{"id":44288,"date":"2018-07-27T03:00:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T07:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=44288"},"modified":"2019-01-10T09:41:19","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T14:41:19","slug":"torontos-proposed-handgun-ban-is-a-feelgood-do-nothing-distraction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/07\/27\/torontos-proposed-handgun-ban-is-a-feelgood-do-nothing-distraction\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto’s proposed handgun ban is a feelgood\/do nothing distraction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every time there’s a tragedy, there are calls from the local media for politicians to “do something”. Politicians are hard-wired to want to “do something” even without prompting. They want (and need, for electoral purposes) to be seen<\/em> to be “doing something”, if only to divert any blamecasting away from themselves. The most recent tragedy was a senseless shooting on Toronto’s Danforth in the Greektown district. The shooter, who was either killed by police or committed suicide shortly after the attack, was apparently not a legal gun owner, and under current gun laws would not have been able to obtain a handgun. So, in the wake of the tragic deaths and injuries, Toronto city council jumped into action to be seen “doing something”. Chris Selley<\/a> explains why the proposed ban of handgun and ammunition sales in the city will not make a difference, except to punish non-criminals:<\/p>\n

The whiz-bang solution on everyone\u2019s lips \u2014 from Mayor Tory to city councillors to the Toronto Star\u2019s and Globe and Mail\u2019s editorial boards and the usual activists \u2014 is to ban handguns. Tory admits there is no \u201cmagic wand\u201d that will solve Toronto\u2019s gun problem. But still he asks: \u201cWhy does anyone in this city need to have a gun at all?\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea has a very superficial appeal. We all wish the Danforth shooter hadn\u2019t managed to get a hold of a gun. Toronto is having a bad year for shootings \u2014 not much worse than last year, but at the wrong end of a distinct and steady five-year-trend. (At this point in 2014 there had been 101 shootings and 127 fatalities; so far in 2018 there have been 228 shootings and 308 fatalities.) It is understandable (if not entirely creditable) that the Danforth shooting would have rapidly intensified demands for something to be done: the victim count was high, and it happened in a wealthy part of town where it would have been easy to pretend there wasn\u2019t a problem at all.<\/p>\n

Still, the limitations of a \u201chandgun ban\u201d are both many and obvious. When Canadian police forces occasionally report on the sources of crime guns, they often find the vast majority have been smuggled across the border. In Toronto nowadays, the number is reportedly more like 50 per cent; the rest of the supply comes from licensed handgun owners who sell them on illegally \u2014 a spectacularly risky thing to do, as any used in crimes would be instantly traced back to the registered owner, but apparently worth it to some.<\/p>\n

But we all know how permeable the Canada-U.S. border is. If we made it impossible to own a handgun legally in Canada, is there any reason to suspect the cross-border flow couldn\u2019t regain its market share? Furthermore, CTV reported Wednesday that the Danforth shooter\u2019s handgun was prohibited \u2014 i.e., it could never have been licensed in Canada \u2014 and that he had obtained it from some gang associates. If true, his carnage illustrates the limitations of handgun bans better than it does their efficacy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every time there’s a tragedy, there are calls from the local media for politicians to “do something”. Politicians are hard-wired to want to “do something” even without prompting. They want (and need, for electoral purposes) to be seen to be “doing something”, if only to divert any blamecasting away from themselves. The most recent tragedy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,28],"tags":[343,49,1266,207],"class_list":["post-44288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-media","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-guns","tag-handguns","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bwk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44289,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44288\/revisions\/44289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}