How to dam river of guns
“Why does anyone in this city need to have a gun at all?” Toronto Mayor John Tory asked. It was the morning after the sickening Danforth mass shooting. I waited for the public response, which was basically “They don’t.”
A gun? In a city? Americans do that. We don’t. (But we do.)
And then there were the anonymous men of social media, instantly howling that they need guns — long, short, fat, sawed-off — and no one can take away a man’s gun, and then a descent into down-the-rabbit-hole paranoia and nuttery.
Ignoring them for a moment, and possibly longer than that, I am writing for the reasonable, peaceful people of Toronto who don’t value guns over people. In a summer of gang killings, after the Yonge St. slaughter by a misogynist man with a van, the gangshooting of two little girls in a Scarborough playground, and a catastrophic death march in one of Toronto’s most amiable neighbourhoods, we have had enough.
After Mayor Tory talked to the young girls’ impossibly brave mother, he said, “It’s time for us to be very aggressive in rounding these people up who carry these guns around and brandish guns and use guns, and just saying: ‘You are not going to terrorize this city, and you are not going to engage in this kind of anti-social, unacceptable behaviour.’ ” Here are our dilemmas: 1. Toronto can’t do much. Guns, including handguns, are a federal responsibility. That won’t change and it shouldn’t. Everyone in Canada should be regulated equally, with legitimate rural rifle owners under safety restrictions including storage.
2. “Firearms flooded into Canada after Stephen Harper’s Conservative government dismantled the federal long gun registry in 2012,” Tim Naumetz reported on iPolitics. In just five years, nearly 2 million rifles, shotguns and handguns were imported for retail sale across Canada, he wrote. It’s an astounding number. Post-long gun registry, the imports of rifle, shotgun and handguns almost doubled.
3. Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says he’s amenable to changes in handgun laws. At the moment, there’s a timid bill on gun regulations and classifications making its way through the House. Why are Liberals still so gun-shy? Angry farmers, one supposes. But the world has changed since then.
But Goodale says it will be complicated. I suspect Ottawa will do nothing before the next election. Why hand Conservatives the gift of an issue they will undoubtedly twist to stir up their angry base?
4. Toronto politicians, desperate to do something, anything, want to buy Shot Spotter technology from an American company, even though it is unreliable, expensive, and unknowable. It allegedly helps police find gunshots but cellphones and 911 do that. Oooh, ShotSpotter, it’s the Uber of loud banging noises.
When is a gunshot Spotted only to find that it was not all? Often. Canada once let its census data be collected by American military giant Lockheed Martin. We should protest against this U.S. intrusion — and data collection — in Toronto. The last thing we need is American-style policing. Chicago cops love ShotSpotter, they say. How many people were shot last weekend in Chicago? Forty-four.
5. This one is awkward. The gunrunners are Canadian. Before the long gun registry was killed in 2012, 75 per cent of firearms were trafficked from the U.S., the CBC reports. By 2017, about half originated in Canada, bought legally by gun owners and illegally sold.
Toronto police have seen more than 40 such cases in recent years, a detective in the guns and gangs unit told the CBC. One man sold 47 guns and made over $100,000 in a five month period, he said. That’s the gaping hole in Canadian gun regulations. And how is it to be filled without unhinged protests from gun collectors? They are unreasonable people, the Corbynistas of Canadian weaponry.
In the meantime, Toronto shouldn’t panic and spend millions on SpotShotter or ShotPutter or whatever it’s called. Toronto can work with Ottawa on damming this river of guns while ensuring that guns remain traceable. Toronto can spend more on mental health care, and the police — not the police union — can keep trying to gain the trust of the people they serve. No more gun-happy Const. Forcillos, please.
Ottawa will do nothing before the next election. Why hand Conservatives the gift of an issue they will undoubtedly twist to stir up their angry base?