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19 November 2010

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Gun Violence

 

Vancouver and Toronto are experiencing

the worst of a wave of gun violence, but

other urban areas are not immune

  

Police on both sides of the Canada/U.S. border are having a tough time staying ahead of the gun smugglers. There is a brisk trade in guns-for-drugs going on say authorities; marijuana and ecstasy pills go south while guns and cocaine come north.

  

In June 2007, police in southern Ontario, Florida, and Alabama picked up 20 suspects. They face a variety of charges involving weapons and drugs.

 

A couple of months earlier, Vancouver cops raided the apartment of Jong Ca John Lee. They found a machine gun, rifles, other firearms, grenades, silencers, land mines, and 3.5 kilos of ecstasy.

 

A year before that John Butcher of Barrie, Ontario was caught trying to cross the Windsor-Detroit checkpoint with some high-powered handguns – 29 of them hidden in the spare-tire well of his car.

 

Demand for Guns in Canada   

There is, apparently, a demand for guns in Canada, and a ready supply of them in the United States. It’s economics 101 – supply and demand. Canadian police say about three quarters of the guns they seize each year are smuggled in from the  U.S. The rest are stolen from gun owners or gun shops in Canada.

  

Our southern neigh-bour has more guns in circulation (240 to 250 million) than there are adult Americans. Not surprisingly, gun shows are very popular in the U.S. With up to 5,000 being held each year.

 

The statistics on gun crime in the U.S. are sickening. Since 1963, more Americans have been killed by civilian gunfire than were killed on foreign battlefields in the whole 20th century.

 

The U.S. records approximately 14,000 gun killings a year; in Canada, the number is about 200. Accounting for the population difference, the U.S. rate is seven times higher than Canada’s. Authorities in Canada want to prevent this type of bloodshed from crossing the border.

 

Tighter Restrictions on Gun Ownership

Premier Jean Charest in Quebec proposed a new gun law. Bill Nine, announced in June 2007, is called Anastasia’s Law. It’s named after Anastasia De Sousa, the young woman who was killed when Kimveer Gill went on a shooting rampage at Montreal’s Dawson College in September 2006. It went into effect on September 1, 2008.

  

The law bans all firearms, as well as replica guns, from educational institutions. The same ban applies to public and school transportation. Gun owners need a provincial firearms permit, which they have to get at their local police station. Premier Charest also put an additional $6 million into a gun-trafficking task force.

  

Predictably, Anastasia’s Law has been criticized.

  

The Coalition for Gun Control says it doesn’t go far enough. Many gun enthusiasts say it goes too far. And, it’s a safe bet anyone in possession of an illegal firearm will pay it not the slightest attention.

 

However, while Ontario and Quebec are exercising more powers in this area, gun control is largely a federal responsibility.

 

Federal Gun Control

As it stands now, guns are regulated by the Firearms Act and by Part III of the Criminal Code. Some guns, such as fully automatic weapons, are banned. As are rifles and shotguns with sawed-off barrels, and handguns with a barrel length of less than 105 mm.

 

To legally possess a gun not on the banned list the owner must have a licence and must register her or his firearm with the federal government. The minimum age for such a licence is 18.

 

Between 2005 and 2009 the federal government had refused or taken away more than 12,000 gun licences. The most common reasons were people with “a history of violence, mental illness, the applicant is a potential risk to himself/herself or others, unsafe firearm use and storage, drug offences, and providing false information.”

  

Ottawa’s Canadian Firearms Centre adds that: “Provinces, territories, or municipalities may have additional laws and regulations that apply in their jurisdiction. For example, provinces are responsible for regulating hunting. They may put restrictions on where hunting can take place and on the calibre or gauge of firearms that may be used for hunting particular game.”

  

Gun enthusiasts don’t like these regulations. They say they do nothing but make life difficult for law-abiding citizens who want to own a gun. In general, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper supports this point of view.

 

Long-gun Registry

A bill (C-391) to remove long guns (rifles and shotguns, used mostly for hunting) from the Firearms Registry is making its way through Parliament. The bill is popular with rural Canadians; it is unpopular with city-dwellers.

