Map(s) of the Week: Gun ownership, week 1

RICK EGLINTON/TORONTO STAR

This week's map is the first installment in a two-week series on gun ownership in the GTA. It shows firearm licence holders as a percentage of the complete population (all ages) by postal area.

Next week, we will compare the 2008 data in this map with equivalent data from 2004 to see where in the GTA gun ownership is rising and falling. As well, we will map hunting permit data to look how the relationship between hunting and gun ownership changes between neighbourhoods.

In the 905, gun ownership is highest in the Woodbridge area of Vaughan (L4L), the rural area north of Pickering (L1Y), Newmarket (L3Y), and Oshawa (L1G, L1J, L1H).

Gun ownership rates are generally lower in the 416 area code. Lawrence Park (M4N) leads the city, followed by the area near the former Downsview military base (M3K), the southeastern corner of Etobicoke (M8W) and the Royal York Rd./Bloor St. W. area of Etobicoke (M8X).

Information was obtained under the federal Access to Information Act from the Canadian Firearms Centre. For some low-population FSAs with fewer than 40 licence holders, the RCMP censored out the number. For the 166 FSAs, we have partial data for seven, no data for six, and complete data for the remainder. The total of licences in each case come from adding together the two types of firearms licences: possession and acquisition licence holders registered after 1991 and holders of the grandfathered possession-only licences obtained before then.

Click on the image to see the map.

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Comments

[DDT]

Re: The hunting license map
Did it ever occur to you that you don't need a hunting license for target shooting, skeet or trap shooting?

[Anonymous]

As a gun owner, I am completely frightened that the RCMP is just handing out data from the gun registry. This is very irresponsible and a violation of my privacy. I will definitely be contacting the Canadian Shooting Sports Association and asking them to determine if there is a basis for a lawsuit against the RCMP and the government on this.

For all those that say that this data can't be used to rob/burglarize gun owners, just think about this for a minute. Postal codes are often very granular. My postal code, for example, covers only the court that I live on. If someone were to look at my postal code in this list obtained from the government, and see that there are say 2 gun owners on my court (there may be more, I only know of myself and one other guy), it would not be infeasible for them to decide to systematically break into all of the houses on my court looking for guns, especially if they decide to narrow it down by say, looking for houses that have pickup trucks in the driveway (since a lot of us are of the truck driving variety).

[jfw]

What are you trying to infer from this mapping business. It really says nothing.

[Robert]

I don't understand what purpose this could possibly have except to drive anti-gun hysteria.

Unfortunately for us, there are some people who refuse to accept the fact that firearms used in crimes are obatined illegally. The same way that drugs are obtained illegally.

Because they don't understand the problem nor want to, they figure by having rifles and black powder rifles registered, this will somehow cut down on crime.

I simply wish they'd sit back and think before handing out such tripe.

[Rod Paines]

Well this is just a jim dandy map - shows where all the legal guns are - you know the people that went to the bother of getting checked out by the police, paying the fees and actually getting a license - now the real map we need is the one showing all of the illegal guns - you know the ones that Miller/McGuinty want banned - but wait isnt that the same thing????

[J. Malaga]

May I respectfully suggest a more pertinent map. A map of ILLEGAL guns that are entering Canada from United States. It would be important to know at which border crossing the most guns find their way into our country. ( just a small hint the majority do not come into Canada by way of any legal border crossings )
Then again the police already have that information and are powerless to do anything about it because they serve their political masters and not the citizens of this province. When did the Provincial Police stop "Serving and Protecting" our rights and start using what seems to be their new mandate "Keep the Peace at any Cost because the government in power wants to be re-elected "?
It would be refreshing to see a Canadian newspaper do investigative work on this problem and pushing our judicial system to take some meaningful steps towards protecting the public.
Of course we won't see that kind of real journalism in a Canadian Newspaper because it might not be politically correct.

[St. John]

This is an interesting article but it misses the point. Handguns are the problem!

Legally-owned hunting rifles and shotguns are not really a huge problem in the city. I think legally-owned handguns are a much bigger threat to the public safety because of potential misuse and theft. I do not want my neighbours to have loaded handguns lying around whether they are legal or not.

Olympic target-shooting aside, high-calibre, automatic handguns have only a few purposes: Homicide, Murder, Suicide, or Intimidation. They have no place in the residential houses, condos, and apartments of the great city like Toronto.

Pistol owners in Toronto, I understand your position (and sympathize) but can’t you target shoot with a smaller, safer calibre gun?

[Mark]

There are serious flaws in your assumptions. Some people have already pointed these flaws out.

First flaw is that all firearm license holders own guns. There are many reasons why a firearms license holder may not hold or own guns. I put it to you that these are not statistical anomalies but more common then you may think. More so in an urban environment. Case in point how many University of Toronto students with licenses actually own a gun? Mum or dad probably own and store the guns.

