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December 28, 2005
Gun Violence in Canada is U.S.'s Fault
Blaming your own problems on the U.S. has become a popular pastime in other countries. Now Canada has come up with a doozy:
TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- Canadian officials, seeking to make sense of another fatal shooting in what has been a record year for gun-related deaths, said Tuesday that along with a host of social ills, part of the problem stemmed from what they said was the United States exporting its violence.
...
"It's a sign that the lack of gun laws in the U.S. is allowing guns to flood across the border that are literally being used to kill people in the streets of Toronto," [Toronto Mayor David] Miller said.
Miller said Toronto, a city of nearly three million, is still very safe compared to most American cities, but the illegal flow of weapons from the United States is causing the noticeable rise in gun violence.
"The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto," he said.
Lack of gun laws? We have gun laws. Unfortunately, there are criminals who flaunt our laws. Illegal flow of weapons from the U.S.? If Canadian criminals didn't want them, our criminals wouldn't be able to sell them.
Fortunately, there is a voice of reason from the Great White North:
John Thompson, a security analyst with the Toronto-based Mackenzie Institute, says the number of guns smuggled from the United States is a problem, but that Canada has a gang problem -- not a gun problem -- and that Canada should stop pointing the finger at the United States.
"It's a cop out. It's an easy way of looking at one symptom rather than addressing a whole disease," Thompson said.
Yep. It's a whole lot easier to blame the big, bad United States than to look at the real reason for the problem. Let's get one thing straight: I am not advocating the flow of illegal arms across our borders, no matter what the direction. What I dislike is one, the knee-jerk finger pointing at the U.S. and two, the fact that politicos seem to forget that for a gun to kill someone, another person has to be pulling the trigger.
In other words, it's a people problem, not a gun problem. Obviously there are criminals in Canada who have decided that they'll use guns. If they didn't get them from their criminal pals to the south, they'd find another way to get them.
Blaming us for your issues isn't going to solve them, Paul Martin and David Miller. Once you figure that out, you might have a chance of actually finding a way to combat these thugs.
tagged: toronto canada guns paul martin canada
Crossposted to Blogmeister USA
Posted by Pam at December 28, 2005 11:56 AM
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Comments
Canada also has a HUGE drug problem, and drugs and guns go hand in hand.
Posted by: at December 28, 2005 01:30 PM
I have a cousin that used to live in Ottawa and when a couple of friends of mine and I went through Montreal on the way to visit him in 1977, we did some bar-hopping.
After the fact, my cousin told us that there was something of a gang war going on in Montreal, that there had been multiple shootings in several bars, to which one of my friends remarked that he thought he saw a bullet hole in the wall of one of the bars were had been in!
T'ain't nothin' new, they just need someone to blame it on.
Posted by: joe-6-pack at December 29, 2005 12:41 AM