I told you about a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences pushing a gun control agenda, one which the mainstream media happily spread without questioning a thing since the claims were made by “experts”.I identified some big problems with it, including the timing of the release of the Canadian Paediatric Society’s guidelines to members citing the same flawed study, urging members to pry into the business of families who own guns.But after I wrapped the first video, I found another major problem.

Their definition of firearm. Watch as I explain why this study is essentially useless.

Don’t fall for fake news, question everything to determine if it holds up. I’d say this study definitely doesn’t.

See the story: https://www.therebel.media/is_a_paintball_gun_a_firearm_more_reasons_to_question_fakenews_from_flawed_study

Despite what you may have read or heard on the news this morning, if you’re a parent in Ontario, your child is probably not going to be shot today. Sadly, your media seems set on convincing you otherwise.

A new study came out Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. It reported that over a five-year period (2008-2012), an average of 355 “youths” in Ontario were injured or killed in firearms-related incidents per year, or almost one per day. (Suicides apparently excluded.) It was full of interesting information and findings — a good piece of scholarship. But how it was reported in the media got it largely wrong, certainly in terms of tone. Because the survey, while certainly telling tragic tales, isn’t nearly as alarming as is being portrayed, and the best solution to the problem — and there is one — isn’t likely to find much public support.

Let’s recap the media coverage. “1 injury a day from firearms in Ontario, pediatricians find,” was the headline on the CBC. “A young person is shot every day in Ontario, Sick Kids study finds,” was how the Toronto Star put it. “Every day a child or youth is injured by gun violence in Ontario, study warns,” was how my colleagues here at Global News summed up the findings. The radio and TV coverage I heard or saw was similar.

These headlines are accurate, in the narrowest technical sense of “not being wrong.” But they also miss a huge part of the data. The headlines and articles bring to mind the horrible stories we hear of children goofing off, finding a loaded gun under a bed or in a closet, and killing or injuring themselves or another child. But those horror stories aren’t really what the study authors found in Ontario.

The study looks at five years of Ontario “youths.” And it also includes those injured and killed by deliberate shootings — crimes — which are about a quarter of the total (and that’s important to know, but it’s also a separate issue, requiring its own study and solutions). When just looking at the accidents, the tracking covers a much wider age range than you’d expect: up to an age of 25. That’s … a rather expansive definition of youth. Sure, a 24-year-old is still young, in the sense of being in the prime of their life. But they’re also adults.

This matters, but all the reports missed it — not just in the headlines, but in the actual reports. I’ve read a half dozen of these news stories. This isn’t mentioned in any of them.

The researchers, for their part, didn’t miss it. They break down the “youth” group into two categories — those under the age of 16 and those over it. But the media reports treated all youths equally, painting a picture of Ontario school children coming home every day lucky to have literally dodged a bullet.

There’s no excuse for this. The numbers are right there in the study, in Table 2, to be precise. And they tell a story that’s still tragic, but not, alas, all that surprising. It turns out that most “youths” killing or injuring themselves in accidents with guns are, in fact, adolescent males and young men. Vastly so. In the five-year period covered by the study, 312 children below the age of 16 were injured or killed in accidental shootings in Ontario, or just over 60 a year (roughly one a week). Meanwhile, the total number of Ontario “youths” who were older than 16 injured or killed in comparable incidents was a whopping 1,017 over five years — not quite four a week. Roughly 77 per cent of those killed or injured in accidental shootings over the course of the study were older than 16. Though the data isn’t detailed enough for me to prove this, I’d bet most of the rest, those under 15, were quite close to turning 16.

Canada has fairly tight gun control laws, and a big part of Canada’s gun control regime is focused on so-called “safe storage” of firearms — keeping guns locked away, disabled and separate from ammunition. I’m a gun owner: rifles, shotguns, pistols, you name it. I’m also a father. And I am 100 per cent compliant with these regulations not just because it’s the law, but because I’m a responsible dad. If there are compliance issues with other gun owners in Canada, that’s where the attention should be focused. It would save lives — young lives, most especially.

