IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE TO GET GUNS OFF THE STREETS?
Frustration grows, but statistics scarce
Sunday’s mass shooting on Toronto’s Danforth Avenue was just hours behind Toronto’s Mayor John Tory when he voiced a question sounding more heartfelt than calculated: “Why does anyone in this city need a gun at all?”
Whether that signalled a call for greater gun control or a possible municipal ban or just a frustrated man looking for answers, his question renewed debate of whether ridding Toronto of private guns would help, and whether it was even possible.
In the wake of Tory’s question, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the federal government is prepared to consider tightening handgun laws; Bill Blair, minister for reducing organized crime, said “every avenue” should be looked at to “focus on those guns that are getting into the hands of criminals.”
Could crime guns really be kept out of Toronto?
The stumbling blocks are many, perhaps first among them the truism that outlaws don’t follow the laws of the land, meaning a ban would only be as effective as the ability to enforce it.
And how easy is it to get a crime gun in Toronto?
It can be as easy as sending a text message.
When convicted killer Dellen Millard wanted a black market gun, he simply asked his drug-dealing buddy who put him in touch with another friend. Millard brokered a deal through text messages and then drove to the dealer’s Toronto apartment to pick up a Walther PPK pistol, a gun made famous by James Bond, for $2,200.
“Is it clean or dirty?” Millard asked by text.
“Clean,” the street dealer replied. “Bring her back safe plz.”
“By the time I let her go,” Millard replied, “she’ll be a dirty girl.”
The gun was used in 2013 to kill Hamilton father Tim Bosma during a test drive of a pickup truck Bosma was selling online, court heard.
The PPK was likely smuggled across the border, but another of Millard’s guns came from a more shocking source.
When a former police officer in the Toronto area was ailing and suffering from Alzheimer’s, his spouse grew worried about his cache of legally acquired guns inside his home.
Instead of turning them in, she put the pistols and rifles in a garbage bag and sold them to a friend of her son’s for a few hundred dollars.
After being sold and resold, one of those guns, a Smith & Wesson revolver, was found by Toronto police. Prosecutors believe the gun was likely used by Millard to kill Laura Babcock.
These cases highlight two primary ways guns get into the wrong hands in Toronto: diverted from the legal market and smuggled in from the United States.
Faisal Hussain, the Danforth shooter who killed two and injured 13, got his handgun illegally, the National Post has learned, although it is not known from where. His family said he had suffered years of mental illness.
Mario Harel, president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, complained to Parliament in May, that gun crime was rising.
“Troubling is the fact that about 50 per cent of all handguns used in crime, that we have been able to trace, have been diverted from legal Canadian firearm owners,” Harel said.
Diverted firearms as a source of crime guns is surging, according to Det. Rob Di Danieli of Toronto Police’s guns and gangs unit. He cited a case of a man legally buying guns and reselling them illegally, earning $100,000 from 47 guns.
The trouble with the statistics, however, is that many crime guns have not been successfully traced.
The RCMP’s National Weapons Enforcement Support Teams traces seized guns and, according to its report for the western region in 2014, only 29 per cent of crime guns were successfully traced. It leaves significant gaps in the data.
Guns are not particularly difficult to get legally, either.
A would-be owner must attend a safety course and pass a test and then apply for a Possession and Acquisition Licence, known as a PAL. Before a PAL is issued, there are background checks, based on a five-year window. Among the questions applicants must answer is:
MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT IS NOT ALWAYS A GUARANTEED CURE, AND IT’S NEITHER HUMANE NOR FEASIBLE TO SIMPLY LOCK UP EVERYONE WHO IS STRUGGLING WITH SERIOUS MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS. — CRIMINOLOGIST ADAM LANKFORD
MANY CRIME GUNS HAVE NOT BEEN SUCCESSFULLY TRACED.
“Have you suffered from or been diagnosed or treated by a medical practitioner for: depression; alcohol, drug or substance abuse; behavioural problems; or emotional problems?”
In 2016, there were 2,076,840 active PALs in Canada.
That year, 406,592 PALs were issued; 771 were refused — 139 of them over mental health concern. Another 2,223 were revoked that year, 424 for mental health.
Toronto already has been pushing to remove more guns after spiking gun violence this summer.
Media releases of seized guns by Toronto police in the past few weeks are becoming routine.
Guns are taken off the street in other ways. Police periodically runs gun amnesty programs where citizens can turn in firearms without penalty.
The programs coax weapons from attics, basements and garages. It is doubtful gangsters or criminals turn many in.
It is difficult to imagine the supply, no matter where they end up coming from, will ever dry up, if for no other reason there is a seemingly unending supply in the United States.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives statistics, 9,358,661 firearms were manufactured in the United States in 2015 and another 3,930,211 were imported.