Let's not blame the US!
Guns have been around for a long time in the US - gun crime in Toronto is very new.
Residents of Canada's biggest city are living in fear of increasing gun violence and blame their neighbour, the United States, for exporting their gun culture and weapons north, officials told AFP.This is not something to blame on the US. My God, are we so blind that we can't have a hard look at the immigrant communities where the violence is taking place in?
Area police reported hundreds of shootings this year, including 46 homicides. Some 1,782 guns were seized, including a cache of illegal weapons confiscated from a local online retailer this week -- Canada's first such bust that included a bullet-proof baseball cap and a military gas mask.
On Wednesday, as Prime Minster Paul Martin unveiled new initiatives to curb gun violence, three men were shot in the Toronto area, including an 18-year-old student outside his high school, prompting a temporary lockdown of a dozen area schools. One victim died in hospital.
"By and large, Canadians are pacifists. We're not gunslingers. This violence is a real departure for us," said police Superintendent Roy Pilkington of 31 Division, the city's most hardened neighborhood. "It's made a lot of people apprehensive about moving around the city."
The north Toronto district, where the superintended grew up, logged six homicides and 36 injuries in 77 reported shootings since January, including a young girl shot in the head and wounded after gunmen opened fire on a crowded bus. Despite 35 witnesses, the case remains unsolved.
"There is fear of retaliation if they speak to police in some sectors of the community," Pilkington said, blaming mostly gangs, some with international links, fighting over turf and drug sales and using guns imported from the United States, for the violence.
In its August edition, weekly Canadian magazine Maclean's noted that gang murders had tripled since the early 1990s in this country, in contrast to an overall drop in violence. The magazine blamed the rise in part on illegal arms from the neighboring United States.
posted by GayandRight @ 12:01 AM
2 Comments:
Perhaps, if Canadians weren't such pacifists, they would have the backbone to challenge the political correctness that won't allow people to challenge the behavior of the immigrant community in Toronto.
I love police Superintendent Roy Pilkington's comment, "By and large, Canadians are pacifists. We're not gunslingers. This violence is a real departure for us. It's made a lot of people apprehensive about moving around the city."
Does he expect immigrants to magically turn into pacifists as soon as they set foot into this country? Not too many years ago, becoming a Canadian was a privilege you had to earn not a right that refugees demand.
What's happening in Toronto makes it seem pretty obvious we need to re-examine the types of immigrants we're taking in. However, the Liberals love them because they vote Liberal
--The other Fred
"My God, are we so blind that we can't have a hard look at the immigrant communities where the violence is taking place in?"
I don't live in Toronto, but from what I've heard, it seems that the problem is more specifically young Jamaican communities. For some reason, other immigrant groups cause disproportionately fewer problems.
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