But what the hell do you do with someone who’s 17, or 19, or 24? By this time, it’s not just a matter of them probably knowing where their parents’ guns are stored. We could very well be dealing with “youths” injured or killed by their own guns — the age for owning a gun in Canada is 18. We’re not talking about curious toddlers grabbing daddy’s loaded 9 mm by the trigger, with tragic consequences. We’re talking adults, or damn near to it, who really should know better.

And the good news is, they can know better. Guns aren’t magic. Anyone, of any age, can be taught how to safely handle a firearm. Show me any gun and I’ll show you how to render it utterly harmless in less than 30 seconds, with zero risk to you or anyone else. (Assuming you choose to touch it at all, of course, which 99 per cent of the time, there’ll be no reason to do — just call the police.)

We could teach basic gun safety to high school students easily. The police could do it. Local gun clubs could do it. Firearms safety instructors, who supervise and co-ordinate the gun safety classes one must pass before receiving a permit to purchase or possess a gun, could do it, and are already in place in every community across the country.

Won’t happen, though. If you thought today’s headlines were bad, imagine how the Star and CBC and perhaps even Global would react to gun safety being taught in high school. “GUNS IN OUR SCHOOLS, PARENT GROUPS OUTRAGED” sounds about right. But for the nearly 80 per cent of Ontarians under 25 accidentally injured or killed with a gun between 2008 and 2012, the knowledge could have saved their life. The best way to fight youthful impulsiveness and ignorance is by providing good information and skills. We do it with sex, we do it with drugs and alcohol, we try to do it with driving. Why not guns?

In the final analysis, though every death and injury is a tragedy, firearms are not a huge public health issue in Ontario or Canada generally. Look at the numbers. There are 300,000 restricted guns (mainly handguns) in Ontario. There are literally millions of the more common hunting rifles and shotguns (precise figures are unavailable due to the scrapping of the long gun registry, but there were more than two million such guns in Ontario in the last year for which data is available). Even so, we’re still talking only a literal handful of deaths and injuries a week, many of which are likely due to recklessness, and most of which could be prevented with better education. Meanwhile, leading causes of death and injuries for Canadian children (0-18) remain the same as ever: motor vehicle accidents, drowning, falls, and, for those under four, suffocation.

Guns don’t even register. They are a rounding error of hundreds in a province of more than 13 million. Ontarians need to keep perspective on this — starting with the media.

See the story: http://globalnews.ca/news/3337217/relax-ontario-especially-the-media-our-kids-are-not-gunning-each-other-down-every-day/

It was the shortest scandal in Canadian political history: Kellie Leitch sent her supporters an email with a photo of her shooting a Nazi-era handgun, which it wasn’t – not that it would matter if it were. The real story is not whether Leitch shot what turned out not to be a Walther P-38; the story is that, for would-be Conservative leaders, handling guns has become as obligatory as kissing babies.

The leading candidates have gone out of their way to court gun owners. Maxime Bernier approached the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, whose stock in trade is slick, professional video, to promote his pro-gun platform. Erin O’Toole’s campaign has posted repeatedly on a bulletin board for self-proclaimed gun nuts, importuning their support. Both offer platforms that read like a gun activist’s wish list.

Kevin O’Leary leads the polls, but he once said that nobody should own an AR-15. Gun owners don’t forgive easily, so he went to the Canadian Shooting Sports Association for help. After being photographed with CSSA executive director Tony Bernardo, he declared that “The AR-15 is just a rifle,” and promised to repeal the Firearms Act: “144 pages of incomprehensible gibberish.” This promise didn’t hit the news. It was made through the CSSA, just for gun owners.

Leadership candidates speak fondly of daddy and grand-daddy who went duck hunting. They wax eloquent over inherited guns. Or they offer the zeal of the recent convert. “I have signed up for my own gun license (sic),” insists Leitch via her website. Like a carbon tax, guns are an issue on which the leading candidates vehemently agree.

That agreement testifies to effective grassroots organizing, chiefly by one man: Richard Wakefield, who drafted a firearms policy, promoted it in riding associations across Canada, and brought that policy to the party’s 2016 convention where it passed with only a handful of dissenting votes. Wakefield even considered approaching an MP whom many gun owners saw as their enemy: Michelle Rempel, who led the defeat of a pro-gun motion at the 2013 convention. Rempel has since earned a restricted firearms licence, and earlier in March tweeted the obligatory photo of herself firing a rifle.

