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GUNNING FOR EXCUSES
BLAMING U.S. FOR SHOOTING WOES WON'T MAKE US SAFER

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If you're reading this, I didn't win the lottery. Which isn't all bad since I can't imagine what a $54 million hangover would do to my insides. So, it's back to work. And as always, there's no shortage of bonehead ideas worthy of a barb or two. Top of the heap this week, the federal obsession with finding someone to blame for the country's gun problem.

Well-versed in the art of deflection, the latest Liberal tactic is to target the U.S. for gun deaths in Canada. It's an old trick but one that, for some reason, plays well with big-city Canadians quick to condemn the American gun culture. Prime Minister Paul Martin guesstimates up to half the gun crimes in our country involve firearms smuggled in from south of the border.

The problem is so serious, Martin even brought the matter up with the most powerful woman in the world, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, during her whirlwind stop in Ottawa. Rice, to her credit, bit her tongue and talked in generalities about mutual border security and the co-ordinated fight against terrorists, drugs and guns. Had she wanted to be cruel, she may have questioned the role of Canada's much ballyhooed gun-control law in the recent spate of firearm deaths.

Calls to crack down on gun violence have been galvanizing in recent weeks as Toronto deals with a rash of shootings and Winnipeg copes with the death of a 17-year-old who was killed after getting caught in gang crossfire. The random shooting death of an Edmonton teen walking home from her birthday party has prompted that city's cops to admit that guns are readily available on their streets.

Which begs the question Condoleezza didn't ask. Ten years and $1 billion dollars since the controversial gun registry was introduced, what have we gained? The answer: Nothing.

The gun registry has criminalized law-abiding rifle owners who distrust the government and done nothing to take guns out of the hands of the real bad guys. In speaking to Sun Media a few weeks back, Deputy Conservative Leader Peter MacKay summed it up best. "The Hells Angels don't line up at a kiosk and register their shotguns."

You see, criminals are crafty individuals. If they don't get their guns from the U.S., they'll get them from somewhere else. It's a necessary tool of the trade for drug dealers and gang members.

Stopping guns at the border doesn't stop crime. Stopping criminals does.

And the best way to do that is to put more badges on the street. Taking even a portion of the billion dollars squandered on a program that makes farmers' long barrels illegal and pouring it into front-line policing will have a bigger impact on crime than any ill-managed registry list. But it takes a certain amount of humility to bite the bullet and admit you've been dead wrong for an entire decade.

And humility is something this arrogant government doesn't have. Pointing a finger at the Americans is a nice distraction from having to look within our own borders at the gang bangers and drug thugs who wage war on our streets. But, much like the gun registry, it does nothing to make us safer.