Increase in Toronto gun deaths has fingers pointing toward U.S.
Canadians horrified by culture of violence they feel is quintessentially American
TORONTO – When a 15-year-old bystander was gunned down last month while holiday shopping on busy Yonge Street, it set off a wave of concern about the safety of citizens in this traditionally safest of cities.
Outrage is only an option when bystanders are hit, not when the real targets are offed.
Toronto’s gun-related homicides nearly doubled last year with 52 shooting deaths. A few miles to the south, Buffalo, a substantially smaller city, had 41 gun murders in 2005. And, the homicide rate of Canada’s largest city still lags far behind comparable American cities, like Chicago and Houston.
If you’re going to kill someone, a gun is a pretty effective tool. Apparently criminals in Canada are smarter than the average bear. Dropping safes, pianos, and icicles on the heads of intended targets is just too difficult these days.
Yet, the crackle of gunfire has horrified residents of Toronto – a city of 2.5 million that prides itself on safe streets and good manners.
With a national election scheduled for Monday, top Canadian politicians are pointing to the United States as the culprit for the city’s eruption of gun violence.
“The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto,” Toronto Mayor David Miller told reporters days after the Dec. 26 shooting.
Well that’s one way to narrow our trade deficit.
Ricardo McRae, a 36-year-old Web-based artist
WTF is a “Web-based artist”? I think someone’s into kiddie porn.
. . . who lives in downtown Toronto, spoke about the cross-border differences last week as he dined at a Front Street restaurant near the CN Tower.
“Canadians are appalled by crime, while for Americans, this is just a part of life and they’re a lot more complacent,” McRae said. “The foundation of the U.S. is based on fighting, guns and protecting yourself. The Canadian way of life is built on multiculturalism, acceptance and peace.
Their multicultural factions want to split the country up. Violence, self-defense, and gun ownership are unacceptable.
“There’s just a culture of guns and violence in the U.S.,” he adds. “Even their national anthem talks about guns and bombs.”
Rockets and bombs. And most of us have neither of those.
That perception of a different tolerance for violence is widespread in Canada.
“Toronto’s just not used to this level of violence. We’re just shocked,” said Vanessa DiMaria, a 31-year-old teacher in Toronto, as she stood in front of the Eaton Centre, a mall in the hub of the downtown shopping district.
“I agree that the States is to blame a little bit because the States allows you to bear arms a lot more.”
And Canada allows you to bear arms a lot less. But the gun violence is still there isn’t it?
In the Boxing Day shooting, 10th-grader Jane Creba was killed and six others wounded when they were caught between rival teenage gangs firing into a crowd of shoppers near the Eaton Centre.
Maybe it is not a gun problem. It’s a gang problem.
The killing occurred in the middle of a national political campaign, and thus sparked politicians to intensify their backlash against America’s gun exports.
“Mindless violence’
“Canadians deserve safe streets. Toronto isn’t Detroit,” Prime Minister Paul Martin was later quoted as saying. “Vancouver isn’t South Central Los Angeles. We are not going to allow our cities to fall into mindless violence.”
As Canadians head to the ballot box Monday, gun control has become a key campaign platform for each of the major political parties.
The Canadian choices include Martin, leader of the Liberal Party who is seeking re-election, Conservative Stephen Harper and New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton.
The Liberals are proposing a complete ban on private handgun ownership, an idea criticized by the Conservatives, who argue that handguns are already severely restricted in Canada.
Hahaha. I’ll get back to this in a minute.
“The Conservatives here, just like the ones in the U.S., are viewed as tougher on law and order, while the left-leaning Liberals are viewed as more focused on the root social causes,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political science teacher at the University of Toronto. “It’s like they’re trying to outdo each other with their crime-fighting initiatives when the policies of these parties are not that much different.”
Some Canadians, though, say pointing the finger at America is unfair.
“It’s a copout, and it’s a very cheap shot,” said John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Toronto.
“The U.S. is our biggest trading partner, chief ally and best friend, and it irritates Canadians that Martin’s blaming America,” he said.
Staff Inspector Brian Raybould, head of the Toronto police homicide squad and a 36-year veteran of the Toronto police force, says 90 percent of the city’s shooting deaths are gang-related and are mostly “young black men shooting young black men.”
I’m guessing that all their social engineering is proving itself ineffective.
But police estimate that half the guns confiscated in criminal investigations are from their southern neighbor. “When we trace a lot of these guns, they are typically from a U.S. manufacturer, sold to a U.S. gun shop and then sold to a person and then the gun pops up in Toronto,” Raybould said.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. But it’s obvious that the American culture is one of firearms, and Canada’s not like that.”
Culture shock
Raybould said he experienced a major culture shock when he recently visited Quantico, Va. – which is home to a major Marine Corps base and the FBI Training Academy – and saw people walking around with guns in holsters.
I can’t imagine why there would be so many visible guns in an area like that.
“People can’t carry a handgun legally here unless you’re a police officer, and all handguns are registered here,” he said.
The Canadian reluctance to embrace the gun culture draws mixed reaction from U.S. visitors.
Last week, American couple Rick Lemcke and his wife, Lona, were walking along Toronto’s Yonge Street after lunching at the Hard Rock Cafe.
You gotta love American tourists. We go to other countries to eat at restaurants that are just like the ones we left back home.
Rick Lemcke is a member of the National Rifle Association, a pistol permit holder and owns a collection of hunting guns.
“I don’t know if Canadians realize it, but gun ownership is a right they’re giving up,” said Rick Lemcke, 52, who is supervisor of Parma, a town in Monroe County near Rochester.
I hate to tell you this Rick, but Canadians don’t (yet) live under the American Constitution, so that’s really not their right.
“If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will own guns.”
So it’s a little lot cliched, but correct nonetheless. Regulating a legal market where a black market is already thriving is tantamount to doing nothing. Do you doubt for a second that the gang members aren’t aware that they are already breaching the law? If they are OK with breaking the law, what can be gained by writing more laws?
Despite the vast differences in murder statistics between the two countries, some community groups in Toronto are reaching out to their American neighbors to help clamp down on crime.
Early this month, the Rev. Eugene Rivers, who inspired an effort that reduced Boston’s skyrocketing homicides in the 1990s, spent three days in Toronto preaching a faith-based network of social programs – a combination of youth mentoring, church intervention and increased police presence.
And the Guardian Angels, a New-York based civilian vigilante group visited Toronto last week with plans to patrol troubled neighborhoods.
Read chapter 4 of Freakonomics.
Instead of enacting more gun laws, blaming America, or bombing the Baldwins, they would probably be best served by increasing their police forces and locking up their criminals. And Rev. Eugene Rivers probably had almost zero effect on the murder rates in Boston in the 1990s.
