Prior to his election defeat earlier this week, Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, attempted to blame the US for increased crime in the US, after all Canada is a bastion for civility, where crime is unheard-of and people never resort to violence as a means of solving disputes, or so we have been lead to believe. As it turns out Canada is no stranger to crime, in fact it seems Canada’s rate of violent crime is twice that of the United States.
While an American must admit without any degree of hesitation that crime in America is appalling and more needs to be done, it would be foolish to argue that crime in America is impacting crime in Canada. In fact, since the 1970s, the FBI has noted a significant decline in violent crime nationwide, during that same period crime in Canada has risen constantly. Paul Martin, however, attributed crime in Canada to lax gun laws and a “culture of violence” in the United States. What the Canadian leader has ignored is the country’s growing gang problem in several large cities including Toronto and Vancouver as well as a seeming aversion to tackle crime and impose harsh penalties for perpetrators.
In fact, according to columnist David Frum, in 2003 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), the violent crime rate in the United States was 475 per 100,000 people compared with 963 in Canada, with similar results for sexual crimes. According to Frum, Canada’s crime has increased as it has adopted more restrictive gun ownership policies, leaving guns in the hands of criminals while removing them from law-abiding citizens.
It’s debatable whether or not gun ownership comes into play one-way or the other. The fact of the matter is in both the US and Canada, culture plays a major role in the prevalence of crime. In many developed and developing countries, some with restrictive gun polices and some without, crime rates are far lower than in the US or Canada. As is usually the case with matters such as this there is no simple answer, but there are simply wrong answers, paramount among them would be blaming America for Canada’s failures.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/1/24/150547.shtml?s=ic
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
