Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns launched early this year, claiming they have the answer to gang violence – ban guns from RCMP-vetted, federally licensed firearm owners.

Their push to ban all handguns and semi-automatic firearms is not the answer but there appears little hope of convincing them of that fundamental truth, so I thought I’d take a look at medical malpractice and see which body of licensed Canadians are more dangerous – doctors or gun owners.

It is important to focus limited government resources where they will do the most good. To know what “the most good” is, we must examine all the facts, not cherry-pick only those which support our position. This axiom applies to all sides of this debate.

If it is truly “time to put public health and safety first” then let’s do that. Virtue signalling and grand gestures solve nothing, especially when those signals and gestures refuse to focus on the source of the problem.

Facts:

• “Patients suffered potentially preventable harm in more than 138,000 hospitalizations in Canada, or about 1 in 18 hospitalizations,” said the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
• There were 84,063 doctors in Canada in 2016.
• In 2014, medical errors were responsible for as many as 30,277 deaths in Canada — more than stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and kidney disease combined.
• Statistics Canada reports a total of 611 homicides in 2016. Of those, 223 were committed with a firearm.

Using the 2014 rate of 30,277 medical deaths per year, doctors are 135 times more likely to kill a Canadian than a bullet.

But deaths from “medical misadventure” don’t make front-page news.

Drug dealers, gang members and terrorists shooting up Toronto streets make it every time.

Banning guns from law-abiding Canadians is like Doctors treating the symptoms of a disease without ever addressing its cause. It’s like taking cars away from sober drivers to stop drunk driver from killing people. It makes no sense.

So, are we willing to look at long-term solutions yet?

Or will we insist feel-good legislation that is not focused on criminal violence or its root causes will solve the issue of violent behaviour in our nation?