire, une prison.