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It shouldn’t be, and it wouldn’t on almost any other public policy issue in this country. But who cares what the gun nuts say, right? Why let a few minor factual errors stand in the way of good rhetoric and public posturing? I’m honestly curious if the Globe will feel it’s worth bothering to correct the editorial’s errors.

But it’s not, in fact, just about a few minor factual errors. The Globe editorial certainly contains those, more than I have room to list here, but it also contains something much worse: a fundamental failure of logic.

Photo by Bryn Weese/Postmedia News

I refer you back to the Globe’s claim that there’s “more than 900,000” handguns in Canada. It follows that up by noting that’s “twice as many as a decade ago.” The Globe adds: “During this period of rapid ownership growth, homicides involving handguns in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal have also increased. Much of the rise is related to an increase in urban gang violence.”

It’s true that gang violence is a growing problem in Canada. But it’s also true that StatCan tracks homicides by firearms type. And while the total number of restricted and prohibited guns (which is mostly but not exclusively handguns) in Canada has been growing sharply, you know what hasn’t been growing much at all? The rate of homicides committed with a handgun. I’m not sure what precise years the Globe was looking at when it claimed “a decade ago,” but let’s just look at the past 10 years of available data. In 2007, the rate per 100,000 of homicides committed with a handgun was 0.38. And a decade later, after a vast increase in the number of restricted guns in Canada — “twice as many,” as per the Globe — the rate in 2017 was … 0.4. Doubling the guns correlated with an increase of 0.02 per 100,000. Meanwhile, rifles and shotguns, which the Globe goes out of its way to stress it isn’t overly concerned with (“Hunting rifles and small-calibre ‘varmint guns’ are legitimate firearms for legal ownership”) actually accounted for far more homicides per capita over that period, going from 0.1 homicides per 100,000 in 2007 to 0.17 in 2017. Not huge numbers, but a much bigger swing.