TO Officials floundering, desperation sets in

Toronto City Council voted on a motion to ban the sale of handguns and “handgun ammunition” within Toronto city limits 41-4. This ridiculous spectacle played out on social media as councillors and the mayor flail around publicly, unable to cope with the mounting gang violence and the public outrage after a 29 year old man went on a shooting rampage, killing 2 and injuring more than a dozen.

As suspected, the shooter was an unlicensed person in possession of an illegal handgun, smuggled over the border from the US. A spokesperson for the family of the shooter presented a statement to the media that the deceased killer suffered from extensive mental illness. The man’s brother was heavily involved in gang activity – a familiar problem plaguing the GTA.

To date, Mayor John Tory and his band of city councillors have been unsuccessful in curbing the escalating gang violence in their streets and have remained satisfied to target sport shooters and duck hunters as a method of combatting crime. This has been a week of glory for gun grabbers, who repeatedly share misinformation about the sources of “crime guns” in Canada. In keeping with that tradition, Toronto city council’s new motion asks the federal government to help them ban firearm sales to legal target shooters and the province to do the same with sales of ammunition for said handguns. Meanwhile, no work has been done or even hinted at for combatting the violence and gang warfare. Watching them pat themselves and each other on the back for this, is the over 100 000 law abiding gun owners who vote in the urban centre. The continuous slander and harassment on gun owners by this council is only echoed by the feds.

The need to have an honest and factual conversation about what happened in Toronto is critical in order to prevent these sorts of things from happening again. In today’s climate of political expediency where transient popularity trumps principle, this is precisely why it’s unlikely to happen.

In the rush to pander, the innocent always get trampled.