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To stop the gunshots

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Four small children are orphans because of the latest shootout in a crowded public place in Toronto. These public shootouts, most of them involving black residents as suspects and victims, may be on their way to becoming a permanent feature of Toronto life. The question for Toronto is whether the city's civic leaders can come together to stop the vicious gunplay.

If any fatality can spur the city to find solutions to the racially charged problem of guns and youth, it is this one. Livvette Moore was a widow; her husband died last June of lung cancer. She had four children; their ages are 5, 6, 7 and 10. She rarely went out, but friends persuaded her to attend a party at Prestige Palace, a Jamaican-themed nightclub. At 2 in the morning, she phoned her mother to say she had locked her keys inside her car and was returning to the club to get help. At 3, her mother received a call that she was dead. At least two people had opened fire while 200 people danced; six were hit by bullets.

Toronto is far from inured to such violence, but also far from surprised when it happens. Shoot-ups in the Eaton Centre shopping mall, on busy Yonge Street, in nightclubs, through the walls of houses and even, in one recent case, on a packed bus (an 11-year-old girl was shot in the face and seriously wounded) have become a regular feature of the city's life. In that last case, few people came forward as witnesses, and no one has been charged. Is it any surprise that those with guns feel empowered to fire them when and where they want? Attacking this sense of impunity will be a big challenge for the city's new police chief, Bill Blair. He needs more cops on the beat who know the communities where the guns are circulating. He needs to build up trust in those communities. And the people who live there need to rally themselves to work with Mr. Blair and the police department.

Toronto has taken some helpful steps in the past year. Mayor David Miller set up a panel chaired by Ontario Chief Justice Roy McMurtry to provide recreation and job training for at-risk youths in three troubled neighbourhoods. And a police sweep of one of those neighbourhoods, Malvern, where street gun battles had grown common, netted charges against 65 people.