title: Lethal firearm-related violence against Canadian women: did tightening gun laws have an impact on women's health and safety?
abstract: Domestic violence remains a significant public health issue around the world, and policy makers continually strive to implement effective legislative frameworks to reduce lethal violence against women. This article examines whether the 1995 Firearms Act (Bill C-68) had a significant impact on female firearm homicide victimization rates in Canada. Time series of gender-disaggregated data from 1974 to 2009 were examined. Two different analytic approaches were used: the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) modelling and the Zivot-Andrews (ZA) structural breakpoint tests. There was little evidence to suggest that increased firearms legislation in Canada had a significant impact on preexisting trends in lethal firearm violence against women. These results do not support the view that increasing firearms legislation is associated with a reduced incidence of firearm-related female domestic homicide victimization.
authors.affiliation: International Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting, New South Wales, Australia. chair@ic-wish.org
authors.forename: Samara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McPhedran
authors.affiliation: Simon Fraser University.
authors.forename: Gary
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mauser
mesh_terms: D002170:Canada; D019548:Crime Victims / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D017579:Domestic Violence / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000517:prevention & control; D005260:Female; D005389:Firearms / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011322:Primary Prevention / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D011634:Public Health / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012307:Risk Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D016387:Women's Health / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D014948:Wounds, Gunshot / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control*