How to Reduce Gun Crime

Absent in the public debate over how to reduce gun-related crimes is a serious consideration of the most sensible remedy: stiffer penalties.

When the Ontario attorney general recently endorsed a Criminal Code amendment that would create a 10-year mandatory minimum for armed robbery, armed assault and other crimes committed using a firearm, former Ontario Superior Court judge David Humphrey bristled, saying the proposal would accomplish nothing.

I’m very much against minimum penalties put forward by politicians for political reasons, as well as to address a social concern, he said. (Odd that. Don’t all laws, by definition, address a social concern?) Prominent criminal defence lawyer Paul Calarco dismissed David Young’s idea as ridiculous political posturing.

But when one examines other jurisdictions that have experimented with stricter sentences for gun crimes, such peremptory criticisms melt away. In a number of cities in the United States -- Detroit, Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami, Pittsburg, Philadelphia -- the number of homicides dropped significantly after the introduction of higher mandatory sentencing laws.

As a general proposition, greater penalties for heinous acts deter more crimes than do lesser penalties (all else being equal). After the passage of stronger sentences in California’s Proposition 8 in 1982, there was a decrease in crimes covered by the amendment, but not for other crimes. Proposition 8 raised sentences by up to five years for criminals with previous convictions such as homicide, rape, robbery and residential burglary. But it did not cover similar crimes such as larceny, auto theft and assault without a firearm.

In the two years before the law passed, all of the crimes it covered were climbing -- as were most of the similar crimes that it didn’t address. In the years just after the law passed, all covered crimes plummeted, down 14 per cent on average, versus a three-per-cent drop for the uncovered ones. By 1985, covered crimes were down by as much as 20 per cent, compared with an average 4.6-per-cent increase in similar, uncovered crimes.

In Richmond, Virginia, a 1997 initiative (Project Exile) that set a five-year mandatory minimum for gun crimes helped reduce homicides in that city by more than 50 per cent -- from 140 at its inception to 69 in 2001. A recent Brookings Institution study has questioned whether this measure was the exclusive reason for the drop in homicides, but it seems reasonable that taking violent thugs off the street for long periods of time helped chop crime rates.

Yet former Ontario judge David Humphrey has argued -- rightly -- that sterner penalties for gun crimes won’t stop hoodlums from buying firearms. We live next to a cesspool of guns in the U.S. and, inevitably, they are going to come here, he told reporters earlier this year. So what is the point of sending a lot of people to jail (in an effort) to prevent a thug from going out and getting a gun in one hour, which he can do? he asked.

That our society is awash in guns only underscores the weakness of regulatory schemes -- such as a gun registry. Since there are so many illegal guns already in circulation, simply raising the costs of acquiring weapons -- by inspiring crooks to invest more creativity in thwarting regulations -- will not stop such criminals from arming themselves.

It therefore makes sense to prosecute harshly those criminals who wield guns. This approach should demand a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison for anyone caught using a gun during the commission of a crime. No exceptions, not even for first-time offenders.

Anything less would make a mockery of the law and might, as is already the case, tempt prosecutors to drop or plea-bargain away the gun charge and focus on the underlying charge of drug possession or robbery in order to ease the courtroom backlog.

So obsessed, in fact, are Crown attorneys and criminal defence lawyers with reducing this courtroom backlog that they often fail to see the larger picture. The gun registry’s $1 billion cost could have paid for enough new court space, computers and judges’ salaries to wipe out the mess of criminal trial delays in Ontario’s courts -- which Roy McMurtry, the province’s chief justice, recently described as the worst in the English-speaking world.

And yet, many lawyers balk at the prospect of mandatory 10-year sentences for gun crimes for fear of even greater backlogs. Here’s their argument: An accused will opt for more trials and more complex, constitutional arguments if he’s worried about getting hauled off to prison for a decade. But this concern seems especially misplaced among lawyers -- whose overriding concern should not be to hustle their clients into pleading guilty.

Focusing on tougher punitive measures for gun crimes is good policy because it serves the cause of justice; it targets violent criminal offenders, not law-abiding gun owners. A mandatory minimum of 10 years would be especially effective since it communicates to would-be criminals that gun-related offences will evoke firm and consistent punishment.