 Welcome back to Think Tech, more specifically, welcome back to View from the North, where we're going to talk about a comparison of crimes in Canada and the U.S. And that's all kinds of crimes, but it's especially gun violence crimes with Ken Rogers, Dr. Ken Rogers, a retired businessman in Kelowna, British Columbia. I, Ken, thank you for joining us. Hello, Jay. So there's this Juristat Information Gathering Organization, and it's Canadian, and they gather statistics about crime in Canada. And of course, you know, they're not current, just as the U.S. stats are on current, but they do show trends. Can you talk about that? Well, crime in most types of crime, Canada and the U.S. are similar. The biggest difference relates to guns. You know, anything to do with guns, the U.S. problem is many times, like five times worse than Canada. I mean, Canada has a national ban on assault weapons. We've had a program of weapon buybacks for a long time, and, you know, they've increased the number of types of guns that are included in the buyback program. So really the crimes where we have weapons involved usually relate to, you know, crime syndicate disputes, disputes between one drug peddling organization and another drug peddling organization, even though our drug problem is not quite as bad as the U.S. I mean, it's maybe one-and-a-half times. The U.S. is perhaps one-and-a-half times as much drug problems per capita as Canada, but that statistic is nothing compared to just the gun violence generally. So we don't have these massive school shootings on a regular basis or massive shootings on a regular basis, but most of Canada is similar to most of the U.S. I mean, population differences also play a key factor in crime rates. Like a very unusual crime factor in Canada is we have a fairly large, you know, five or six percent of the population is native, and in some provinces like Saskatchewan and Manitoba, that population is considerably higher, and the crime rate for the native population is really high, and it connects back to other social problems like the alcoholism addiction, drug addiction, homelessness connect directly to the crime rates involving, you know, the natives in particular, the alcohol addiction plays a key factor since genetically they seem to be more predisposed to becoming alcoholic with, you know, without a massive amount of drink to trigger it. However, you know, Canada does not have as big a Hispanic population as the U.S. or Black population as a percentage of the total. So, you know, a lot of our big cities have much higher crime rates in the smaller cities and the rural areas, the same as the U.S., when it comes to virtually all nonviolent crimes. Canada is very similar to the U.S., but the violent crimes, the U.S. is miles ahead of us, or miles deeper in the sewer, whatever way you want to describe it, certainly I don't think that's a nice thing to say about the U.S. Well, let's look at that. I think the number of violent crimes in the U.S. is much higher, whether it's guns or other weapons, and that is so interesting that Canada has a more civilized approach. And I'm not sure I told you before, but I was very impressed in Australia with the buyback program in Australia. And what they did in Australia is they said, you know, we're going to buy these guns back from you and we'll pay you a fair price for them. Don't cheer up, you've got to sell them. And if you don't sell them back to us, it's a crime. And you will go to jail for failing to sell them back to us. Does it work the same way in Canada? No, we're not quite as coercive. However, if you take the Australia-Canada-U.S. comparison, importantly, if you think of for years and years and years British in the United Kingdom, you know, the policeman that walks the beat, they never had any firearms whatsoever. They carried a billy stick. And once the American Revolution was on, one of the key things I suppose you could take why did Americans want guns in the first place, you'd say, well, to protect themselves from Big Brother, you know, from government doing something they don't like. And it's bubbled and evolved since then, where Canada, Australia, New Zealand, you know, we're closer to the British approach that, you know, guns shouldn't be around. But they are. So how hard is it to get a gun in Canada? Well, you don't get the gun in Canada. You know, the guns all come from the U.S. You know, that makes sense because there's so many guns here. We have 400 million guns in the United States. We have a population of only 330 million. That means every man, woman, and child, and plus there's enough guns for everyone, which is really, you wonder about that. Yeah. Well, the Canadian U.S. border is basically, you know, easy for anybody to go across smuggling a gun or smuggling anything else. I mean, we get, you know, virtually all our drugs smuggled across the border. And, you know, you could even have the reverse of drugs could come into Canada and smuggled into the U.S. because the market's bigger, you know. But that, you know, is key to any of the bad guys in Canada. They get their guns and ammo in the U.S. So what about the Second Amendment, you know? Can we have this perverse protection of guns in the Second Amendment? And it's, I say perverse because I really doubt that the Founding Fathers wanted it to go as far as it has