Matt Gurney on an important claim in the controversy about guns and crime in Toronto — that will probably not get anything like as much coverage because it doesn’t support the prohibitionists’ narrative:
Earlier this summer — a summer that has seen Toronto wracked by gun violence — a report came out that suggested lawful Canadian gun owners were to blame for at least some of the violence. The article was originally published by the Canadian Press, and was widely republished elsewhere, including at the CBC, the National Post, a dozen local newspapers, CTV News, and, yes, here at Global News. Since then, it has been widely cited in other news stories covering the issue, including in The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. The report was everywhere.
Here’s the problem. Newly released stats show clearly that it was wrong.
The article was based around an interview with a Toronto Police Services detective, Rob Di Danieli. Det. Di Danieli told the Canadian Press that Canadians who were lawfully licensed to purchase and possess firearms were increasingly a public safety issue. “They go get their licence for the purpose of becoming a firearms trafficker,” Di Danieli told the CP. “A lot of people are so ready to blame the big bad Americans, but we had our own little problem here.”
The CP article hangs on this revelation from the detective. It notes, in various places, “The number of guns obtained legally in Canada but are then sold to people who use them for criminal purposes has surged dramatically in recent years compared to firearms smuggled from the United States, Toronto police say,” and, “In recent years [investigators say they] have noticed a stark shift in where guns used to commit crimes are coming from,” and, “Legal Canadian gun owners are selling their weapons illegally, Di Danieli said, noting that police have seen more than 40 such cases in recent years.”
[…]
At the time the CP story first ran, there were no publicly available stats to support (or contradict) what di Danieli had told them. But now, those numbers are publicly available, thanks to Dennis R. Young, an Alberta-based researcher who filed a Freedom of Information request with the Toronto police and published their reply on his website. And these stats tell a very different story.
So a Toronto police detective is basically speaking out of his ass and the Canadian Press runs with it, because it supports the narrative. The man needs to be suspended, or at the very least censured publicly, for making up “facts”. No matter now, they could publish a complete retraction and no one would run it, like you say, because the story they want is that legal guns are just as bad as illegal ones.
Comment by Dwayne — September 8, 2018 @ 17:58
That is it, in a nutshell. Most folks in the media have had no contact with guns in their lives, except as tools for criminals on TV, and for the most part they don’t know anyone who knows anything about guns. I suspect that in a lot of their little worlds, guns have a magical aura that compels humans to commit crime and the only way to prevent crime is to somehow take away the magic.
Comment by Nicholas — September 10, 2018 @ 08:33