As most everyone knows, Toronto Mayor David Miller is pushing to ban guns within the city of Toronto.
The mayor’s proposals go so far as to use bylaws to ban gun clubs and the manufacturing of firearms within the city’s boundaries.
These proposals, of course are aimed at law abiding citizens since guns in the hands of criminals are already banned because they are illegal under the Criminal Code. But banning guns sure sounds good when preaching to the converted.
Within the last week, the following shootings have taken place in Canada’s largest city that was once known as “Toronto the Good”.
June 11 – an 18-year-old and a 15-year old were shot on a playground in Regent Park;
June 13 – two 25-year-old men were shot to death while sitting in their vehicle in Toronto’s so called “Entertainment District”;
June 15 – a man was shot in killed while leaving a pizza shop with a slice of pizza in Toronto’s west end. A little later in the morning, four other people in the city were shot;
June 18 – A man in his 40s received head wounds when a bullet shattered the window of a car that he was in.
The shootings in the Entertainment District incurred the wrath of Miller, who once again made a call for the banning of guns and even visited the family of one of the deceased. Unlike the late Nathan Phillips who was called “the mayor of all the people”, David Miller is “the mayor of some of the people” and the families of the two deceased men are some of the people that Miller is mayor of. They are white, well off, and live in Rosedale which is in the old city of Toronto. And neither of the 25-year-olds had been in trouble with the police. In fairness to the mayor, the mainstream media also focused on this shooting, no doubt because they identified the victims as being two of their own. It was a far cry from the reactions to the killing of the alleged gang member at the pizza shop or the shooting of two young black boys on a playground in a housing complex.
So who is responsible for these shootings and all the other gun violence that has plagued Toronto in recent years? Well, it certainly can’t be the shooters themselves. No doubt when whoever killed Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin while they sat in their vehicle at the edge of the Entertainment District is apprehended he will be young and described in Miller’s lingo as an “at risk youth”. The poor baby. And it is certainly politically incorrect to attempt to blame parents who raise these scumbags who walk the streets armed, not just for self defense but so they can eliminate anyone whom they feel may have slighted them in some small way.
And we certainly can’t blame the police who do their best with the resources that they have to stem the violent crime that is rampant in some parts of the city. The closest anyone ever comes to assigning responsibility for a violent act is former premier Mike Harris who caused all of this by making one cut or another.
Let’s do something really outlandish and take Miller, who is after all a politician, at his word when he says that legal gun owners, gun clubs and firearms manufacturers must be driven out of the city in order to make it safe. Well, where are these new laws? There’s a lot of talk but Olympic shooters are still free to practice for the upcoming Beijing games in our fair city.
Toronto’s municipal government is a bureaucracy that puts all other bureaucracies in Canada to shame. Suggested bylaws go to committee after committee and must be reviewed by bureaucrats that the politicians lovingly refer to as “staff”. But on really important matters such as raising their own salaries and perks, the city mothers can actually act with amazing speed. If they really thought banning legal guns would save lives, those firearms would be banned already. Guess saving lives isn’t quite as important as salary increases.
The mayor and his socialist seals simply can’t have it both ways. If these guns are the problem and not the shooters then they should already be banned. By simply talking about guns, organizing petitions and professing outrage whenever white kids from good families get shot, David Miller is responsible for the carnage.