gone. And that's one of the reasons there are so many guns in this country that a lot of people believe that they need to have guns. It's, you know, and I keep running into people who are, it's kind of a euphemistic thing. They say they need to have guns, but what it really is, it's a toy. It's an expression of macho. It has nothing to do with self-defense. There is no real need. They're just happy as punch to have a half a dozen guns in the house and make some feel good. So, you know, it's really a mixed bag from a sociological, psychological point of view. But the Second Amendment gives them cover. And the gun manufacturers in this country are a strong lobby. And they are, you know, like connected with the National Rifle Association, the NRA. And together they're a very strong lobby. And what does strong mean? It means they have money and they give the money to legislators. They give the money to legislators in the Congress and in the state, you know, the state legislatures as well. So it's all kind of corrupted. And it's been corrupted under the Republicans for some years now. And as a result, and this is really a problem, and I don't think this exists in Canada, is that they pay the legislators to protect their guns because they really care about their guns. And there's enough money floating around from the gun manufacturers and the public who cares to have these toys, you know, so that they can pay big bucks to a lot of legislators. As a result, you'll have a culture in the Congress, in the Republican Party. You have a culture in a lot of state houses in this country where they're never going to do gun control. They're never going to take away assault rifles and automatic equipment. So, you know, this is really a problem. Because what it says, the message to the public is it's free for all. And if you want to be, you know, protected, you have to protect yourself. We can talk about that also. But my first question to you about Canada is, do you have a Second Amendment? And do you have a lobby, you know, that advocates in favor of expanding gun rights? We have nothing whatsoever like the Second Amendment. And we do not have the same level of lobbying in Canada whatsoever. Our federal election, you know, probably costs about the same as the amount of money used to generate one senator in the U.S. That is our time for electioneering is, you know, a matter of like 60 days or less. We don't start, you know, campaigning a year and a half ahead of the election date. And the amount of money spent for the elections is fairly small. Our turnout is similar to the U.S., you know, not terrific. But certainly, money is not of the same influence on politicians as in the U.S. You know, it's interesting what you say sounds to me like the, you know, the condition of the world in terms of the communities of the world. There is no Second Amendment outside the U.S. If you want to have a gun, usually you run into some kind of bureaucratic obstacle, then you have to get the gun in the black market. God knows where it comes from. Maybe it comes from the U.S. where there are so many of them. And furthermore, you know, gun control in a lot of places is absolute for obvious political reasons. If somebody, for example, is an autocrat or anywhere near an autocrat, he doesn't want anybody in his country having a gun because that, you know, that leads to, it leads to protest. It leads to assassination. It leads to regime change. It leads to violence in the streets. And I would say to you, I don't know how you or the Canadian culture sees this, but as I see it, the more guns you have in a given society, the more likely you have violence in the streets. People who have guns are drawn to use them. And from, from, Jew from the North is probably, you know, sympathetic to that. In other words, the Canadians, I guess, would feel that the Americans have a problem, that the more guns you have, the more gun violence, right? Well, you mean you don't think the Americans have a problem because of guns? I think, I think it's absolute insanity. It's, it's stupid. I mean, I tend to think Americans and Canadians are very similar for the most part, but somehow there's a few brain cells missing in Americans and on anything whatsoever to do with guns. It's just stupid. It's totally unacceptable. It's unreasonable. Yeah. Well, it's dangerous. It's dangerous for kids in school. It's dangerous, you know, for people who don't want to have their houses broken into it and so forth. And the argument that if you have a gun, you'll be safe or really sound like poppycock to me. That's, that's a fabricated argument. I remember Ken on January 6th. There's some very interesting photographs came out of that, you know, the Proud Boys and other such right-wing organizations. They walk around with guns. They were walking around with guns that day with fosters like policemen carrying 40 fines or clocks or some kind of handgun. And they were there at the Capitol with those guns. And what, you know, it strikes and, you know, nobody stopped them. In fact, Trump said, I don't want to use you to use the, you know, the X-ray machine to identify the people with guns. Let them walk around. That's what he said. Anyway, we know that. Well, he, he rightly understood they weren't there to harm him. Yeah, he wasn't concerned. So, you know, when I, when I get out