1 Gun Control & Violence Prevention Bill C-71: An Act to amend certain Acts and Regulations in relation to firearms Brief submitted by the Canadian Women’s Foundation to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security May, 2018 The Canadian Women’s Foundation is Canada’s national public foundation dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls. Since 1991, we have invested in more than 1,500 community programs across Canada that help women and girls move out of violence, out of poverty, and into confidence and leadership. Since 1993, the Canadian Women’s Foundation has invested more than $18 million in violence prevention programs across Canada. We invest in programs that work along a continuum of violence prevention and rebuilding lives, including programs and shelters which build the community and capacity of organizations working to end gender-based violence. Through this work we’ve learned that ending domestic violence creates safer communities for everyone: when mothers are safe, their children are less likely to grow up experiencing violence in their own lives. In Canadian households, the presence of firearms in the home is the single greatest risk factor for lethality of domestic violence. With online organizing by men involved in violent misogyny on the rise, it’s time to move swiftly and surely to strong regulation of firearms in Canada to increase protection for women and girls. Women comprise 80% of those killed by intimate partners annually. With 72 intimate partner homicides in 2016, 85 in 2015, and 83 in 2014, on average a Canadian woman is killed by her intimate partner every six days. To date this year, 57 women have already been murdered in Canada, almost one every second day for the first four months of the year. 1 Rural women are particularly vulnerable to homicide by firearms. Saskatchewan reported the highest rate of firearm-related homicides in 2016, and Alberta experienced the second highest rate. Shotguns and rifles commonly kept in rural homes have been referred to as “the weapons of choice” when it comes to domestic violence by the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs. In violent homes, these weapons have been used to intimidate and control women living in rural areas.
Gun Control & Violence Prevention
Jul 05, 2023
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