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The article criticizes sociologist Neil Boyd's article on the subject of firearms homicide in Canada. The argument in Boyd's paper rests upon several unsupported claims. Boyd's knowledge of Canadian homicide statistics is faulty. The typical Canadian homicide victim is male, not female, as he states. As well, the typical homicide victim is not killed with a firearm; as two-thirds of all homicides involve other implements than firearms. Firearms may be useful for self-protection even if they are not fired. Clearly this would be so if a woman deterred a rapist simply by showing him her firearm and her resolve to use it if necessarily. Such an incident would probably not be brought to the attention of the police. In the case of the woman who used a firearm to deter a potential rapist, she has nothing to gain by going to the polite, and given the official attitude towards the defensive use of firearm, much to lose by doing so. Nevertheless, the article does not recommend that anyone buy a firearm for self-protection— that is a very personal decision.

This article comments on a paper on gun control and violence in Canada in the January 1990 issue of the Canadian Journal of Criminology. In his article, Mundt concluded that the Canadian legislation in 1977 regulating the acquisition of firearms had little perceptible impact on crime, suicides, and accidental deaths. Aside from several figures and charts, Mundt presented no statistical analyses to support this assertion. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the conclusions of Mundt, as far as suicide is concerned, was wrong--the firearms legislation did have an impact on suicide by firearms. The suicide rate by firearms in the 8 years prior to the legislation was increasing. For the eight-year period following the passage of the firearms legislation, the suicide rate by firearms decreases. Mundt suggested, that even if the suicide rate by firearms were to decrease, people might switch to other methods for suicide. This was not the case, since the suicide rate by all other methods did not change during this period, and neither did the total suicide rate. However, the percentage of suicides using firearms did decrease. Thus, at least as far as suicide is concerned, the firearms legislation in Canada was followed by a decreasing suicide by firearms.

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