It seems that former Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino is the only one in the public eye that understands what is happening on the streets of one of Canada's major cities that has seen a record 52 gun related murders take place in Toronto in 2005. While speaking to CTV News, Fantino said that guns were being used by a "hard-core (group) of young people who are pre-disposed to violence, afraid of nothing and accountable to no one."
If our politicians can actually see this, they disregard it for partisan political purposes. Toronto Mayor David Miller wrings his ideological hands and says that crime is a "complex issue". He and Prime Minister Paul Martin, who blamed Toronto's Boxing Day shootings on the fact that the bad guys have been "excluded", love to paint society's social ills as the root cause of the violence. and while they do that to further their socialist agenda of redistributing wealth, the shootings and the killings go on and on and on. They just love playing the "class" card to excuse what the little dears who are on the verge of taking complete control of the streets are doing. Meanwhile they are the elitists; they are the ones who practically ignored the violence and the killings until a 15-year-old, attractive, white star athlete was gunned down in a Boxing Day lineup. David "me me me" Miller spoke about how he had bought skates once on Boxing Day where Jane Creba was brutally murdered. It's not about Jane Creba; it's about him. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
There is no doubt that there is a correlation between poverty and crime. Young people, such as Jane Creba, who are raised by loving middle class parents, have no need or desire to run with street gangs. It's not difficult to understand why those who feel they have no hope turn to robbery, theft and drug dealing. It is also understandable why those who get involved in the criminal element feel the need to be armed; to prevent rip-offs and to defend themselves from other criminals. None of this is rocket science.
But it is difficult to make the leap that being poor or disadvantaged leads to young people firing guns in crowded shopping centres, on public transportation, next to daycare centres, where mothers who have finished work are picking up their toddlers, or on streets that are overflowing with holiday shoppers. The only way to end these types of crimes is to remove these potential offenders from society.
To begin with, all firearms prohibitions should be removed from the Criminal Code and judges should be prevented from imposing such terms as a condition of bail or probation. These restrictions do nothing more than give judges a false sense of security that the conditions will be complied with and society will be protected.
Sentences for gun crimes need to be increased, but not to the four years that is being bantered around now. Everyone who is convicted of possessing a firearm should receive a mandatory 10-year sentence. and those who use illegally use a firearm should be sentenced to life with no possibility of parole for 20 years. There is more chance that the Income Tax act will be repealed that these types of laws will pass, but they would be effective. Okay, so let's go through all the arguments against imposing harsh sentences.
Rehabilitation — Lengthy sentences will take away the initiative that some accused might have to turn their lives around. They will eventually be released and be more hardened criminals. answer: the protection of society in removing the gang bangers is more important than worrying about rehabilitation. It is difficult to see how anyone could be more "hardened" than those who fired in the crowd where 15-year-old Jane Creba lost her life.
Deterrence — Since becoming Justice Minister, Irwin Cotler, until he was directed otherwise, had always opposed minimum mandatory sentences because they do not act as a deterrent. and he was right. Lengthy mandatory sentences will neither deter the accused nor others. The only benefit would be to remove the bad guys from society so they can't do any more damage.
Running around in the type of gangs that are currently wreaking havoc on Toronto streets are restricted to those in their teens and 20s. While there are certainly criminal "gangs" such as motorcycle clubs and other organized criminal associations that have older members and that are armed and commit murders, you don't see older people firing guns anywhere they feel like it. The loss of innocent life is not unheard of, but groups of 30 and 40 year olds don't run downtown and fire guns in crowds. Those current gang members, whom Julian Fantino refers to as the hardcore, simply have to be removed from society until they get to an age where they are simply too burned out to run around the streets firing handguns.
Paul Martin was wrong when he blamed society because "exclusion" was the cause of violent gun crime. But exclusion does have its place. The young thugs should be excluded from society until such time as their threat to society is at least minimized.
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