of that, see if you feel the same way. When I get out of that, is that for not everyone, but for a large part of the country, guns are a political weapon. They are, you know, in the holster on January 6th, they are, they are wired by, held by, collected by people who believe that one day they may want to use them to turn the government over, to have another who they may want to use them for some kind of political protest. And, and, you know, guns give you this extraordinary power against someone who doesn't have a gun. You know, if you're standing there in the street with a guy who's burning a gun at you and you don't have a gun, you know, you'll say, oh yeah, sure, three bags full, that's fine. Yeah, take my wallet, take my shoes, it's okay. And, you know, you can extend that to a large crowd of people where, you know, one persuasion of that crowd has the guns and the other doesn't. How far can you get against a group of people who have guns, they're like a small army or police force? And so, I mean, I really believe that in the minds of those on the right side of the political spectrum, they see guns as a political instrument. They see guns for the day when they're going to take over. And this is what Trump as a, as an autocrat, you know, I don't say a potential autocrat, a real autocrat, this is what he has in his mind. And, and I think he's already shown us that he can do dog whistle and he can get his base fired up literally to use those guns. So it's more than just kids in school. There's more than people breaking into your own with guns. It's, it's a political statement, political weapon. What do you think? I agree with you fully. I interestingly, my highly educated brother made a comment about about the matter and said, well, the only good thing about Americans having guns is if Trump wins and starts, you know, being autocratic, you know, the saying that that the purpose of having the public with a lot of guns is to protect themselves from big brother. So if Trump is running the big brother machine, you're going to have an awful lot of people that don't like Trump and don't like, you know, an autocratic government that will suddenly be less cooperative. They won't be very easy to roll over on. No, but you know what my observation, and maybe it's small, my bubble is too small to see, you know, the larger picture. But I think that the people with the guns are the ones who like Trump and that the others don't have guns. They, they, they, they resist, you know, the, the argument that guns would be helpful to defend themselves. And, you know, this is, this is a problem that the other madness is, you know, you talk about this is madness and it is madness, but why in the world should any person, any civilian in the United States or anywhere have an assault rifle? That's a military grade weapon. That's what you use on the battlefield. As a matter of fact, there are those people that are acquiring and sending them to the troops in Ukraine because it's a, it's a battlefield weapon. Why in the world would we permit anyone to have that? The, the, the leverage in terms of the damage this individual can do is extraordinary. It's built to kill. It's built to kill many people at the same moment. That is an extension of what you said before. That is madness. And yet, and yet here's the thing. Congress in this country, based with that, seeing it in the newspaper, like every other day of a mass shooting somewhere, some unpredictable place, even in rural areas, Congress does nothing. It completely locked up. And the Supreme Court knocked off the assault alone in New York State, which was a great protection to the citizens of New York State. And now, you know, you can have a sign on and carry around a gun with you. And the authorities have to let you do that. That affects every state in the country, especially states that are, you know, concerned about sirens. So, you know, you get a side effect of, of the gun scenario. Oh, interestingly, of recent, there's been a bunch of, of what I'd never heard of before called swatting is where somebody phones in, makes a phony complaint that, that somebody's just, you know, the, the prosecutor was just shooting his wife. So you should, you know, have a special raid. And then the SWAT teams show up with, you know, phenomenal, you know, military gear. Now, the SWAT teams in Canada are the same, but they're not expecting wherever they go to be as heavily armed as they are, you know, in, in Canada, the SWAT team always has a muscle advantage. So the American SWAT team, you know, is always on edge and trigger happy, you know, hence you get a type of crime. I call swatting a crime that you don't have in Canada at all. Or at least we haven't had yet, you know, but Canada always bandages to have a few copycats of anything that the US does. You know, well, to go, to go to Canada for just a minute, we can learn from Canada. That's one of the reasons I like to do this show with you. We can learn from Canada, not everything, not in all ways. And sometimes Canada, you know, can't teach us something that we should know. But in this case, maybe it can't. So if we could take the best parts of Canada's gun policy plan policy for that matter, what would be to what what is your advice to the United States? Be lofty. Go ahead. Well, first of all, Canada is not perfect. You know, one