Stop focusing on guns....

Another horrible day for Toronto...but this Toronto Star article just talks about gun crime..and nothing about the perpetrators.

As morning traffic coursed down one of downtown's busiest corridors yesterday, two angry men stood facing each other, separated by two lanes of flowing cars on Bloor St. E.

Dangling a gun, one man stood near the middle yellow line glaring southward. The other, on the sidewalk facing north across the moving vehicles, seemed to passing driver Mirek Fudalej as if he wanted to shoot. Then he did, launching a quick exchange of gunfire above the heads of unsuspecting motorists.

The morning gunplay was the third public shooting in as many days. By mid-afternoon, in the Jane St. and Finch Ave. area, there had been another, and by late evening in Scarborough there had been yet another, leaving criminologists and police wondering whether the latest storm of shootings is a sign Toronto has lost control of its streets.

More than 40 shootings have occurred in public places since the beginning of July. Nearly half the victims, including three this weekend alone, are dead, while a handful of others are fighting for their lives. Of Toronto's 64 homicides this year, 44 were committed with firearms, all but one of those handguns.

The circumstances of the street mayhem are varied and bloody. Bullets have cut into the skull of a bus driver, sprayed through front yards and twice torn across Dundas Square, one of the city's most lauded pedestrian spots. Elementary school grounds, shopping mall parking lots and playgrounds have become nighttime killing fields. Increasingly, it seems the gunmen of Toronto are devoid of mercy. They know no bounds.

At least, that's Rosemary Gartner's theory. The University of Toronto criminologist says her research indicates the nature of killing is trending toward a higher-than-ever use of guns.

"There are more guns and more killings in public places," she said. "Public shootings are a concern. (Innocent) people can be killed when people are on the street shooting people."

Well,yes, duh.....she states the obvious...but what about the ethnicity of the shooters? Doesn't that point to the source of the problem?