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The Ottawa Citizen DATE: 2005.08.13 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PNAME: Letters PAGE: B5 BYLINE: Larry Whitmore SOURCE: The Ottawa Citizen ILLUSTRATION: Photo: The Canadian Press / Larry Whitmore says police and politicians should realize that the solution to Toronto's epidemic of crimes involving weapons is harsher sentences, not wasting more money on gun registration. WORD COUNT: 299 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't blame legal gun owners for armed crimes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Politicians and police have missed the boat again on the source of the illegal guns rampant on the streets of Toronto. Ten years ago, when then justice minister Allan Rock introduced the much-maligned Firearms Act (Bill C-68), it was touted as being the solution to the "guns on the streets" problem. More than a billion dollars later, they are still looking for answers. The useless registry not only wasted valuable resources (both financial and human) but also drove untold thousands of guns underground into the grey/black market. Now they are trying to blame legal, registered and licensed gun owners for this recent outbreak of violence as well as blaming the lack of gun-control laws in the United States. The problem is not the number of guns being stolen or smuggled but the size of the market that theft fuels. And why is there such a demand? Because there is no deterrent for this illegal behaviour. The "mandatory" penalties heralded by Allan Rock when he introduced Bill C-68 are useless, as they are the first items that are plea-bargained away. The courts are not making it expensive enough to make drug dealers and gang members think twice about obtaining and using firearms (or any other weapons, for that matter). Interestingly enough, there is a program in a number of U.S. cities called Project Exile and it has had a significant effect on violent, gun-related crime. This program mandates an additional five-year jail term served in a federal prison, with no parole, for any crime committed with a firearm. Perhaps if the politicians and police officials would direct their energies (and blame) at the real culprit instead of taking the politically expedient route and blaming licensed Canadian firearms owners, we could actually make our streets safer. Larry Whitmore, Vaughan, Ont.,
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