--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shooting the wrong target

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

During his successful 1995 election campaign -- which overlapped the parliamentary debate on the Liberals' national gun-registry law -- former Ontario Tory Premier Mike Harris used to delight northern and rural Ontario audiences by asking rhetorically why they thought is was that whenever there was a shooting in downtown Toronto, Ottawa's first instinct was to harass farmers and duck hunters in North Bay and Chatham.

Despite the $2-billion price tag on that registry, the Liberals still falsely claim that Canadians are getting value for money. But to explain the registry's failure to staunch gun crime in Toronto, they have had to invent fresh red herrings. Thus is the federal government musing publicly about suing American gun makers for the illegal use of their products by criminals here in Canada.

If anything could be more useless than the gun registry, this is it.

Suing Smith & Wesson, Colt, Glock and others for the rise in gun crime in Toronto -- up over 20% in the past two years -- is about as logical as fining the makers of cheap wine for an up-tick in barroom brawls. Or charging Ford or GM when one of their cars is stolen. Bad people do bad things with otherwise legal products. That's not a manufacturer's defect.

Torontonians are increasingly uneasy about their personal safety in the face of highly publicized shootings. While the perpetrators and victims remain mostly drug gang members, the shooters show little concern for innocent bystanders. Ten days ago, it was a 41-year-old transit driver who lost an eye when two rival gun-toting gangs both tried to board his bus at the same time. Monday, police closed a subway station on a busy route east of downtown when shots were fired in broad daylight during a soured drug deal. In the past 72 hours, there have been at least eight shootings in what was once one of the most crime-free major cities in the world. No wonder 55% of Torontonians surveyed recently said gun crime and violence was their top concern. More than a third of city residents also told pollsters they were afraid to walk in their own neighbourhoods after dark.

All of this has the federal government concerned. The Greater Toronto Area (with its 45 ridings) is a key to the Liberals' grip on power, so Liberal politicians in Ottawa must be seen to be doing something -- anything -- to tackle the problem. The trouble is, there is little the Cabinet is prepared to do that will actually help. It is unlikely to strengthen federal sentences for the use of a gun in the commission of a crime -- which would be genuinely useful -- or even to ask provincial solicitors general to have Crown prosecutors stop bargaining away gun charges just to obtain guilty pleas on other crimes.

The Liberals also won't dismantle their useless gun registry and redirect the funds to frontline policing. Nor are they likely to crack down on criminals already under deportation orders who commit even more crimes here.

So the federal government seems to have hit on the lawsuit as a do-nothing publicity stunt. It permits it to look tough. It allows the Liberals to blame a favourite bogeyman, the Americans, and prevents them from having to take meaningful action that might rankle their lenient core voters. Bingo.

Most guns used in Canadian crimes are smuggled in from the United States. But that is not the gun companies' fault. Threatening to sue them may make the government and its supporters feel good, but it will not prevent a single death in Toronto, or anywhere else.