Here's a really good read!
PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun
DATE: 2005.08.10
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Editorial/Opinion
PAGE: 19
BYLINE: PETER WORTHINGTON, TORONTO SUN
COLUMN: Write Stuff
WORD COUNT: 477
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FIGHT GUN VIOLENCE: SCRAP THE REGISTRY
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HOW MANY times have we gone over this -- gun violence and gun
registration and how the two have little relevance to each other? The
media, politicians, police and public all agree that something must be
done to halt the increasing tendency towards gun violence in Toronto --
especially handgun violence, which has had strict regulations and
controls since 1934. It's a familiar refrain. Yet little is achieved.
There's no mystical secret on how to curb the use of guns, but our
society simply isn't willing to do what works. Clearly, what doesn't
work is gun registration. That reality is painfully obvious, yet those
who bray the loudest against all firearms are often the ones most
aggressively opposed to what may reduce firearm violence.
Take Toronto, where we all share varying degrees of outrage and unease
over 22 shootings in barely two weeks. The Sun editorializes on the
subject, as does the National Post and other papers -- all sensibly, but
all missing key points. In Toronto, most of the victims of shootings are
black; most of the shooters are black. Black community and church
leaders are urging people to come forward and help the police --
something many have understandably been reluctant to do, fearing
reprisals.
Yet gun violence is more than a "black problem" -- as every black
citizen knows. Toronto's gun-gang problem is largely imported from
crime-plagued Jamaica, where many of the shooters are from. Until
recently, this has been unmentionable in Toronto. Racial profiling, and
all that.
Police know it, the posturing Mayor David Miller knows it, as does
dithering Dalton McGuinty. But will any of them acknowledge it? Not
bloody likely! So law-abiding Toronto black citizens (including the
majority of Jamaicans) continue to be victimized by other blacks, many
if not most of whom are linked to Jamaica. Some who've been deported
later re-emerge in Canada.
The most favoured deterrent is mandatory prison sentences for using a
gun in a crime. How is that a deterrent when it isn't implemented? Too
often, the existing "mandatory" sentence for using a gun in a crime gets
plea-bargained away. For shame.
Toronto's political leaders wonder at how New York changed under Rudy
Giuliani from being America's most lethal and crime-ridden city into the
safest city for its size. But our leaders dare not try Giuliani's
formula here.
BEGGARS REVERED
Giuliani did it by cracking down on all lawbreaking -- from littering,
vagrancy and innumerable petty offences to murder. The payoff from
fingerprinting and identifying minor criminals was that in major crimes,
many fingerprints matched and the police had leads. Meanwhile, in
Toronto, beggars, squeegee people et al. are not only tolerated but
practically revered. Not a great way to purge crime and criminals.
When gun violence becomes endemic, there is also the solution invoked by
Florida, Texas and 40-plus other states -- allowing honest citizens to
carry concealed weapons. To the surprise of everyone, gun crimes dropped
precipitously in those states. Lowlifes considering shooting up a
McDonald's for kicks were deterred by the prospect that a Big Mac
customer with a concealed gun might very well shoot them. That would
never wash in Canada, least of all in Toronto, but it might deter gun
crimes here as it has in the U.S. Some think more police would deter gun
violence. Unlikely.
More practical would be ending long-gun registration, and using the
billion dollars saved to change laws so that violent criminals are
easily jailed and/or deported; or, put bluntly, themselves shot by
police. The choice is ours.
