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ON CRIME, COMMUNITY AND COLOUR

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WHENEVER TORONTO Mayor David Miller talks about urban street crime, we're inclined to say, "yes, but ..."

When he says, as he did this week after the latest wave of gun violence, that 50% of the illegal handguns here come from the U.S. and that it's unacceptable, we want to say, "yes, but ..."

Yes, but .... nothing is ever going to change unless politicians like Miller and his politically correct followers admit the real problem -- that urban street crime, gangland shootings and executions on our streets, some in broad daylight, are mostly the work of young, black, violent, disenfranchised men.

And that better handgun registration, either here or south of the border, isn't going to help.

As veteran Sun crime reporter Rob Lamberti put it yesterday, "the mayor talks about it like it's a hardware problem -- the guns -- but it's not, it's a software problem -- it's about what's going on inside the heads of the people who do these things."

Ironically, the politically correct way civic leaders like Miller tip-toe around race and violent, urban street crime finds its mirror image in the attitudes of racists, whose response to this mayhem is that, "as long as it's just black (or Asian) punks killing each other, who cares?"

Let's be clear. We are not suggesting Miller is a racist.

We're talking about societal attitudes. We're saying that if young Jewish men in Forest Hill, or young WASP men in Rosedale, were gunning each other down and terrifying their communities the way young black men are in Lawrence Heights, to name one example, here's what would be happening:

City council would be in emergency session with the police chief instructed to come up with an action plan to restore public order in these communities, to hell with the cost, including calling in the army to protect the innocent, if needed.

You think we're kidding? No. Not if young white men were terrorizing Forest Hill or Rosedale day after day after day.

So why are the lives of black people any less important?

This isn't just about gang bangers killing each other. What about bystanders? What about all the decent people in Lawrence Heights, where people say they're frightened to leave their homes at night, lest they or their children are shot at?

As for all those stats showing the crime rate is going down, sorry, but a growing number of people don't buy it and don't care.

They figure either the stats are cooked or that the crime rate is down because of disillusionment with reporting crimes.What they know is that in the Toronto they grew up in, people didn't run around gunning each other down in broad daylight.

There is no magic solution here. The answers lie in fixing lax gun laws and our lax refuge system, in bolstering understaffed police forces and overwhelmed schools, in reversing the physical and social decay in so many of our communities, including the breakdown of the family unit. In fighting racism.

But for too long now, the politically correct talk in Toronto has been that it's racist to talk about crime and colour.

Wrong. It's racist not to.