Quick on the heels of Wednesday's tragic murder of 15-year old Toronto high school student Jordan Manners, local and provincial politicians renewed their calls for a complete ban on handguns.
Toronto's Mayor David Miller told CBC on Thursday that "handguns exist to kill people. That's why they are made," adding that cities would try to impose stricter controls if national governments failed to do so. Ontario Community Safety Minister Monte Kwinter lamented the Harper government's failure to enact a handgun ban as well, and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty re-issued his appeal for a handgun ban and stiffer sentences for gun crimes at an Ottawa press conference.
When confronted with such an audacious act of street violence, our political leaders often issue convenient sound bite solutions. The Manners homicide is no different. While a call for a ban on handguns may make a good media headline, it demonstrates an utter naivety both with respect to how the underground trade in handguns really works, and on the efficacy of prohibitions against products where there is acute demand and ample supply.
We need to resolve ourselves to the fact that handguns are plentiful on Canadian streets, despite our country already having in place some of the world's most stringent handgun control laws. An outright handgun ban will not make a stitch of difference to their availability and probably not even to their price, and paradoxically might serve to stimulate further the illegal importation of small arms from the world's largest cache of handguns, the United States. If you are a street gangster, criminal or even a misguided youth who increasingly believes a gun is necessary for protection, intimidation or the commission of a crime, you will either buy one or rent one, irrespective of a handgun ban or existence of severe mandatory minimum sentences for carrying or using an illegal handgun.
Prohibitions simply do not work so let me be clear about this: unless we, as a country, are prepared to...
- inspect every land or sea-based shipping container entering our country (we currently inspect 2 to 3%);
- inspect every truck, car and other conveyance entering our country at every border stop (we currently employ random searching, but only a small fraction of vehicles are inspected);
- beef up border patrol along the world's longest undefended border, especially along smuggling hotspots like Akwesasne Mohawk reserve in Cornwall;
- inspect every package that is sent from the United States by air mail or courier to Canada (plenty of guns and ammo are sent this way);
- force the United States to locate the estimated several million handguns that started their life as an otherwise legitimate product but now call the underground economy home, and
- somehow reduce the growing street demand for firearms, recognizing that many youth who seek firearms are not deterred by severe criminal sanctions of any kind
...then a handgun ban is futile.
Rather than debate the merits of this quick fix legislative solution, let's spend our time dealing with the underlying causes of youth violence, gangs and the gun culture. This does not offer our esteemed politicians the same economy as a media message, but in the long run, is the only way we can prevent future tragedies like the one that befell young Jordan Manners.
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