EDITORIAL: We need real solutions to gun crimes

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Canada needs a rational debate about gun crimes, gun bans and legal gun owners.

There’s no doubt it will be a controversial and emotional discussion, inflamed by growing numbers of tragedies related to gun crime.

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But the solution some propose – handgun bans in major cities across the country – won’t address real issues.

Let’s start with some facts.

Statistics Canada data suggests roughly 25% of households own a firearm. That makes a war on legal gun ownership a difficult political sell.

And most of those guns are long-guns, not handguns.

Simply banning handguns in cities – but not in the rest of the country – makes little sense. If the bad guys are using legally-obtained guns, how does moving the supply to the suburbs change things?

As gun crime worsens and victim counts grow, it borders on offensive that political ideologues cling to simplistic and emotional arguments that don’t address real issues.

We know where the real problem lies.

Thugs, gang-bangers, criminals, bikers and organized crime groups traffic in drugs and people and guns.

We know the bad guys smuggle handguns among the thousands of vehicles cross the Canada/U.S. border every day. They’re using mules, planes, trains and automobiles to ship guns here. Windsor has been a key transit point in the past, so have some First Nations reserves.

As long as smuggling guns remains easy and free of serious consequence, why should anything change?

It’s not clear how a ban on legal handguns addresses the primary source for illegal guns.

Gun ban advocates correctly argue more guns equals more deaths and statistics support that. Statistics also support the success of gun bans in places like Australia and Germany.

But those are apples and oranges comparisons, failing to consider, for example, that Australia is surrounded by thousands of kilometres of ocean or that Canada has a porous border and lives next door to the world’s largest concentration of handguns.

Finally, police frequently suggest half of all guns used to commit crimes come from legal, domestic sources.

However, when pressed no one seems to be able – apart from anecdotal suggestion – to validate that figure. We would love to see actual evidence.

Of course, there are no easy solutions to our gun crime problems.

But political posturing and pointless bans won’t help.