In less than a week, two innocent Toronto men were shot to death in the city that was once known as Toronto the Good. First, 42-year-old John O’Keefe was shot while returning from a few drinks at his favourite pub. As he was walking past a Yonge Street strip club, a couple of patrons that had been ejected from one of A-Rod’s favourite haunts fired in an attempt to hit the club’s bouncer. Two arrests were quickly made.
Around 6 in the evening a few days later, gunfire erupted in the always crowded east Chinatown. Hou Chung Mao, a 47-year-old immigrant from China, was killed as he was working in one of the busy neighbourhood’s grocery stores.
It was not surprising that the bodies were not yet cold before Toronto Mayor David Miller came out with his standard diatribe that guns should be taken away from law abiding citizens and that firearms have to be prevented from coming into Canada from the United States. Miller’s zeal reached orgasmic proportions when it was learned that the alleged shooter of Mr. O’Keefe had been in possession of a lawful registered firearm. That he had no legal right to carry the gun except to and from a shooting range was a fact not worth mentioning by the ideological Miller.
It is easy to see why the mayor was so upset. After all, these two victims were his kind of people. He would have gladly shopped at Mr. Mao’s grocery store and would even have dropped into the Duke of Gloucester Pub and had a drink with O’Keefe. These shootings were a lot more serious than those murders that occur in other parts of the city; where, you know, “those people” are almost always the victim.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, as he always does when something like this happens, followed Miller’s lead in calling for the same thing. There is nothing surprising in this; contrary to being described as a “leader”, Dalton McGuinty is really a “follower”.
A total ban on Canadian guns is a relatively straightforward matter. All it would take is the federal government to pass a law. Since politicians like McGuinty and Miller have no consideration for the private property of Canadians except to the extent that they can ban it or seize it, the solution to Canadian firearms is simple. Just pass a law. Luckily, the federal government doesn’t quite see it that way, and this proposal was rejected by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day. Day and his party have this antiquated notion that criminals should be held responsible for violent crime and punished appropriately and law abiding citizens left alone.
The issue of stopping the flow of illegal guns into the country is more problematic even though the solution to the problem is straightforward.
Leaving aside one of Miller’s previous proposals; that we give former MP Carolyn Parrish’s “bastards” in the south a good talking to and get them to change their gun cultural and their constitutional rights to bear arms, guns can be prevented from entering the country if proper searches are conducted at points of entry. Every parcel, person and vehicle attempting to come into Canada would have to be searched sufficiently closely to find any firearm that might be present. If this is not done, then the flow of guns northward will continue, often in payment for shipments of marijuana that the same politicians who rally against guns, think is harmless and should be decriminalized if not legalized.
It’s time David Miller and his cohorts at Queen’s Park stop whining about the fact that guns must be stopped from coming in from the US and tell us how they propose to stop them. Tell us Mr. Mayor, are you prepared to see every person and vehicle be thoroughly searched in order to find any firearms that may be present? This would be tantamount to shutting the border between Canada and our largest trading partner. Are you prepared to effectively end trade with the United States in order to prevent guns from coming into Canada? And are you willing to discourage those American tourists who haven’t yet been discouraged from coming here by the high cost of gasoline and the value of the Canadian dollar? And if not, what exactly would you propose in order to keep American guns out of the country?
It’s time to stop the rhetoric about the presence of American guns in Canada. Tell us how you propose to stop it. If there are no proposals, your ranting and raving every time a “regular” person gets killed is nothing more than playing politics with other peoples’ tragedies.