item where Canada, Canada at least is willing to try experiments, you know, one of the major experiments was on, you know, anything other than, you know, heavy violent crimes. Canada's bail system is was pretty easy. So everybody was getting out on bail. Well, when once the, you know, post COVID showed that all of the the street population had greatly increased or the homelessness population that the homeless population combined with mental illness, drug alcoholism addiction and drug addiction, you know, they all combined so that, you know, you had an increase in these, what I would call small crimes, but very important ones is somebody just bash a store window and then just stand there to wait for the police to pick them up so they could get a couple of free meals and then be back out in the street the next day. You know, the now that ridiculously easy bail system they have now just recently backed off on, but not very far, you know, so relative to the US, the Canadian bail system is is easier. And I don't know that that is a wonderful sign. I mean, you have probably seen the statistics that the US jail population as a percentage of the per capita is about four or five times what Canada is and way higher than anybody else in the world. You know, so, you know, but I think that there's other reasons for that, like having private industry operated jail, you know, that just seems absolutely stupid to Canadian. However, I don't know that there's an awful lot that that the US can learn from Canada other than to do with guns, you know, just less guns make some more peaceful, less crime, less terrible crime society. It's a much safer feeling. Yeah, well, you really worry it's it. You got to shoot innocent kids in school on that. And that's of concern to everyone. Just as they can shoot an innocent kid in school, they can shoot you on the street or in the course of some kind of criminal activity. Robert, well, well, you think of just a simple item like you're in a large city and you're going to ride the you're going to commute in the train. So you're sitting in a train chugging long underground somewhere or or above ground on light rail transit. But in the US, if if there's 50 people on in your car, you know, and how many of them are carrying a gun? You know, you're you're busy, you know, concerned about that. We're in Canada, nobody's carrying a gun on that train. You know, what troubles me can I don't know if there's anything we can do about this. But is that, you know, if you keep an issue at the top of the priority of this for a length of time, people become complacent about it. They stop thinking about it. If you keep on feeding, you know, scary raw meat news stories into into the media, to the media, to people, the population in general, they forget about a story that was raw meat here a week or months before. And I'm troubled that the whole notion of gun control, prime control, the improvement of our prison system, and not just the system in general. And we should talk about that, too, if we had time. You know, people people don't put into the top of the priority list. They're interested in what happened yesterday, what the news has been talking about. And sometimes what the news has been talking about is not important relative to public safety, but public safety slips at the bottom. And I think that's what's happened. You know, ideally you'd have the the parents of these kids who were killed, the families of those who were murdered senselessly by people with guns and people who are, you know, deranged on the street. Nobody takes care of them. Nobody treats them the way they should be treated, however that is. And so we forget. And when we forget, we don't write letters to our congressmen. We don't write opinion pieces for the newspaper. We don't send money to the gun control and gun advocate organizations. And so it'll come up again. There'll be a big mass murder in one of these days. But for now, it seems to me like people are complacent and I would bet you five they're also complacent in Canada. They're fairly complacent. I suppose one I would call it major crime difference in Canada is our major politicians don't lie consistently. Like like your point of repeating something over and over, the public becomes immune to it. Trump has has made a career of that, his whole political thing. He can say a lie often enough that his body, his base tends to believe it. And the rest of the public becomes to immune to listening to about it, you know, and they tend to somewhat pass it off and get on with what's happening the next day. That's the problem. It's priorities and it's politicians like Trump who ignore the priorities, who dishevel the priorities and who never ever do anything about dealing with the things that are a priority. So here we are. Anyway, I wish I could say I'm enlightened or rather elevated in this discussion. But I right now I feel that there's not much happening in terms of gun control, and it's going to continue on for a while, just in the same way. And every few days, we'll see another gun violence episode. But thanks, Ken. Stay safe. Stay, stay on the street. OK, and we'll see. I don't have to worry about that in in Canada. You know, then you can say it to me. Yeah, well, keep your wave safe. OK, we'll talk soon, a couple of weeks. Take care. All right. Bye for now.