The day after Christmas, a drive-by shooting in downtown Toronto killed a 15-year-old girl and wounded six other bystanders. Some years back, the government of Canada decided that the best way to deal with gun homicides was to ban guns. Never mind that it makes as much sense as dealing with drunk driving by banning cars, it made sense to the Canadians. So they banned guns.
Ruled Canada's Supreme Court on June 15, 2000, "All guns are capable of being used in a crime. All guns pose a threat to public safety." This is madness. Presumably, the Canadian Army has guns. So do Canadian police. Are they therefore a threat to public safety as well?
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It is equally accurate to say that, "all knives are capable of being used in a crime," is it not? Can you think of a knife that cannot be used to commit a crime? Does it therefore follow that "all knives pose a threat to public safety?" What about a baseball bat? A big rock?
Remember, the first recorded murder in history was Cain killing his brother Abel with some kind of club or rock. The real problem is the fallen nature of man, not the instrument he uses to do the killing.
In the book of Romans, God said that man's fallen nature had to be curbed by lethal force. The Bible says:
For it [government] is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the SWORD for nothing; it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.
– Romans 13:4
The "sword" in that day was a symbol of deadly force just as a gun is today. Some men will always take advantage of the helpless if there is no force to stop them. And since police are rarely ever on hand when a murder takes place, it is certainly prudent to have a gun in the home and know how to use it.
Since banning guns, Canada has experienced an explosion in violent crime, particularly home robberies and burglaries. In the United States, only 13 percent of all burglaries occur when someone is home. American burglars fear getting shot by armed homeowners – especially in Texas where citizens are openly allowed to defend their homes with a gun.
Canadian burglars have no such fear. Every other burglary in Canada (50 percent) is a home invasion of an occupied dwelling.
Robberies, muggings and similar crimes are higher in Canada than they are in the United States, mainly because Canadian criminals know they have zero chance of running into an armed victim.
Banning guns didn't reduce crime in Canada, it increased it. It didn't disarm the criminals – it disarmed the law-abiding citizens, leaving them helpless to defend themselves and their homes.
In Toronto so far this year, there have been 78 homicides reported. Of those, 52 were homicides involving guns. In every case, the gun was in the hands of a criminal working under a legal guarantee that he would be the only one bringing a gun to the gunfight.
According to Toronto's mayor, Toronto's gun problem is Uncle Sam's fault. It seems – gasp! – that criminals aren't obeying the gun ban. They are going to the United States and smuggling guns back into Canada. (Yes, Canada also has a law against smuggling – but that's not important. Just ask the Canadians.)
Fumes Mayor David Miller, the Toronto drive-by shooting "a sign that the lack of gun laws in the United States is allowing guns to flood across the border that are literally being used to kill people in the streets of Toronto."
The United States is "allowing" guns to "flood" across the border (right under the noses of watchful Canadian Customs inspectors) to "kill people on the streets of Toronto!"
According Toronto's mayor, America targets Toronto's poor with its insidious gunrunning plot. "There are neighborhoods in Toronto where young people face barriers of poverty, discrimination and don't have real hope and opportunity. The kind of programs that we once took for granted in Canada that would reach out to young people have systematically disappeared over the past decade and I think that gun violence is a symptom of a much bigger problem."
Let's see if I am following this correctly. I don't want to misunderstand. There are poor young people suffering discrimination in Toronto whose social condition is so bleak they will even resort leaving the country to get a gun they can smuggle back so they can shoot up Toronto ...and that is America's fault?
Sure is, says Canada's prime minister, Paul Martin. Martin says half the gun crimes in Canada involve guns smuggled in from the United States. Indeed, Martin said he raised the "smuggling problem" with Condi Rice when she visited in October.
That must have been interesting. "Madame Secretary, Canadians are breaking Canadian smuggling laws and we are powerless to prevent it. What does the United States propose to do to solve our border inspection problems?"
Martin was quoted in all the Canadian papers after the shooting, saying "What we saw yesterday is a stark reminder of the challenge that governments, police forces and communities face to ensure that Canadian cities do not descend into the kind of rampant gun violence we have seen elsewhere."
"Elsewhere" was a not-so-veiled reference to the United States. Two-thirds of Toronto's homicides this year involved guns. Why look elsewhere? The problem isn't guns. It is people who are unwilling to admit responsibility for a problem. So instead of fixing the problem, they attack the symptom.
Canada's problem is not American private gun ownership. It isn't America's responsibility to enforce Canadian smuggling laws.
Canada chose to assign responsibility for its social ills to an inanimate object. Failing in that effort, they are now trying to assign responsibility for their social ills to the United States.
It isn't Americans going to Toronto and shooting the place up.
Was Canada's Supreme Court right to proclaim guns "a threat to public safety"? There is one absolute way to be sure.
I suggest putting a gun in a locked room in front of a 24-hour camera and monitoring it 24x7x365. Write me in a year and let me know if you see it cause any trouble.