Handgun ban should be small part of a solution

TO NO ONE’S SURPRISE, a lobby group that opposes any ban on ownership

of functioning handguns hasn’t been swayed by the horrendous Boxing Day shooting spree on Toronto’s Yonge Street that took the life of a beautiful 15-year-old.

In fact, the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action and the Canadian Shooting Sports Association plan to make anti-gun control an election issue and make Toronto a $100,000 target for its lobbying.

A memo dated Dec. 22, 2005 from the gun lobbyists to “undisclosed recipients” said: “We held a major strategy meeting last Saturday ... to plan and implement a $100,000 media campaign to coincide with the final two weeks of the election.”

And although the media campaign was organized before the Dec. 26 shootings, the institute’s executive director, Tony Bernardo, said it will continue as planned in order to get their point across before the federal election.

“Our message is that the problems that are happening in Toronto really have nothing whatsoever to do with the sporting community — and yet once again we are being blamed for it,” Mr. Bernardo told the Toronto Star, adding that the problem was “drug gangs shooting each other.”

He is, of course, absolutely right as to the apparent origin of the shooting. However, we fail to see why the ban proposed last month by Prime Minister Paul Martin that would severely restrict handgun ownership and boost efforts to control the illegal flow of weapons ought not play at least a small role ina campaign against the “drug gangs.”

Bernardo said the $100,000 campaign will use print and electronic media to focus on the Toronto area.

“This is an initiative by law-abiding private citizens who are once again being, in our view, persecuted,” Bernard said, noting that the institute has 12,000 members who are primarily target shooters and hunters.

The association — an umbrella organization of recreational firearms groups — reportedly has 10,000 members.

But the president of the Coalition for Gun Control contends both groups are closely linked to the powerful pro-gun, U.S.-based National Rifle Association (NRA) and that the continuation of a political campaign after notorious shootings was not unusual among gun lobby groups.

“The National Rifle Association held its annual meeting in Columbine just after that shooting,” Wendy Cukier told the Star. “It’s not an unusual strategy.”

She was referring to the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado in which two student gunmen killed 13 and wounded 21 before they turned the guns on themselves. The NRA had earlier scheduled its annual gathering for downtown Denver and trimmed their convention after the shootings.

As we see it, a ban on ordinary Canadians continuing to own handguns is eminently reasonable and ought to be supported by most of us, even in the face of statistics indicating there could be as many as one million of the weapons now in Canada.

After all, that statistic can be seen as showing that 30 million Canadians don’t see a need for such easily concealed firearms.

If nothing else, the ban would stand as a statement made by a peaceable society.

Unlike the much-maligned federal gun registry, such a ban need not involve any costly administration. And, as we understand it, handguns could still be owned by collectors and others so long as they are rendered permanently inoperable.

That said, we must admit that far too little is being said or done by gun-control advocates and governments at all levels in the way of proposed measures to combat the burgeoning problem of “drug gangs,” which we’re sure is already spreading far beyond Toronto’s borders.

Our strong suspicion is that at least two-thirds of the 52 fatal shootings in Toronto in 2005 involved “turf wars” among street gangs, most of whose members are black youths in their teens and 20s.

In fact, the first two arrests made with apparent links to the shootings that took the life of Jane Creba were described as aged 20 and 17.

Thus far, all we’ve been hearing from politicians on the campaign trail is that we need much tougher laws and sentencing for crimes involving firearms.

However, the fact is that we already do have Criminal Code provisions that include minimum sentences for firearms offences and for offences committed by members of a “criminal organization,” defined as any group of three or more persons whose main purposes or activities is “the facilitation or commission of one or more serious offences” designed to benefit the group.

Although aimed primarily at the Mafia and motorcycle gangs, the law passed in 1997 ought to be used against Toronto’s street gangs, making their members liable to five years’ imprisonment for simply belonging to them.

Of course, that alone would probably do relatively little to eliminate the problem.

What we see as urgently needed is a linking of the provisions that targeting criminal organizations with the other Criminal Code provisions that deal with firearms offences.

As one example, any member of a criminal organization who is found in possession of a firearm should be facing at least a 10-year sentence upon conviction, without eligibility for parole for at least five years.

And we use the phrase “any member” advisedly. As we see it, every young teenager in Canada should lose all the protections of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) the moment he joins a gang that deals in drugs and arms its members.

Beyond that, the YCJA must be amended to make it clear that its guarantees of anonymity do not apply to any youth convicted of a firearms offence.

In our view, it’s utterly absurd that this Act may well wind up concealing forever the identity of some of those involved in the Boxing Day shootout.

This law must be changed.