[font size=+1]Harper’s dangerous advice on guns for rural security
[font color=grey]By loading up more guns, Canadians can expect to have more innocent victims killed, not fewer houses invaded by strangers.[/font]
By: Irvin Waller & Michael Kempa, Published on Thu Mar 19 2015[/font]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has taken to dispensing advice to Canadians living in rural areas on how best to secure their households with firearms — advice that is so disconnected from the facts about household safety that it might be comical if it were not also so dangerous.

Last week, Harper opined that guns provide “for a certain level of security when you’re a ways from immediate police assistance.” On Wednesday this week, he upped the ante, telling Canadians that critics who say his remarks could fan vigilantism in rural communities are “clearly anti-gun owners.”

The evidence tells a different story.

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On the more serious side, this advice is not simply a misinformed but harmless electoral ploy. Suggesting that gun owners have their weapons ready for self-defence will encourage rural Canadians to break our laws requiring ammunition and guns to be stored separately. These laws are important because it is well-known that storing loaded weapons increases the suicides, accidents and murders that occur in emotional situations, especially in those tragic cases involving domestic violence.

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Rather than take the easy path of following some of the U.S.’s worst gun failures, rural safety in Canada would profit most through developing crime and violence reduction programs that have been proven through mostly American research. Massive databases of program evaluation results confirm that sensible prevention approaches that provide non-violent conflict resolution training in schools and community centres protect two of the most over-victimized groups in our society: women and youth.

If the United States were to go full out to follow the policy advice contained in their own databases, we estimate they would save at least 7,000 lives a year that are needlessly lost to the untimely matching of high emotions and loaded weapons. Likewise, our rural households would be a safer place for many of us if we invested in stamping out interpersonal and domestic violence — along with fostering our culture of responsible gun ownership rather than erode it.

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http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/03/19/harpers-dangerous-advice-on-guns-for-rural-security.html

Irvin Waller is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa and author of Smarter Crime Control.

Michael Kempa is an Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa and is seeking the federal Liberal nomination for Scarborough Southwest.