Tony Bernardo is the executive director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.If licensed firearms ownership is driving violent crime in Canada, rapid growth in licensed ownership should signal a significant rise in crime statistics.Economists Derek Mikola of the University of Ottawa and Matthew D. Webb of Carleton University went looking for that signal.They couldn’t find it.They examined the relationship between legal firearm ownership, crime, and deaths in Canada from 2013 through 2019. The study says:"In aggregate, these results suggest that the Canadian style of gun control ‘works'.""When analyzing a period of nearly 50% growth in licence holders, we fail to see systematic increases in gun deaths or gun crimes. This suggests that the system of hands-on training, background checks, and safe storage enables private ownership without a negative externality."Firearms licences appeared unrelated to firearm-related deaths.Legal handgun ownership was unrelated to total firearm deaths and to firearm deaths classified as assault or self-harm.Total homicide was generally unrelated to possession and acquisition licences (PALs), restricted possession and acquisition licences (RPALs), legal handguns, restricted rifles, and the study’s residual category of other registered firearms.Yet Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government, like Justin Trudeau’s before it, continues to focus the government’s resources on licensed firearms owners and the guns they own legally..The conclusion that deserves attentionWhile firearms licence holders increased by almost 50%, the study did not show systematic increases in firearm deaths or firearm crimes.The finding suggests a conclusion that’s extremely relevant to the present firearms debate:Canada’s existing firearms licensing and registration scheme is already doing the job it was designed to do.Lawful owners must complete mandatory firearms safety training, pass written and practical examinations, submit personal-history information, and undergo background screening.They remain subject to continuous eligibility checks and requirements governing storage, transportation, and use.If the licensing and safety system has successfully separated responsible ownership from dangerous access, as the study indicates, what additional public-safety benefit comes from freezing the legal handgun market or confiscating firearms from people who passed every government-mandated test?The Liberal government should be able to answer that question with mountains of evidence.But it can’t.It should show what proportion of firearms used in violent crime came from licensed owners and identify whether those firearms were legally acquired, stolen, smuggled, or illegally manufactured.It should publish measurable targets and distinguish policy results from changes in gang activity, smuggling, trafficking, and other drivers of violence.But it doesn’t.Part of the reason is that no government agency has all of that information..Serious information gapsPolice records do not always establish who owned a firearm used in a crime, whether that person was licensed, or how the firearm entered the illegal market.Not every firearm is recovered, and tracing remains incomplete.Those gaps should make policymakers more careful about the laws they pass and the policies they invoke.Instead, legal ownership is repeatedly treated as a convenient proxy for criminal risk.That said, the research paper must be treated with the same discipline we expect from government.It’s a working paper, not a final verdict. Its data end in 2019. Its geographic analysis leaves much of rural Canada outside the main models. It can’t count every non-restricted firearm or directly measure the illegal supply — but neither can the government.The results are not uniformly favourable to lawful owners.In some models, legal handguns were positively associated with handgun-related deaths; PAL prevalence had a small positive relationship with total firearm deaths; and certain rifle measures were associated with firearm violations.Other results were negative or statistically insignificant..Across a period of substantial growth in licensed ownership and registered handguns, the study found no systematic increase in death and crime flowing from the legal firearms market.At minimum, that contradicts the simplistic assumption that more licensed owners mean less public safety.One study should not dictate national policy. Neither should political agendas, imported American rhetoric, or the convenience of targeting people whose names and property are already known to government.Ottawa should commission independent research using current Canadian data, improve firearm tracing capability, and publish meaningful information about how firearms enter criminal markets.Most importantly, it should demonstrate the incremental benefit of imposing new restrictions on people already governed by licensing, screening, training, and storage rules.Canada’s licensing system was designed to identify responsible owners, screen out dangerous applicants, and regulate lawful possession.This research suggests that the firearms owner licensing system has largely done its intended job, a fact that Liberal rhetoric never admits.If the government wants to impose even more restrictions on the people who passed every test, it must prove — not merely conflate and assume — that licensed firearms owners are the source of the danger.Because public safety policy should be built on Canadian evidence, not political agendas.So far, that’s not happening.Tony Bernardo is the executive director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.
