Ford’s failed ‘old school’
We recently learned that Ontario Premier Doug Ford does not support a ban on the sale of handguns in Toronto.
That’s disappointing. But, to be effective, it’s a national handgun ban that we need anyway.
And while Ford seems to think he can run the City of Toronto, as well as the province, he has much less influence over Ottawa. It is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals that need to take steps to reduce the number of guns that wind up on our streets.
But how can the premier be so wrong on the details of something so serious as this?
Ford said he doesn’t support what Toronto councillors called for in the wake of last month’s mass shooting on the Danforth because bans don’t work. His evidence: Chicago.
“You look at Chicago — you all know that I spend a ton of time in Chicago — and they have a ban and guess what, last week they had 72 shootings, 72 or 76 shootings. Imagine that,” Ford said last week.
It’s hardly a surprise that Chicago’s handgun ban isn’t working because it doesn’t have one.
Not since 2010, at least, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the strongest gun controls in that country. According to the Chicago police, the city had 70 shooting incidents in the week Ford was referring to, including 41 people shot in a sevenhour period.
So Chicago, a city Ford knows well from work with the family label business, is hardly an example to pull out as to why gun control is a bad thing.
Ford also said that he doesn’t support a ban because lots of good guys own guns.
“There’s a lot of legal, responsible handgun owners,” he said. “We have to refocus all our resources going after the bad guys, not the good guys.”
Yes, there certainly are some good handgun owners. And yes, a national ban on the private ownership of handguns would strip them of the right to continue with their hobby of target shooting or collecting handguns.
But that’s not a reason, in and of itself, not to do it. Governments routinely make decisions that adversely affect some individuals for the broader good of society.
On top of that, many good, legal owners have their handguns stolen. And, increasingly, some legal handgun owners are far from Ford’s “good guys.”
They are, in fact, buying handguns to sell them to the people Ford likes to call “the bad guys.”
According to Toronto police, half the guns used for criminal activity that have been traced were once purchased legally in Canada. And that’s a figure that has risen since Stephen Harper’s Conservative government loosened federal gun controls.
Trudeau’s Liberals have taken steps to undo some of that damage, but the legislation it tabled in the spring doesn’t go far enough. Canada should ban private ownership of handguns; increase restrictions on other firearms that fall well outside the range of ordinary rifles and shotguns; introduce more stringent requirements for selling and owning guns; and make it easier for the police to track them.
While Ford opposed a handgun ban, he did offer up what he sees as the solution to gun crime in Toronto. And that, too, was disappointing.
“I love boots on the ground, I love having police in neighbourhoods,” he said.
So, on Thursday, the premier said he’d give $18 million to Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders to spend as he sees fit. And another $7.5 million to get Crown attorneys to oppose bail for gun crimes, something they say they’re already almost always required to do.
Toronto went down this targeted, tough-on-crime approach with the now-defunct TAVIS unit. It didn’t work then, and a broader solution is needed now.
There is no evidence that flooding neighbourhoods with police and electronic surveillance is a long-term solution to gun crime and the social and economic issues that lead to it. And there is plenty of evidence that it’s not.
And yet here Ford is, pushing this failed approach while scoffing at a handgun ban and leaving the root causes of violence unaddressed. As he proudly stated: “I’m from the old school.” Trouble is, that’s a failed school and it’s time the city moved on.