The impact of gun control (Bill C-51) on homicide in Canada

✍ Scribed by Antoon A Leenaars; David Lester

• Book ID: 104269532
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 78 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0047-2352
• DOI: 10.1016/s0047-2352(01)00094-0

✦ Synopsis

Homicide is a multiply determined behavior, and single-factor prevention efforts have rarely been shown to have an impact on the homicide rate. Gun control has been proposed as an important component of society's response, and an opportunity for studying the effects of legislative gun control laws on homicide rates was provided by Canada's Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1977 (Bill C-51). This article reviews previous studies of the impact of this Act on the total population of Canada and subpopulations by age and sex and, in addition, presents the results of a multiple regression analysis, which controls for some social variables. It appears that Bill C-51 may have had an impact on homicide rates, at least for older victims.