She is a convert, her reputation redeemed.

It was also Wakefield who invited Kellie Leitch to fire his guns in November at the East Elgin Sportsmen’s Association range near Aylmer, Ont. where the briefly controversial photo was taken.

Wakefield’s success relied on smart politics. His draft policy affirmed the importance of safe storage regulations, safety training and screening for prospective gun buyers. It was apparently innocuous stuff that, to some gun owners, didn’t go nearly far enough. But Wakefield relied also on a simple message: back us, or we will back your opponents. Conservative politicians know that gun activists are committed. They vote – and more importantly, they join riding associations and work to sink candidates who offend them.

In a campaign where most of the candidates are pandering to gun activists, it would seem guns are not an issue. But anyone who comes off as weak on guns stands to suffer on a ranked ballot, becoming the last choice of the pro-gun bloc. And this is why candidates with weak gun credentials – Leitch and O’Leary – have to push pictures of themselves on the range, shooting.

Meanwhile, Wakefield is already working with a small group of gun activists and politicians to develop his apparently innocuous four-point policy into toothier measures for a Conservative government to implement, including an overhaul of the classification system and a complete rewrite of Canada’s gun laws.

But first, whoever wins the Conservative Party of Canada leadership must win an election. And winning the support of a wider public may be all the more difficult, after all those promises to repeal the Firearms Act.

A.J. Somerset is the author of Arms: the Culture and Credo of the Gun and writes frequently on firearms issues.

Correction: 

This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Wakefield considered, but did not actually, solicit support from Michelle Rempel. 

See the story: http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/somerset-whats-with-the-tory-love-affair-with-guns

Wednesday afternoon, Ottawa criminal lawyer Mark Ertel picked up an illegal revolver from a home in Ottawa, put a lock on the trigger, and delivered the weapon to Ottawa police.

That’s one more gun that won’t make its way to the street, says Toronto lawyer Edward Sapiano, who runs a program that allows people to anonymously surrender illegal guns. Ertel agreed to conduct Wednesday’s gun surrender, the first in Ottawa under the Piece Options program. Sapiano says he hopes to expand the program to cities across Canada.

Sapiano and other criminal defence lawyers participate in the program in Toronto, where 70 guns have been surrendered to police since 2004, including three this year.

The service is free. The lawyers establish a “solicitor-client” relationship with the person wanting to surrender a gun. That ensures the lawyers don’t have to reveal the client’s name to police.

Lawyers can possess illegal guns briefly for the purpose of delivering them to police, said Ertel. He’s done similar anonymous gun surrenders to police three or four times in his career, he said. 

The gun he collected Wednesday was from a middle-aged man who had inherited it. The main danger of such weapons is they may be stolen and used by others, said Ertel.

Guns surrendered through Piece Options are not usually from active criminals, said Sapiano. “I’m not expecting a 25-year-old gangster punk who just spent $2,500 on his piece to have an epiphany and give it up.”

Rather, they typically come from middle-aged people, under a variety of circumstances. Some bought the gun when they were young to impress a girl or a buddy, but are not involved in crime now and don’t know how to safely dispose of it, for instance.

“You have an illegal gun, and you don’t want to get caught and thrown into prison for a long time, and you don’t want to just throw it in a bush … ” says Sapiano.

Others had guns given to them by friends or family members. In one case in Toronto, a “panicky mother” phoned to say she found a gun in her kitchen cupboard, said Sapiano. Police had raided her house in connection with alleged criminal activity by her son, but they hadn’t noticed the gun, which the son had apparently thrown in the cupboard.

The mother didn’t want to call police and get her son into further trouble.

Defence lawyers pick up the guns from people surrendering them.

“There are obvious safety considerations,” says Sapiano. “We don’t want to have people hopping on an Ottawa bus and going down to the lawyer’s office with a gun.”

Sapiano says he’s particularly keen to get small pistols off the streets. The guns surrendered in Toronto also include a sawed-off shotgun and a Glock pistol stolen from a Toronto police officer.

See the story: http://www.ottawasun.com/2017/03/30/lawyers-bring-anonymous-illegal-gun-surrender-program-to-ottawa