Editor: This is not a gun control letter.
I would guess that anyone reading these letters follows the news fairly closely, usually watching the CTV, Global or CBC television news broadcasts. By now, I am sure you have seen countless stories about the gun control debate in the United States, usually accompanied with an air of sanctimony because of Canada’s supposedly superior treatment of guns.
Yet last week a major study came out that, somehow, CTV and Global did not find “newsworthy.” I don’t watch CBC, so I can’t speak for them.
Pew Research released a very surprising study (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/) that shows that, in the last 20 years in the U.S., gun-related crimes have sharply dropped.
From the study, I quote:
“Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49 per cent lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm —assaults, robberies and sex crimes — was 75 per cent lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72 per cent) over two decades.”
When our Canadian news networks can come up with story after story — often from emotional but uninformed victims of gun violence, or politicians — which seems to support strong gun control, wouldn’t it seem reasonable for them to report a serious, respected, factual story that refutes it?
Or do they have an agenda outside truthful news reporting?
This also raises another question: In the same period, with Canada’s strict gun laws, have we achieved the same reduction. Or, are the networks hiding the opposite?
Fox News is not watched more than all the other U.S. news networks combined because it is “conservative”. It is watched because it specializes in giving “the other side of the story.”
Are Canadians so immature they have to have spoon-fed news, which is only acceptable to the networks, because they can’t decide for themselves? Where is the “contra-news” network in Canada?
P. Bowman,
Langley
