How Dangerous are Gun Owners?

Abstract

Every night, the police check all licensed firearms owners. As if that was not enough, the RCMP encourages officers to check before attending a call to see if anyone has a firearms licence at their destination. Licence information is made readily available on the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) virtually without restriction through the portal to the Canadian Firearms Registry Online (CFRO). As I reported to Parliament, Canadians who have a firearms licence are less than one-third as likely to commit murder as other Canadians (Mauser 2012).

This paper examines police killings specifically to discover the number of murderers who hold a firearms licence. Analyzing a Special Request to Statistics Canada that reported the number of police officers who were victims of firearm-related homicide between 1997 and 2013. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of police-officer shootings involved illegal firearms (15 out of 18). Comparing PAL holders with the general Canadian population shows that PAL holders pose approximately the same level of threat to police as the typical Canadian.

Keywords: Firearms Owners, Firearms Licence, Police Murders, Canada, Violent Crime, Statistics