Reply #191: please, everyone, stop this Michael Moore/Canada business [View All]

Will someone please quote for me exactly what Moore said about firearms ownership in Canada? Do I really have to dig out the DVD and watch the whole damned thing again to see whether he is being misquoted or really did fuck it up that badly?

This dates from 1998, but things really haven't changed that much, relatively, since then:

http://www.cfc-ccaf.gc.ca/en/research/other_docs/notes/canus/default.asp

There are more than 30 times more firearms in the United States than in Canada.

There are 9 times more people in the US than in Canada.

There are an estimated 7.4 million firearms in Canada, about 1.2 million of which are restricted firearms (mostly handguns).

That's about 1 firearm per 4 people in Canada, and less than 1 handgun per 25 people.

In the U.S., there are approximately 222 million firearms; 76 million of the firearms in circulation are handguns.

That makes pretty close to 1 firearm per 1 person in the US, and 1 handgun per 5 people.

There are, proportionately (per capita), about 7 times more handguns in the US than in Canada.

From 2001:

http://www.cfc-ccaf.gc.ca/en/general_public/news_releases/quickfacts-01252001.asp

17 percent (two million) of Canadian households own at least one firearm
There are 2.46 million firearm owners in Canada
One-in-three Canadian rural households has a firearm
Just over one-in-ten Canadian urban households has a firearm

There has been a decline of more than one-quarter of the percentage of households that have firearms. The average calculated from 11 surveys between 1989 and 1998 indicates that 24 percent of Canadian households had firearms compared to today's figure of 17 percent

http://www.cfc-ccaf.gc.ca/en/research/publications/reports/1990-95/reports/siter_rpt.asp

Firearms Ownership Rate/100,000
Canada - 24,138
US - 85,385

The firearms ownership rate in Canada is less than 1/3 what it is in the US: 5 out of 20 people in the US, 17 out of 20 people in the US.


There simply is no similarity between firearms ownership rates and characteristics in Canada and the US.

There are vastly fewer firearms per capita in Canada.
The proportion of households in which there are firearms is vastly lower in Canada.
The nature of the firearms owned (overwhelmingly long arms and not handguns) and the purpose for which they are owned (hunting, sport and rural/farming purposes, not personal defence or protection of property from crime) are vastly different in Canada.

It goes without saying that the cultures of the two countries are also vastly different.

But there is simply no basis for attributing the differences in rates of firearms death/injury/crime *exclusively* to cultural differences, any more than there is for attributing those differences *exclusively* to the far lower rate of firearms ownership and the far lower prevalence of the kinds of firearms most often used in deaths/injuries/crimes in the US (handguns).

If Michael Moore actually claimed that Canada and the US were similar in terms of firearms ownership, he was entirely wrong as regards both the comparability of the numbers and the comparability of the types of firearms and the purposes for which they are owned.