Comments on the Article ..."Gun Control and Rates of Firearms Violence in Canada and the United States" by Robert J. Mundt

Beginning of article

The major thesis of the article by Mundt (1990) is that parallel trends in violent firearm crimes, firearm suicides, and firearm accidental deaths in both the U.S. and Canada prove that the decrease in firearm crimes and deaths in Canada is "part of a secular trend as in the United States", not the result of firearm control legislation in Canada.

A detailed examination, however, reveals that the article is badly flawed with factual inaccuracies (using wrong numbers), logical inconsistencies (using inappropriate data and deriving conclusions not apparent from the data analyzed), and methodological fallacies (using unproven assumptions). The trends in the two countries are, in fact, not parallel. The analysis and the conclusion of the article are thus erroneous. Contrary to the article, it is clear from the available data that decreases in firearm crimes and firearm deaths in Canada are much steeper than in the U.S. and are most likely the result of the 1978 firearm control legislation.

Factual inaccuracies

(1) On page 140, paragraph 1, Mundt states, "Rates for 1986 and 1987 were lower, but that for 1987 is exactly at the mean for the years 1974 -- 1987." The actual 1987 homicide rate was 2.51 per 100,000 population while the average rate for 1974-1987 was 2.71 per 100,000. Thus the 1987 rate was 8% lower than the 1974-1987 rate.

(2) In the last sentence on page 140, Mundt says, "However, the 1985 rate is still higher than the five-year mean for 1974-1978; ..." Yet the data show an average firearm robbery rate of 32.2 per 100,000 population in 1974-1978, as compared to the 1985 rate of 27 …