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T.O.'s handgun ban defies logic; Illegal guns are available in bars and alleys, yet mayor is targeting legal collectors

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It never ceases to amaze me how many politicians can convince themselves that criminals who are prepared to murder or beat their victims, steal cars, rob banks and convenience stores, and deal drugs will nonetheless cower in the face of a new gun-control law and hand in their firearms.

That's essentially what Toronto Mayor David Miller is proposing, though.

Next week, Miller will ask the executive committee of Toronto city council to consider a handgun ban in that city. He will also ask them to shut down the two handgun ranges remaining on city property and forbid the manufacture, assembly and storage of firearms within the city limits.

In other words, like many other demagoguing, anti-gun politicians, Miller will seek to punish innocent, law-abiding gun owners in an attempt to cut down on the gun crime being committed by drug-dealing gang members who have smuggled their guns in from the States and will continue to do so even after Miller's ban passes.

Any bets on how effective Miller's proposals will be at reducing crime? It's hard to understand why leaders such as Miller routinely buy into this illogic.

In the past three years, there have been nearly 100 firearms murders in Toronto, most committed by handguns.

In just one case -- a shooting at a nightclub this past January -- was the killer known to be the registered owner of the handgun used.

Such a statistic would indicate to most people that murders with legal handguns are not a problem in T.O.; so look for some other solution to the city's gun-violence problem.

Even Mayor Miller himself seems to acknowledge this on a subconscious level.

Speaking to reporters Monday, he said "I want a safe city. The truth is guns are too easily available, and if you talk to some kids in some neighbourhoods, they tell you they want a gun to protect themselves."

Are the neighbourhoods where these kids live full of competitive shooters with registered firearms or full of gang members with black market guns?

Miller, of course, knows it is the latter, even as he acts as though Olympic sport shooters are running rampant on Toronto's streets.

Legal handguns are not easily available. It's the illegal ones that are simple come by.

If you, a law-abiding Canadian with no criminal record and no history of mental illness, decided tomorrow to take up handgun collecting or target shooting, it could take as much as eight to 12 months before you actually got you hands on a pistol.

The underlying assumption in the Canadian firearms bureaucracy is that you probably want the gun for all the wrong reasons. So you would be subjected to a series of obstacles designed to weed out anyone unworthy of ownership.

You would have to apply for a licence, complete an extensive safety course and pass an hours-long safety test. After that, you would need special permission to buy a handgun, as opposed to a rifle or shotgun. Your recent employment history would be investigated to ensure you are not some newly laid-off maniac looking to exact revenge on his former employer and co-workers.

If you've recently divorced or left your common-law spouse, your chances of being approved would be reduced. Your ex-partner might even be contacted for a character reference and authorities would place a get deal of stock in her answers.

Then, if you are eventually approved, you would be able to go to a gun shop and buy a handgun. But before you could take the gun home, you would have to take the bill of sale to police and apply for a transportation permit, a step that could take several additional weeks. Then, if police grant you a permit, you could go back to the gun shop, pick up your pistol, lock it in your trunk in a locked gun case and take it directly home.

Thereafter, you could only take it from your home to the shooting range you designated on your transportation permit, again locked in a case in your locked trunk. And you would have to take the most direct route and make no stops along the way, there or back.

That's how "easily accessible" legal handguns are.

Illegal handguns are available in alleys and scores of bars in Toronto on less than 24-hours notice. No applications or ID required.

And yet Miller has convinced himself he can make his city safer by cracking down on legal handguns.

Preposterous.

A recent study by the Institute of Economic Analysis in Britain on the U.K.'s total handgun ban beginning in 1997 concluded the prohibition had been counterproductive.

"The ban's ineffectiveness was such that by the year 2000 violent crime had increased so much that England had the developed world's highest rate of violent crime, far surpassing even the U.S.A."

Manchester is referred to by British police as "Gunchester."

Why worry in Edmonton about a silly symbolic political act in Toronto?

Because what Toronto wants has a way of becoming national policy before too long.

lgunter@shaw.ca