 

For example, Toronto Mayor David Miller is pushing for a complete federal ban on handguns. He is joined in his request by Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty and the province’s former Chief Justice Roy McMurtry.

 

Alok Mukherjee, chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, is also on the anti-handgun campaign bus. The Globe and Mail quoted him as saying the board wants “a complete ban on handguns for private purposes because we don’t see they have any use other than to kill.”

 

But, is banning handguns going to stop the bad guys from getting hold of them? Probably not. So, say gun enthusiasts, why bother bringing in a law that will only be respected by law-abiding citizens? Their solution is to deal firmly with the criminals who carry guns.

  

In May 2006, the Conservative government introduced a number of bills in its get-tough-on-crime package. A first weapons offence will bring an automatic minimum sentence of five years in jail. With subsequent offences the minimum jail time goes up.

  

Another bill makes it harder to get bail. What’s called reverse-onus will be applied to people arrested on serious weapons charges. They won’t be allowed out of custody while waiting for trial unless they can prove they are not a danger. In the past, it was up to the Crown to convince a court that the accused should be kept under lock and key.

  

Police have long complained about the “catch and release” justice system. Too often, they say, they arrest someone for armed robbery only to find that individual out on the street a few days later because they were granted bail. This is probably about to end, but the flood of illegal weapons coming into the country is going to be much more difficult to put a stop to.

 

Sources

“MPs Vote to Abolish Long-gun Registry.” CBC News, November 5, 2009.

Firearms Registry.

Parliament of Canada.

Canadian Firearms Program.

 

 

© Canada and the World, September 2007

Updated June 2010

All Rights Reserved

 

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

After a spike in gun violence in Toronto in 2005 police used some new tactics to combat the problem and were quite successful.

A massive redeployment of resources was the key. The Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy involved putting an additional 450 police officers on the street.

 

They focussed their activities on high-risk people in high-risk locations. They engaged the community in crime prevention and built trust so that witnesses would come forward.

 

All too often in gang-controlled territory witnesses are afraid to offer information. There have also been some big raids that netted drugs, illegal weapons, and the villains in possession of them.

  

By 2007, shooting incidents in the city were down by about 40 percent.

  

But, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair warned the public not to have expectations that can’t be met. “There is no simple, quick fix,” he said. “There are social, cultural, economic, and demographic conditions that give rise to this violence, and I can’t undo those things.”

  

At the time, the Toronto police force seized about 2,000 guns a year.

 

HOME IS WHERE

THE GUN IS

 

Under Swiss law all able-bodied men are issued with a rifle and 50 rounds of ammunition.

 

After completing basic training they store their weapons at home. This citizen-army stands ready to repel attackers, a tradition that goes back to the 19th century.

Pro-gun people point to Switzerland as a country with lots of firearms and little gun-related crime. However, every year about 300 people die from those army-issue weapons. The majority of those deaths are suicides that likely would have happened anyway, but some of them are tragic accidents.

  

Now, there is a movement building to end the storage of at-home guns. (One survey found that two-thirds of the Swiss population wants to ban army weapons from private households.) Gun opponents also want a ban on automatic weapons and pump-action shotguns and the setting up of a gun registry.

  

Jo Lang, of the Swiss Green Party, is behind the proposals. He argues that keeping an army gun at home is “a major security risk.”

  

On the other side of the issue is a group called Pro-Tell. Hermann Suter, of Pro-Tell says: “Every misuse of a weapon is not the fault of the weapon – it’s the person behind it; it’s a problem of society.”

 

Canadian Firearms Centre

 

Coalition for Gun Control

 

Toronto Anti-Violence

Intervention Strategy

 

 

In the U.S. presidential election of 2000, Vice President Al Gore was in favour of gun control. Observers say this stand caused him to lose his own state of Tennessee where most people strongly oppose gun control. Had Mr. Gore taken Tennessee he would have won the election and become president instead of George W. Bush.