From: "Gunter, Lorne (EDM_EXCHANGE)", [EMAIL PROTECTED] appeared in the Edmonton Journal (Canada) Wednesday 22 November 2000 headline: Stats on handguns tell the story: They're a murderer's preferred firearm despite 66 years of registration The homicide stats are in. The homicide stats are in. ``Gee,'' you say, embarrassed for me, shifting your gaze from side to side to avoid making eye contact. ``Gunter, you have a very ghoulish sense of glee.'' And you'd be correct, if my interest in the national murder statistics had anything to do with the murders behind the numbers. But it doesn't. Rest assured, I take no delight in the fact that 536 Canadians were murdered last year. There is some genuine good news in the statistics for 1999, though. The numbers of homicides fell by 22 from 1998. And the murder rate, at under two people in 100,000, is, according to Statistics Canada, at ``its lowest level since 1967.'' Thankfully, murder remains a relatively rare crime in Canada. It is still about 40 per cent above where it was in 1960. Yet it is nowhere near the peak of nearly three persons per 100,000 (almost double the current rate) achieved in 1975. Our murder rate, like the murder rates of most industrialized countries, shot up in the late 1960s, reached its zenith in the mid- to late-70s, and has been trending downward since. In Canada, even in this current election, the Liberals have credited their 1977 gun law for this improvement. But since the trend is common to almost all developed countries, and most of them didn't have our 1977 gun laws, the Liberals' self-congratulatory explanation seems improbable, to say the least. No, the cause is more likely demographic. The huge generation of the postwar baby boom, which was common to most developed nations, began in 1946 and entered its prime murdering years (18 to 30) in 1964.
