Editor: The wonderful thing about statistics is that you can get them to say just about anything you want.
In Paul Bowman’s letter (The Times, Dec. 23) he chastises the news media for its inaccurate reporting on the number of homicides with firearms in the U.S. as compared to Canada.
According to Mr Bowman’s calculations we Canadians are 6.35 times as likely to get shot by a licensed firearm in Canada than an American in the U.S.
His calculations however are derived by comparing the number of guns licensed in each country compared to the number of deaths by firearms, licensed or not. This seemed somehow flawed in that these calculations did not take into account populations. So naturally I went to my old pal Google to look up populations.
Apparently in 2014 there were 35,540,000 citizens in Canada and 318,900,000 in the U.S. — roughly nine times as many.
Consequently, if there were 131 deaths via firearms in Canada, one would expect about 131 x 9 in the U.S., say 1,179. However, according to Mr. Bowman’s letter, there were actually 8,124 such deaths in the U.S.
This seems to say that, taking into account the populations of both countries, one’s chances of getting shot in the U.S. is 6.89 times greater than in Canada.
Perhaps this disparity is a result of the fact that when a nut-bar with a gun in the U.S. goes on a shooting spree he/she usually takes out a dozen or so citizens at a time. Children are often favourite targets.
In Canada we’ve had a few incidents of two or three (victims), usually police officers, but most often just one.
Whatever the reason, the chance of getting shot in the U.S. is almost seven times higher than in Canada. This seems a lot more likely figure
Not only is it a lot more expensive to go to the U.S. these days, it’s a helluva lot riskier.
Evan Brett,
Langley
