Over the course of the past few years, gang gun violence has been a plague in our cities. Politicians, ridden with angst over the problem, have struggled to come up with legislative ideas to solve the problem.
Toronto Mayor John Tory came up with the supremely idiotic idea to “ban handguns” in his city. This seems to ignore the reality of the gang gun problem – the guns being used are illegal and the users are criminals who don’t pay attention to laws.
This would seem to be so basic it’s a wonder that any politician would think that legislation could solve the problem. Yet they soldier on.
The federal Liberals trotted out Bill C 71 which ostensibly “tightened” regulations relative to legal gun owners and other bureaucratic nonsense.
Bill Blair, the former Toronto Police Chief and now Minister of Anything Presenting a Problem to the Prime Minister, has mused about a possible ban on “assault” weapons sometime this summer as discussed by True North’s Andrew Lawton.
The problem with that is there is an election this October and he would risk angering a whole lot of folks in rural Canada. The other problem is that the term “assault” weapon is a made up term by the hand-wringers and pearl-clutchers of the political left.
What they don’t understand is that an AR-15 is essentially the same weapon as a Ruger Mini 14. One has a hand grip on the stock and a flash suppressor and the other looks like your dad’s squirrel gun. They both fire the same calibre bullet and have the same rate of fire.
Bill Blair should know this, yet he continues to tow the company line.
What he should be advocating for is taking some of the tax dollars the government has been lavishing on a variety of dubious causes for foreign governments and giving it to law enforcement agencies investigating organized crime and drug dealing gangs. That’s where the problem is. He is, after all, nominally the Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime.
Organized crime and gang investigations cost big money. In order to get the Part VI (requisite Criminal Code) information needed to get an intercept warrant, many hours of surveillance and investigation must be conducted and information gathered on what the police believe the target is doing and who with.
For example, there are just over 100 Hells Angels members in British Columbia alone. It takes police approximately $2 – $4 million to take down the criminal network of just one full patch Hells Angel. Multiply that across the country, then add in Asian Organized Crime (AOC), Traditional Organized Crime (Italian) (TOC), East European Organized Crime (EEOC) and Middle Eastern Organized Crime (MEOC) then add in the street gangs and you begin to see the size of the problem.
In the past week alone the government has given, by my count, $418 million to foreign governments for dubious causes like climate change and birth control.
The police do what they can. But frankly, it isn’t enough.
Having said that, the Toronto Police Service on Friday announced the takedown of a Scarborough gang called ‘Chester Le Gang.’ They laid 599 charges against 73 people. They seized more than a kilo of cocaine and more than a kilo of fentanyl. Enough to kill every man, woman and child in the GTA.
They also seized a tableful of handguns, you know the type of things the gangs use to engage in street war against their rivals, acquired illegally. Police set the value of the weapons seized at over $84,000. A significant result for the Toronto Police and their Joint Forces Operations (JFO) partners in law enforcement.
Many of the names of the folks arrested have Muslim names. That’s a reality that no one seems to want to speak about. In their media report, the CBC wouldn’t name any of the arrestees. There was barely any mainstream media coverage at all.
Maybe it was because it was the Friday of a long weekend. Maybe. Or maybe because it is an uncomfortable subject.