Second flaw is that hunters hunt every year. Hunting can be an expensive sport. It requires holiday time and it requires money. It is illogical to expect every hunter to be able to afford to spend a week or two hunting every year.

Third hunters only hunt in Ontario ( less likely for the very wealthy). The very wealthy often hunt outside the province. One year they may hunt moose in Newfoundland, The next Caribou in Quebec, the next might be deer in New York or ducks in Argentina etc. Every year they may hunt and never purchase an Ontario license.

The statistic prove time and again. Gun sports are safe. Hunting in particular is a very safe sport with very few accidents. It is a sport that the people of Toronto have a moral right to participate in the same as anyone else in the country.

[Robert]

I cannot see a viable reason for posting this map. What is it supposed to show/prove. The only reason I can why this would be posted is to stir up anti-gun sentiment. The worst part is that the people who will get riled up are the people who don't understand the issues involved.

How many crimes in the last 30 years have been committed with a black powder rifle? None? Great. No need to worry about them then. How many bolt action hunting rifles have been used in drive bys and bank robberies? None? Awesome, no problems there.

The problem is that people lump all guns together out of ignorance. They don't know the different types of firearms, but they damn sure have an opinon on them.

The violence in Toronto is related to illegal handguns. Some of these guns are stolen, however the vast majority are ILLEGAL FIREARMS. That means they were brought over from the states or shipped to Toronto and were not stopped by police.

If a drug dealer can get illegal drugs into Toronto, they can also get illegal guns into Toronto the exact same way.

Regulating hunting rifles and people who legally get firearms will not help the problem, as the criminals DO NOT use those means to obtain firearms.

I'll go one step further. Even if all firearms were banned in Canada, criminals would STILL HAVE THEM.

The only way we can stop firearm crime is to halt the smuggling of them. A task that is virtually impossible.

[mikey boy]

google maps are cool, we get that... but who murders someone with there own registerd gun, id like to see that statistic, all the gun crimes are from guns that arent registerd and illegally obtained. People with firearms licence are respectable responsible tax paying individuals who have a mtg, family and a life. this artice should pay more attention to the irresponsible illegal gun owners, give me a break here ..... you have to be an idiot if you think that tougher gun licence laws is the solution,, what a joke

[jacky]

I agree with the above comments. David Miller is just trying to win votes with his anti-gun proposal. The general public is not aware that this proposal will not reduce the gun crimes in Toronto. They don't know criminals use illegal handguns and would never join target shooting clubs or take safety courses which is required to obtain a firearms license.

Most Toronto residents are immigrants who do not have family/friends with a firearms license and are frightened at the thought since the media often associates guns with bad people, gangs, drugs, and death. Just as an example, I'm an immigrant from Hong Kong and since I moved here 27 years ago (I'm now 31), nobody I know has even held a real handgun before! Contrast to many in rural areas who own guns for hunting and self-defense (mostly white people).

[Andrew E]

St. John wrote: This is an interesting article but it misses the point. Handguns are the problem!
Legally-owned hunting rifles and shotguns are not really a huge problem in the city. I think legally-owned handguns are a much bigger threat to the public safety because of potential misuse and theft. I do not want my neighbours to have loaded handguns lying around whether they are legal or not.
Olympic target-shooting aside, high-calibre, automatic handguns have only a few purposes: Homicide, Murder, Suicide, or Intimidation. They have no place in the residential houses, condos, and apartments of the great city like Toronto.
Pistol owners in Toronto, I understand your position (and sympathize) but can’t you target shoot with a smaller, safer calibre gun?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Your argument is flawed in two ways: legally owned handguns are not left "lying around"... sports shooters follow the letter of the law when it comes to safe storage, which includes trigger locks, locked vaults, only one key, and ammunition stored in a separate locked box.
Second, pistol competition involves many calibres, from the brawny .45ACP used in Practical Defense competition, down to the puny .22LR that punches holes in paper targets at the majority of ranges, due to its low cost (about $3 for 50 .22 rounds, vs. about 75 cents a round for the .45) .... so many target shooters are already using the smallest ammunition chambered for handguns.
As far as a "safer" calibre, yes, the .22 is smaller, but with correct shot placement (i.e. not holding it like an extra in a 50-cent video) it can be lethal.
Mayor Miller and his bed mates see all pistols as the problem, regardless of calibre. He wants all of them confiscated from their legal owners, while turning a blind eye to the issue of illegally-owned guns.
The real problem? Well, infer what you want from my 50-cent comment.

