Last week a 16-year-old student was shot just outside of his secondary school in Scarborough. In an unusual twist, the “victim” was later charged along with another for attempted robbery. The alleged “real victim”, another student, apparently consciously or unconsciously successfully applied the wisdom of the late Jimmy Hoffa – always run towards a gun and away from a knife. As soon as he saw the gun he made a grab for it and it went off, critically injuring the shooter’s alleged accomplice.
That a student would not only take a gun to school but use it in an attempt to rob a fellow student naturally has a lot of people talking about violence in schools. While Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber (Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Toronto Mayor David Miller) make their now boring repetitive plea for a handgun ban, many Torontonians are raising the issues of metal detectors in Toronto schools. While a handgun ban could prevent those who presently legally own handguns from losing their weapons to theft and break ins neither politician has ever explained exactly how we can keep US guns from crossing the border. In order to achieve that objective airport style security would have to be placed at all border points, effectively killing trade between the US and Canada. To be fair to David Miller, he wouldn’t much care.
Councillor Michael Thompson, one of the saner city mothers, was quoted as saying that as far as metal detectors are concerned, “we’re not there yet”. This of course begs the question, when exactly will we be there? Well, with all due respect to Councillor Thompson who is black, the way things work in Toronto is that we’ll be there when an attractive blonde white student like Jane Creba ends up being shot in or near a school. So why wait for more bullets, serious injuries and deaths before installing metal detectors? Although nothing is ever “foolproof” metal detectors in schools will go a long way in keeping firearms out of the hands of those who attend our schools.
