"Could it be that canada is less urban for starters?"Nope, but I'm sure that's a pretty common misconception among USAmericans.
Canada is just about exactly as urbanized as the US, in terms of percentage breakdown. In fact, I'd venture to guess that a larger proportion of the Canadian population than of the US population lives in very large urban agglomerations -- i.e. if we knock out little towns and call them "non-urban", Canada is more urbanized. Out of a population of just over 30,000,000, about 4 out of 10 (over 11 million) live in four urban areas with over 1 million population alone: the Greater Toronto area, an unbroken agglomeration of several municipalities (over 4.5 million), Montreal (about 3.5 million), Vancouver (about 2 million) and Ottawa-Hull (over 1 million). About as many again live in cities of over 100,000:
http://www.canadainfolink.ca/cities.htmFirearms ownership, of course, is more prevalent in rural Canada (1 in 3 households) than in urban Canada (1 in 10 households) (an estimated 17% of households overall).
http://www.safety-council.org/news/sc/2001/dyk-apr.htmlHomicide rates don't vary widely by community size in Canada; suicide rates -- and especially firearms suicide rates -- do:
http://www.cfc-ccaf.gc.ca/en/research/other_docs/factsheets/rural/default.aspThe total suicide rate increased as community size decreased and the same was true for firearm suicides — the smaller the community, the higher the firearm suicide rate. The per capita firearm suicide rate in the three largest Canadian cities (Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver and their surrounding areas) was 1.8 compared to 8.0 for the smallest rural areas
... total homicide rates are highest in the smallest and largest communities. The rates for firearm homicides show no particular pattern with regard to community size. The rates are highest in the largest cities <Tor, Mtl, Van: 2.64/1000 and 1.15/1000 for total homicides and firearms homicides, respectively> and second highest in average size communities (i.e., populations of 10,000 to less than 50,000)<2.06 and 1.01 respectively -- and 2.32 and 0.85, respectively, in communities of under 1,000>
So hmm, firearms ownership rates *alone* could not be what causes homicide rates to be lower or higher (or we'd expect to see higher homicide rates in rural areas). But perhaps it IS
a causal factor, offset by, say, the much higher prevalence of illegal drug trade activities in the cities, which obviously plays
some role in urban homicide rates that it does not play in rural homicide rates. That is, I think that one could confidently say that in the cities, where firearms ownership rates are low, homicide rates would be considerably lower than in rural areas, where firearms ownership rates are higher, were it not for the violence associated with drug use and trafficking in the cities. Correlation; cause and effect?
Then there's the minority group population factor:
http://www.bctf.ca/research/list/archive/1999-2000/1999-10-05.htmlWith a total Canadian population given as 28,528,000 <slightly out of date>, the national minority population consists of 11.2% of the total. While Montreal resembles the national ratio, with a 12.2% minority population, the minority population of Toronto is 31.6% of the total Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) population, and Vancouver's minority groups represent 31.1% of the total Vancouver CMA population.
The racial/ethnic breakdown is of course different in Canada from the US (and Canada has a much higher proportion of its population born outside the country than does the US), but I mention this just to address the other common misconception of Canada as some sort of homogeneously white, anglo (outside Quebec), Christian sort of place.
"Economics is not one of my strong suits iether, but how about less disparity of income?"That's the one that has indeed been found to correlate strongly with homicide rates: the less income disparity, the lower the homicide rate. The correlation is apparent both between countries and within the US itself. Canada, and all other OECD-type countries, have considerably more equal income distribution than does the US. (According to the figures in the CIA factbook, the US scores several points higher on the Gini index of inequality than even the next closest OECD-type country, the UK, and way higher than the Scandinavian countries and Japan).
Of course, correlation is not cause-and-effect ...
If it were, I'd just say "Canadian firearms legislation causes the homicide rate to be lower in Canada than in the US". I don't.
Sometimes what seem to be a cause and an effect are actually an effect and a cause ... or two effects of a single, different cause.
Perhaps Canada has the firearms legislation that it has because the lesser income disparity contributes to a society in which people are not afraid and suspicious of one another and feel no need to arm themselves against one another and are happy to forego firearms ownership in order to keep firearms out of the hands of those who actually might use them to cause harm -- so the relative income equality caused both the firearms legislation and the low rates of homicide. Who knows? Of course, that could not be taken to mean that Cdn firearms legislation does *not* contribute to reducing the homicide rate to even lower than it would be in the absence of that legislation.
One problem that we have is that the countries with more income equality than the US also have stricter firearms legislation than the US. That does make it hard to find an "all other things being equal" situation for comparison. But it also makes it hard to discount either factor as potentially causal.
.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