[Nappey]

Comment to st john..
No sir you are sadly mistaken handguns are not the problem, your opinion obviously comes from fear and not from reasonalbe thought. Meaning your mayor managed to instill fear into you to view as handguns being bad. Your opinion is mostlikly based on emotions, and is exactly what the mayor is counting on.
His stats are completely false, mistaken and misleading. Look at what he states now go do yourown reaserch and you will blatenly see you have been lied too. Based on what you wrote we all can see that you have no experience with the subject, and are completely swayed by hollywood stigma. EX. you dont fly backward ten feet when shot with a handgun.
No legal owner keeps a loaded handgun. Why? Its against the law, firearms and ammo must be kept seperate. There starts the debat. All laws new and old are passed to keep the legal owners at bay, and do nothing for the criminals. Criminals do not follow the law any law thats why they are criminals. Now I ask you, do criminal obtain proper permits and licences to accuire registered and tracable firearms??? Thats like taking your car to commite a crime and leaving your licence plates on LOL.
STJohn, do you know that firearms for personly defence in canada is illegal? The media always fails to mention that. They also fail to mention that handguns cannot be transported at will whenever you want or where you want, you need an ATT for that. See your neighbour cant just take his firearm to a local gunsmith without clearance from the authourities.
I shoot with police officers on a regular basis, not one I have ever met in my shooting carrer agrees with the mayor and his patsty posie. Not one.
By the way one of your neighbours has a handgun registered, did you know that? Obviously not, because registared owners do not advertise what they have.
Here is a question for you. If given the choice what would you want to be shot with a 9mm pistol or a shotgun? Ill take a pistol myself any day of the week.

Your comments are soley based on emotion and not logical. NO offence.

Did you know that there are more deaths involving stolen vehicles, let ban them too.
Knives were invented for one purpose, to kill not to cut. Let ban them too.
Alchol kills more people than firearms, let ban that also.
Let also ban hockey, baseball, golf while were at it.

I challenge everyone who is scared and dislikes firearms to take a safety course/licence and see if you are affraid afterwards. I guarantee you will have more respect for them, and will no longer be affraid.

[R C]

We should be proud of Mayor Miller and thank him for telling us that pursuing our tradition of hunting is so wrong. I learned a lot from Mayor Miller. If you cannot/do not want to solve an issue (like drugs and guns), blame it on something that most people will be sympathetic to. I guess most people dont know that guns are already banned (just like drugs and homicide). Most people do not know that these guns are bought by hunters and shooters (who bring us medals and glory). Thank you David Miller for telling us which hobbies we should pursue. The ban on guns affects those who are not gang members (For gang punks they are already banned; and guess Mayor Miller does not want to do anything about getting guns from them). What a wonderful Mayor we have. Lets have someone better next time ;)

[Doug]

Well I think that to get rid of the Gun problem that the politicians that are involved with the coruption should be ousted and then get rid of the gangs only then can you control the gun problem. It seems to me that the show has been going on for 62 years and just now there is a gun problem.
Next you will be after the fisherman saying that there is a knife problem so take all filet knives away. Again the Ontario Goverment proves to me they can rob us of our money and now our options of hunting legaly and fishing as this is where this will eventually all lead to. Anything that the people have fun doing the goverment has to either tax or make renewable licences for and only a small bit of that money is placed back into our resources. Heck the next thing you know we will need a sidewalk permit LOL

[zeister]

A number of facts are obvious from this article. There is a significant number of urban Canadians that enjoy their historic firearms culture. From the published national crime figures it is painfully obvious that legally licensed firearms owners are not a significant problem in the GTA or elsewhere in Canada. The anti-firearms lobby do not base their arguments on science or reality but rather on emotion and propaganda. They manipulate an inherent fear of firearms by some urbanites based on lack of experience and an unreasonable bias against firearms and firearm owners. Politicians like David Miller and the Liberal Party of Canada have learned to feed that fear and in so doing to milk votes. They are part of the problem. They have neither the will nor the competence to solve the socio-economic problems that breed the gangs nor are they willing to suppress the gangs. Instead they engage in finger pointing. It is always someone else's fault for the gun crime. They have misrepresented the facts in the past and continue to do so. Who is the next visible minority to be persecuted? These arrogant buffoons have the gall to pass judgement on which cultures in our society are politically correct or should I say which one offers the most votes. Shame on them and shame on those with the same intolerant views.

[Andrew]

For those saying "look, higher gun rates mean lower crime rates", did you look at the legend? The percentages top out at "more than 4%", and only a handful of postal codes meet that level. Do you really think that an additional 1 or 2 gun owners per hundred households are keeping the forces of evil at bay? Ever hear of the phrase "correlation does not equal causation"? But hey, by all means let's get our gun ownership rates closer to the United States. In 2001, 39% of households there reported owning a gun according to this survey (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=234). Once Harper gets rid of the long gun registry, I'm sure the gun lobby will want to move on to repealing the automatic weapons ban, allowing concealed carry permits, and so on. Because by your logic, if everyone is armed, crime should end. That's why the worst murder rate in Canada (Edmonton) is 4 per 100,000 in 2006, and the worst in the U.S. was Detroit with, let's see, 47.3 per 100,000 (http://www.macleans.ca/canada/national/article.jsp?content=20080312_110944_110944).

