PUBLICATION:
National
Post
DATE:
2004.03.01
EDITION:
National
SECTION:
Editorials
PAGE:
A13
SOURCE:
National Post
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Stopping
gun crime
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Vancouver
is the bank robbery capital of Canada. With 237 hold-ups last year (about one
per business day, according to the Canadian Bankers Association), B.C.'s largest
city and its suburbs have five times as many robberies as Montreal (45) and more
than twice as many as Toronto (114). The Lower Mainland's robbery rate is
comparable to the worst in America's most violent metropolises. Shootings and
seizures of guns used to commit crimes are way up, too. And like Toronto,
Vancouver also appears to be in the midst of a bloody turf war among rival
ethnic drug gangs.
The
two trends might seem unrelated, but Vancouver's gun seizures and robberies have
one thing in common -- weapons smuggled in from the United States. Organized
criminals are thought to be shipping marijuana across the line in return for
large quantities of cash and hard drugs, and more than a few firearms thrown in
on the side. Ninety-four per cent of guns confiscated by Vancouver police are
contraband, purchased legally in the United States, then slid across the border
under the noses of customs and police. Many of these guns are kept by gang
members and mobsters for their own crimes, but many more are sold to street
criminals who are using them for, among other things, bank robberies.
Vancouver
is not an isolated case: It is on the leading edge of a Canada-wide trend.
Nationally, handguns now account for two-thirds of all firearms murders, up from
one-third a decade ago. In gangland, the proportion is often much higher. If
there is any set of figures that proves the futility of the Liberals' national
gun registry, it is these numbers on handgun crime. Canadians have had to
register their handguns for 70 years now, yet the incidence of handgun murders
and hold-ups is soaring.
The
statistics on smuggled guns are also damning. By their nature, smuggled guns are
illegal, and illegal guns are never registered. Their owners aren't the sort of
people who want police to trace them. Yet police in Toronto and Vancouver are
finding that upwards of nine out of every 10 criminal guns they seize were
smuggled into Canada. Most guns used in Canadian crimes never were and never
will be registered.
In
other words, Canada's billion-dollar gun registry should be scrapped not just
because its net cost has skyrocketed by a factor of more than 500, but because
it's a waste of money at any price: No matter how much it is tweaked and
fine-tuned by the Liberal government, registration is a fundamentally flawed
crime-control concept.
If
it is serious about fighting crime, Paul Martin's government should scrap the
registry and instead pour more resources into border patrols, customs inspection
and keeping criminals from acquiring the tools of their trade.
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BREITKREUZ'S PLAN TO KEEP GUNS OUT OF THE HANDS OF PEOPLE WHO SHOULDN'T HAVE THEM
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/breitkreuzgpress/guns114.htm