Lethal

Tonight's mandatory reading comes from Dan Gardner of the Ottawa Citizen.

Gardner points out that while the number of gun-related deaths in Toronto increased significantly during 2005, the amount of violent crime overall involving guns declined from the early 90s to 2004, the last year for which data is available.

It will be interesting to see if overall gun crimes rose along with the gun murder rate in Toronto during 2005. If it's just gun murders that rose, then a couple of explanations come to mind; first, the shooters shot to kill (and were successful in doing so), and two, the targets of those murders were most likely from a specific and restricted pool of candidates who engaged in a certain kind of activity or ran with a certain crowd that would open them up to being fatally victimized by gunplay (i.e. gangs).

I look forward to seeing the figures for 2005 relating to other crimes which will tell us if people are using guns primarily to kill and not for other purposes like armed robbery or assault with a weapon.