[Neil]

i don't think that any criminal, who is going to attempt to steal guns from a collector or any other law abiding gun owner, is going to see this map and use it as a shopping list. i don't think that it takes a rocket scientist to know that areas that are more rural (oshawa/whitby/bowmanville, newmarket, stouffville) have a higher population of hunters than other more urban areas. i think that people are over reacting to this map.

[frasie]

I'm a registered gun owner in TO
my firearm is 300k north at a cottage
this information is skewed
Go gangs and guns task force!!!

[Mike Berryhill]

This is a clear cut case of yellow emotionally driven pseudo journalism.

How many people were injured by cars yesterday? How many crimes were committed using cars yesterday?

If lives being saved is your goal, it is clear that cars should be banned.

But that is not your goal. It is sensationalised infotainment using falsehoods, innuendo and intends to victimise honest responsible people for your own political agenda, as much as Hitler's was against the Jews. It is not honest journalism. It is the opposite.

Your journalism is a greater threat to people than was that single gun.

Shame on you.

[Mike Berryhill]

Nice censorship you practice on this rag.

It's not journalism, it's hypism.

Print that.

[Freewheeling]

As a legal firearms owner I resent this serise of articles, thank you sir for letting the criminals zero in on where to steal them from. An artilce from the Ottawa Citizen did the same thing recently (they published a map of gun stores in the area). How can you be so stupid! Once again the press is creating "fear mongering" by targeting the lawful citizens for what? Oh ya, to sell newspapers! What about public safety? As a member of gun club and the CSSA and the OFAH I speak for all of us by saying "get off our case" how about going after the illegal arms trade, help us by promoting the safe and responsable use of firearms and educate youth, not create a panic and fear. Also shame on the Government and the RCMP for allowing this information to be public access. Whats next a public access list of all our SIN numbers and banking information?

[Jim Pruner]

Once again the Toronto media (and media in general for that matter!) are showing how backward and out of touch with reality they really are. Thank you all for giving the criminal a focus for where to steal more guns! Did any editor at your paper even consider this to be a bad idea to print, or are they unconcerned about how to REALLY fight the war on gun crime?!!
I find this kind of attitude exasperating to put it mildly.
Some of the comments on here are almost as ridiculous too! Suggesting that there isn't any room for guns in the city and that all gun owners should move to the country is so ignorant I can hardly contain my contempt and keep this comment civil. City people are perfectly entitled to have guns so that they can legally hunt wild game or keep handguns to compete in shooting sports at approved events or locations.
With this kind of attitude in mind, why don't I counter by saying this: I don't see any reason for anti-gun minded individuals to live in Canada anymore. Why don't they just separate and form their own gun-free utopia and leave the rest of us law-abiding gun owners to our ways, and then we'll see which society has it better or worse when it comes to gun crime?
Whoever approved the printing of the information needs to be reprimanded and possibly terminated-- freedom of information is a great thing, but just because we CAN print doesn't mean we SHOULD print!

[John Green]

Some one some where has lost all sense of reality. The guns causing the grief in the GTA are not the guns shown in the picture captioned in this article. The guns are not sporting weapons owned by law abiding citizens of the area. The guns are the ones that have never been registered or have been stolen from some unfortunate individual who in all likelyhood had his firearms registered. Thanks for letting every person of less than standard morals know where to start their next "shopping" expedition. It is reporting and knee jerk reactions like this article and the narrow minded views of the mayor of your city that will lead to eventual disarming of the law abiding and the unabated arming of the masses of unlicenced, unregistered, uncaring, ulcers running the streets of what was once Toronto the Good. Toronto, get ready to say Good Bye to your sporting weapons, and Good God another kid was shot. But with all the legal weapons gone that just can't happen! RIGHT!

[William Manary]

I am sorry but do you as jurnalists think you are doing the people in the GTA a service and if you think so you need to bang your heads against a wall 3 or 4 times or untill your brains rattle back into place. You are doing the leg work for the gangs and other criminals who look to break in to houses to aquire firearms for crime. You are giving them areas that are the highest in gun owners. Have you thought about how many innocent lives you are putting at risk or do you even care it looks good in the paper.I do realise that they could possibly do this themselves but I did not think a newspaper person would be so willing as to give them the information just to show how smart the reporter is. This is one of the reasons that this foolish law needs to be ended because unethecal people like you figuring out how to go through the system to find a loop hole to get the info. We never thought it would be a reporter looking to get a few headlines out of it would be the culprit. As my Granddaughter used to say SMARTEN UP!!!!!!!!