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Statistics belie flood of guns from U.S.

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As Canadian politicians express alarm about a rising tide of guns smuggled from the United States, statistics obtained by The Globe and Mail show that federal border guards are seizing fewer firearms and Toronto police are pulling no more guns off the streets than they ordinarily do.

The Canada Border Services Agency says it has intercepted 318 guns so far in 2005, below the more than 1,000 seized guns that border guards have averaged annually during the past five years, and far fewer than the 1,500 seized annually in the 1990s.

And while Toronto Police Service Chief Bill Blair was widely quoted last week as saying his officers have seized more than 2,000 guns so far in 2005, civilians in his statistics department say the chief inadvertently "misspoke." Their official tally is only 1,151, consistent with the pace of seizures in recent years.

During the past three weeks, eight people have been killed by guns and 25 injured in Toronto. One man was killed and two others injured in two separate incidents Saturday night, the latest in the city.

As the gun violence appears to be rising, officials are left seeking answers. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and other politicians have started lobbying U.S officials, asking them to help curtail the cross-border gun flow.

But if a glut of guns exists on Canadians streets, the weapons have not materialized overnight. The border agency says its lower seizure numbers stem from anti-smuggling efforts.

Meanwhile, the union representing border guards disagrees, saying a lack of resources leaves its members intercepting, at the most, one out of every 20 guns coming north.

No one really knows how many guns are crossing the border, but experts say plenty of problems lie in Canada's backyard and the Americans are not about to solve them.

"Guns from the U.S. are an issue, but a small part of the bigger picture," said Paul Culver, a senior Toronto Crown Attorney.

From his vantage point, gun crimes are a complex riddle. He finds the ones he prosecutes mostly involve weapons stolen from Canadian homes and businesses.

"Guns on the street are nothing new, especially in Toronto. I would say they are probably being used more often." Like many observers, he regards the summer's flare-up of violence in Toronto as part of a tit-for-tat series of shootings that has long affected a small subculture of gangsters.

While the city's homicide rate has not changed in a decade, police and Crown prosecutors say guns have become status symbols, even fashion accessories. Gunmen, who increasingly care about nothing beyond amassing respect, no longer need much provocation to pull the trigger.

One telling example occurred at the back of a crowded Toronto bus last fall, after a young man told a group of tough-talking youngsters that "people on this bus don't appreciate or care about what you're talking about." "What, you think we're bitches?" a 16-year-old retorted. "We gangsta niggas," his cohort said. And with that, bullets flew -- almost killing the 24-year-old man, who later told his story to this newspaper, and hitting 11-year-old Tamara Carter, who suffered a serious injury to her left eye.

In Toronto, similar shootings happen in busy dance clubs and crowded public squares, and on streets where the intended victims are surrounded by children -- such as four-year-old Shaquan Cadougan, who was wounded this month in a drive-by shooting.

"I don't think we've always had the same mentality," said Detective Stacy Gallant of Toronto police's guns and gangs task force, who added cultural factors are at work.

Music videos are harmless entertainment for the vast majority of viewers, but Det. Gallant suggested some young criminals are ready to kill or be killed so they can emulate the high-living drug dealers and pimps whom they have grown up watching on TV.

"I've had young kids say to me, 'I'm not afraid to die.' A 19-year-old.

They don't care," Det. Gallant said. "You see these guys watching rap movies and videos, and look at what these guys are carrying -- the money, the flashy cars." "If you're driving a flashy car, it's not enough to have a cheap gun. You have got to have a Smith & Wesson." The gangsters who value ostentatious wealth are often poor children whom society failed years ago, some experts say. "It used to be that we had more places to encourage kids to get power, self-esteem, and respect in a socially acceptable way," said psychologist Robin Alter, who has spent 25 years working in Toronto's violence-plagued northwest.

But, she said, camp programs have been cut, affordable housing has not been built and single mothers are working two or three jobs just to get by. Years ago, youth workers sat around talking about ways to get children into programs that suited them, she said, but "that doesn't happen any more." It is easy to blame the United States for gun violence, she said, "but we have some of our own problems we need to address." Still, a lot of police have trouble seeing today's criminals as needy children, especially given the disregard for life that exists on the streets. That only fuels a fear factor, where handguns fetch a "consistent" price of $1,000 to $2,500, according to members of Ontario's weapons enforcement unit.