It’s time for Canada to consider a handgun ban

When two children laughing in a Toronto playground are hit by stray bullets fired in what’s likely a gangwar, it’s time for Canadians to talk about gun control.

When a 10-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman are shot dead in the same city in a rampage that leaves 12 others wounded, it’s time for Canadians to talk about gun control.

And when Statistics Canada reports that crimes involving firearms in this country have increased exponentially since 2013 and that there were more than 7,700 victims of a crime where a firearm was present last year, it’s time for Canadians to talk seriously and maturely about gun control.

So let’s start talking. And let’s begin by welcoming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s commitment to consider a nationwide ban on the private ownership of handguns.

To be sure, it is premature to state categorically that owning a handgun should be forbidden for everyone except, of course, police, the military or those whose profession requires them to be armed for security reasons.

Laws that have been in place for decades should not hastily be rewritten without considering all the facts. Handguns are already tightly restricted weapons in Canada and most legitimate owners behave responsibly and in accord with the law.

Such caveats, however, do not refute the evidence that handgun crimes are an increasing threat to lawabiding Canadians.

The country was stunned in July when a man firing a handgun killed that 10-year-old and that teen while injuring 12 others in a normally tranquil Toronto neighbourhood. Outrage was surely the most common response when, just weeks earlier, a criminal firing a handgun shot and badly injured those two sisters in a park.

Nor were these isolated crimes. As of the end of July, Toronto police had recorded 233 shootings in the city in 2018, up nine per cent from last year and 124 per cent from 2014. Not all of those firearms were handguns. Yet many were.

And the handgun plague is not limited to Toronto. A new Statistics Canada report identified an increase in firearm violence that was part of a rising crime rate across the country for the third year in a row. Tellingly, six out of 10 firearms-related crimes involved handguns.

We realize many Canadians, including farmers, hunters, trappers and Indigenous Peoples, have legitimate reasons for using long-guns, such as rifles or shotguns.

Japan, a nation of 127 million people which has banned handguns, seldom has more than 10 shooting deaths a year. The United Kingdom banned the private ownership of handguns and saw its rates of gun crime fall dramatically. Could a handgun ban do the same here?

Critics will argue that criminals in this country can always buy black market firearms smuggled in from the United States. But while border security should be tightened, police say half or more than half of the firearms used criminally in Canada originated in this country.

Banning handguns in Canada, therefore, might prove an effective way to significantly limit gun violence and gun crime.

Of course making such a drastic change to our gun laws would be a daunting legal and political task. Maybe it’s not the answer.

But Canadians should at least support the federal initiative to tackle this issue. Let’s see what evidence Ottawa can present to support a handgun ban. And let’s be ready to go where that evidence leads.