| The
Conservative Party Policy – March 2005
Firearms Policy Sentencing Policy --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PUBLICATION: The Toronto
Sun -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MILLER'S STILL OFF TARGET -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MAYOR DAVID Miller got one thing right yesterday at his bizarre "Toronto is a safe city" press conference -- prompted by yet another weekend of gun murders. He finally admitted it's not good enough to merely cite statistics -- as his left-leaning supporters so often do -- purportedly showing "crime is down." "That doesn't satisfy a shooting victim or his or her family," Miller said, Police Chief Bill Blair at his side. Exactly! Now, would someone please tell Miller that task forces, social programs and pointing fingers at U.S. gun laws won't satisfy families ravaged by gun crime either? Nor will taking a kick at the left's favourite all-purpose bogeyman, former Conservative premier Mike Harris. Yes, as Christina Blizzard notes, opposite, Miller actually found a way to implicate Harris in the current crisis, saying his regime "dismantled" some neighbourhood programs. Unbelievable! Yet this kind of talk has been Miller's approach to crime ever since early 2004 -- when a string of gang-gun murders shook the city and innocent people were being caught in the crossfire. Sound familiar? Miller formed a task force then to study community solutions to the problem. Yesterday, the provincial NDP was calling for another one. And the shooting continues. In one of the weekend shootings, a stray bullet even blasted into a nearby bedroom window, barely missing a couple as they slept. As Miller well knows, statistics and studies can be used to prove all kinds of things. For instance, 27 of the city's 64 murders last year were done with guns -- while this year, we have already had 28 gun murders out of 42 slayings so far. That would indicate gun murders are way, way up. Meantime, CITY-TV reported that 14 of the last 20 murders (before last weekend) occurred on Toronto public housing property. A sign that poverty and limited social services are factors? Perhaps, though they don't cause crime. Look, we have nothing against good community programs, or against letting innocent kids in poor neighbourhoods know, as NDP MPP Michael Prue put it yesterday, "that there is a better future, that they don't have to belong to a gang, that they don't have to succumb to the violence." But a new basketball court doesn't stop bullets. It doesn't send a strong message to the brazen thugs shooting up our streets that they're going to be locked up (a message Miller and Blair also attempted to deliver yesterday). First, you need to get the gangsters and guns off the street. And make sure the courts keep them there. Make sentences tougher, and make sure judges make them stick. In this, Miller should listen to his erstwhile mayoralty rival John Tory, now Conservative leader --who wants to join forces with him, the NDP leader and the premier to push the feds and our judges for tougher justice for gun crimes. Sure beats pointing fingers. -------------------------------------------------- OTTAWA'S FIREARMS POLICIES DISCONNECTED FROM TORONTO'S GUN PROBLEM TORONTO POLICE CHIEF
BILL BLAIR: Almost a quarter of people cops apprehend
with guns are already prohibited from carrying firearms as a result of
a previous conviction, Blair said. "It's quite apparent that for
those individuals those prohibitions have very little effect," Blair
said.
STATISTICS CANADA CONTRADICTS
JUSTICE MINISTER ON EFFECTIVNESS OF MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES - ESPECIALLY
FOR FIREARMS LEGISLATION BREITKREUZ QUOTE: "Isn't it odd that the government would state categorically that mandatory minimum sentences do not work to curtail the criminal use of firearms but (in the face of all evidence to the contrary) that the gun registry does?" June 15, 2005 - RCMP
SAY THEY HAVE NO INFORMATION ON WHY 70-YEARS OF REGISTERING HANDGUNS HASN’T
WORKED OR ON TWO OTHER SOURCES OF CRIME GUNS WHAT THE LIBERALS CAN’T OR WON’T TELL YOU ABOUT THEIR $2 BILLION FIREARMS PROGRAM - By Garry Breitkreuz, MP, Conservative Firearms Critic – August 8, 2005 http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publicate/Columns/2005_aug_8.htm |