Toronto’s push for handgun ban is far too simplistic
When a womanhating cretin mowed down 26 people on Yonge Street in North Toronto in April, killing 10, it seemed to be universally accepted in the aftermath that this wasn’t the sort of thing governments or legislation can prevent. No one demanded Mayor John Tory explain why the city’s sidewalks weren’t protected by concrete bollards, or that they be installed forthwith. No one suggested mandatory background checks for renting a van. Everyone would have agreed that would be stupid and pointless.
Not everyone agreed to what extent the murderer was a predictable and replicable byproduct of an imperfect society, as opposed to a singular, hideous mutation. And people certainly assigned blame, including to allegedly pervasive “toxic masculinity.” But everyone quite rightly realized that if preventing such events was possible, it certainly wouldn’t be easy.
The same cannot be said of Torontonians in the aftermath of Sunday evening’s mass shooting on Danforth Avenue. For as-yet unknown reasons, a 29-year-old man (now dead) opened fire on pedestrians and diners, killing two: 18-year-old Reese Fallon was apparently targeted on the sidewalk; 10-year-old Julianna Kozis was reportedly eating ice cream with her family at a popular café.
The whiz-bang solution on everyone’s lips — from Mayor Tory to city councillors to the Toronto Star’s and Globe and Mail’s editorial boards and the usual activists — is to ban handguns. Tory admits there is no “magic wand” that will solve Toronto’s gun problem. But still he asks: “Why does anyone in this city need to have a gun at all?”
The idea has a very superficial appeal. We all wish the Danforth shooter hadn’t managed to get a hold of a gun. Toronto is having a bad year for shootings — not much worse than last year, but at the wrong end of a distinct and steady five-year trend. (At this point in 2014 there had been 101 shootings and 127 fatalities; so far in 2018 there have been 228 shootings and 308 fatalities.) It is understandable (if not entirely creditable) that the Danforth shooting would have rapidly intensified demands for something to be done: the victim count was high, and it happened in a wealthy part of town where it would have been easy to pretend there wasn’t a problem at all.
Still, the limitations of a “handgun ban” are both many and obvious. When Canadian police forces occasionally report on the sources of crime guns, they often find the vast majority have been smuggled across the border. In Toronto nowadays, the number is reportedly more like 50 per cent; the rest of the supply comes from licensed handgun owners who sell them on illegally — a spectacularly risky thing to do, as any used in crimes would be instantly traced back to the registered owner, but apparently worth it to some.
But we all know how permeable the Canada-U.S. border is. If we made it impossible to own a handgun legally in Canada, is there any reason to suspect the cross-border flow couldn’t regain its market share? Furthermore, CTV reported Wednesday that the Danforth shooter’s handgun was prohibited — i.e., it could never have been licensed in Canada — and that he had obtained it from some gang associates. If true, his carnage illustrates the limitations of handgun bans better than it does their efficacy.
There are those who argue a ban “couldn’t hurt,” implicitly placing zero value on the liberties of law-abiding gun owners who are no threat to anyone. I can’t help noticing many of the same people arguing against installing more CCTV cameras, on grounds it abridges residents’ privacy rights. And I think it could definitely “hurt” if it distracted people even for a minute from the real work.
Kids who grow up along the Danforth are far less likely to wind up roaming the city with an illegal handgun pursuing various criminal enterprises than the kids growing up in Toronto’s so-called “priority neighbourhoods.” There’s no mystery to that. Where measures of education, income, housing, employment, health and opportunity are lower, outcomes including criminality will be worse. The only solution, in the end, is to improve measures of education, income, housing, employment, health and opportunity. There are lots of ways to do it. It is being done. The proper response to a bad year for gun violence is to redouble those efforts. The cost might be high, but the payoff is enormous.
On Tuesday, Toronto city councillors approved a $44 million package of anti-violence measures: the CCTV camera expansion, more cops on the streets, unproven-at-best technology that’s supposed to detect and locate gunshots, and a financial boost for various social programs and interventions for at-risk youth. The fate of the program rests entirely on provincial and federal support. The municipal contribution is $0. Next time you see one of them pounding his fist and demanding the Prime Minister institute a handgun ban, you might consider holding your applause.
THE ONLY SOLUTION ... IS TO IMPROVE (EDUCATION).