National Post (National Edition)
Anti-gun theatrics won’t help
Toronto has held up well in the aftermath of Sunday night’s horrific attack, the second mass-casualty incident in the city in recent months. Within minutes of the investigators’ police tape coming down along the normally bustling Danforth Avenue, the scene of the rampage, Torontonians were back, filling local businesses (which scrambled to reopen) and returning life to the streets. It was heartening.
The behaviour of Toronto’s city council, sadly, has proved far less inspiring.
Politicians are going to politic, of course. And that’s especially true after a tragedy, when the desire to be seen to be doing something seems overpowering. So before much was even known about Faisal Hussain, the shooter, or where he’d obtained his pistol (illegally, it turns out), city council was passing motion after motion hammering the usual suspects: gun stores, firing ranges and lawful gun owners generally. A motion seeking to ban the legal sale of handguns in Toronto (and nationally) was also approved by council, with the mayor’s support.
The fact that these matters are in the federal jurisdiction, not to mention unlikely to meaningfully improve public safety, seems not to have occurred to them. Passing the motions was the point. Not actually enacting things. The motions were meant to give councillors, and the mayor, a chance to grandstand.
And the shame of it is, up until recently, Toronto had actually been a voice of moderation in the gun-control debate.
As horrible as Sunday’s shooting was, it was just the latest in a series of incidents, including a very frightening one in June where two little girls, sisters, were hit by bullets while playing at a playground. These other Toronto shootings have been linked by police to a surge in gang activity, and Mayor John Tory had rightly focused his efforts there. Cracking down on gangs and choking off the supply of guns they depend on are sensible ideas — and Tory himself had been offering worthy ideas to help.
Specifically, he had previously noted that while handguns are already tightly regulated in Canada, Toronto police had reported a surge in guns being used by gangs that had been purchased by valid firearms licence holders and then illegally sold onto the black market for huge cash windfalls. Tory sensibly proposed that sudden purchases of handguns in large quantities by citizens, which would be detected by the restricted gun registry, should be flagged for review — especially purchases by people who had only recently obtained a licence before going on a handgun-shopping spree.
This is exactly the kind of reasonable, modest proposal that is desperately needed in Canada’s gun-control debate, which is usually dominated by anti-gun advocates who seize upon every incident as proof our firearms laws are too lax, even when the guns are sourced illegally, as those used in shootings often are, including the Danforth shooter’s. Meanwhile, those in the minority who note, rightly, that our gun laws are generally strong and our rate of gun crime is low, don’t often get called by reporters.
And so this supposed “debate” is actually shrill, repetitive and driven mostly by inapt talking points imported from the U.S. for wholesale use by lazy and ill-informed Canadian commentators and officials. Tory had been a rare voice actually making proposals for changes that might be acceptable to both sides while also serving the interests of public safety. To see him give up and throw in with the hysterics is deeply disappointing.
The facts remain the facts: gun violence in Canada is overwhelmingly linked to organized criminal activity. Civilian ownership of firearms is tightly regulated; and if one discounts the gun murders linked to gangs, Canada’s gun-crime rates drop from already low to vanishingly rare. Indeed, one key talking point that has this week been making the rounds among those screaming for a handgun ban just happened to accidentally prove why one isn’t needed. The line is that imports of handguns (and other restricted firearms) rose dramatically from the late 1990s to the mid 2010s — 14 fold. And that is true. Yet even while the number of guns being imported into Canada rose dramatically, from roughly 5,000 a year in 1999 to approximately 70,000 by 2015, Canada’s rate of homicides by handgun actually fell slightly. That is not a sign that Canada’s gun laws don’t work. It proves that they are effective.
Lawful gun owners are convenient targets for public scorn, but they are not the problem and never have been. Hammering them with yet more showy restrictions and regulations — publicsafety theatre, as it’s called — will have about as much effect as usual on reducing gang shootings. Which is to say, not much. A continued crackdown on gang crime and further efforts to stop the flow of guns from the United States into Canada are the appropriate courses of action, along with the necessary regulatory changes that will catch those people specifically exploiting the legal system for criminal purposes.
Toronto’s mayor was once a leading voice for exactly that kind of measured, reasonable, evidence-based policy. His city, and its residents, were better off for it. It’s a pity they’ve lost that.