Lost in reporting

Garbage in - garbage out. I might put up with media bias, particularly at the CBC and its online outlet (the "garbage in"), if it were not compounded by readers' asinine commentary and just as asinine "approval" ("garbage out"). While other lefties waste elbow grease befouling news items and congratulating their ilk on their vandalism of truth, I prefer putting my neurons in gear and discovering what, if any, the CBC does not want its readers to know.

In a story about StatsCan reporting a decrease in homicide rates, including gangland murders, the pet topic of objectivity-haters from sea to sea was missing. I am talking, of course, of the Long Gun Registry and its influence, if any, on firearm crime. Commenters brayed about the LGR being successful, or the government suppressing the data, or other drivel I won't waste bytes on.

The CBC literally copy-pasted the entire Statistics Canada report, excluding the sections on registered firearms and spousal homicide.

Read and weep. Of murder weapons recovered between 2005 and 2009, 7 out of 10 were unregistered. In the four-year period considered, only 253 guns were recovered and checked against the registry.

In 2009, out of 179 firearm homicides, 122 (68%) were committed using a handgun, 29 (16%) using a rifle and 14 (8%) using a saw-off (14 are, apparently, undefined).

Assuming the proportions remained the same year after year between 2005 and 2009, registered and recovered murder firearms were split as follows: 67% rifles, 22% handguns and 12% saw-offs.

Compare the proportion of handguns used in murders (68%) to the proportion of handguns recovered and identified as a registered murder weapon (22%).

Want to make the long gun registry effective? Stop pretending it to be a deterrent. Remember that between 2002 and 2008, including five years since the implementation of the LGR, gun crime went UP.

Focus on its potential as a crime-solving tool for those 3 murders out of 10. Make it a one-off fee, merge the database with the firearm license database already kept by the RCMP and for the love of God make it contain the sole truly useful bit of information: the gun's signature on the bullet.

Let's rejoice that murders are down in Canada. And, while we're at it, let's keep it at that.