Ban handgun ammo sales
In the past two weeks, two Toronto teenagers have tragically been shot dead.
Mackai Bishop Jackson was only 15 when he was murdered on Sept. 25 inside the building where he lived. A week later, on Oct. 3, 18-year-old Elliott Reid-Doyle was killed in front of a pizza shop that was a hangout spot for high-school students.
Sadly, these brazen shootings in broad daylight are not an anomaly. They’re part of a larger alarming trend. By Oct. 1, there had been 316 shootings in this city leading to 42 gun deaths. That last figure is up 40 per cent over last year and puts Toronto on track to match the 52 people who were shot to death in 2005, the so-called “year of the gun.”
Fighting this deadly scourge will take urgent action from all levels of government to reduce the number of guns and the amount of ammunition in Canada. There’s no time to waste.
Happily, there’s promising action on that front. City council passed a resolution over the summer calling on the federal government to impose a ban on handguns and assault weapons and asked the province to ban the sale of ammunition. As Mayor John Tory sensibly asked at the time: “Why does anyone in this city need to have a gun at all?”
Then, in September, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau directed Border Security Minister Bill Blair to lead a study of a “full ban on handguns and assault weapons in Canada.”
Now, the Ford government has a chance to show similar leadership by allowing municipalities to ban the sale of handgun ammunition in their communities, as Toronto has requested.
Instead, though, the government actually appears set to block a private member’s bill introduced in the legislature last week by Liberal MPP Mitzie Hunter that would do exactly that.
After Hunter introduced the bill, Community Safety Minister Michael Tibollo echoed the well-funded gun lobby’s spin on the issue when he said: “It’s not guns that kill people; it’s the people that have guns illegally that kill people.”
Nor is Premier Doug Ford taking a constructive view on this pressing issue.
He has previously said he doesn’t support a handgun ban because it targets lawful owners, not criminals.
The comments from Tibollo and Ford show a striking ignorance of the facts around gun violence in this country.
First, as Hunter pointed out in an opinion piece she wrote for the Star this summer: “Too often legally purchased ammunition ends up in the wrong hands for the wrong reasons, causing death and mayhem in our communities.”
Second, according to police, Toronto criminals now get half their illicit firearms in Canada from those lawful owners Tibollo and Ford are referring to. They start out as legally owned guns that are stolen in break-ins. Or worse, people lawfully buy them for the sole purpose of selling them to criminals on the black market.
Third, it’s getting easier to steal or buy legally owned guns because the number of legal handguns and semi-automatic rifles has doubled in recent years. That’s because Canada has made it easier, not harder, to buy and amass large stockpiles of guns.
“If you have twice as many restricted firearms in Canada, it’s just inevitable that you’re going to see more of them end up in the wrong hands,” points out Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control.
When Hunter introduced her bill she said: “This government can do more, should do more, particularly because of the results we are seeing — young people are still dying.”
Indeed, the deaths of Jackson and Reid-Doyle are testaments to that fact.
Banning the sale of handgun ammunition won’t stop gun violence, but it will help curb it. And that’s a start. The Ford government should support this worthy bill.