Toronto The Good

"This is not a normal weekend in the City of Toronto."
"I find it disturbing when you've got over one hundred people and someone would be brazen enough to pull out a gun and start shooting."
"It’s very solvable, because we have a lot of people that were there... We’ve got a lot of resources on this one, [and] we will definitely be in good shape to solve it if we have witnesses come out and help."
"When I’ve got 13 people right now in the city that have been shot, that have a bullet in them, I’ve got concerns for that."
"I can tell you that we will be putting additional resources in specific places that we think will help deter and reduce the gun violence that’s occurring in the city."
"Most of the shootings are occurring at nighttime and a lot of the places and some of the people that have been shot aren’t necessarily 9 to 5, wife and kids at home."
Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders

Toronto Police were called around 2:15 a.m. on Monday to a nightclub called District 45 in the city’s northwest. Five people were shot.

"This was always put forward as a part of the answer to gun violence together with changes to other laws affecting things like bail, additional support for police and the paramount need for all three governments to invest together in kids, families and neighbourhoods."
Toronto Mayor John Tory

Canadians tch-tch the violence taking place in the United States, with sensationalized reports of one mass shooting after another, multiple deaths and inexplicable repeats leaving a nation mourning its unenviable record of violent hate crimes in a divided society. In the United States the powerful gun lobby works in overdrive to ensure that no laws can be enacted to interfere with the freedom of Americans to own guns, including rapid-fire automatic weapons. And it is increasingly these powerful weapons that are deployed by psychopaths with their pathological hate to wreak havoc in society, from school shootings by youths to large-gathering massacres at film showings or open-air concerts shot up by sociopathic loners.

And Toronto? Canada has fairly stringent gun laws, with most automatic and semi-automatic weapons outlawed. Not for sale, that is. Through conventional, legal means, that is. But anything is available on the black market. Gun enthusiasts, hobbyists, hunters and sport-shooters can have their weapons of choice to a degree and are enjoined by law to safely store weapons and ammunition. There are no open-carry permits in Canada other than for law enforcement agents. But petty criminals, hard-core criminals and gang members alike know how to get around the law. Proscribed weapons can and do make their way into the country.



Police are often called to various parts of the city to deal with shootings where people are injured in gang crossfire, and to respond to killings. These often take place in poor parts of the city where subsidized housing exists, where gangs and drugs are endemic, where residents have no intention of speaking to police and/or helping with information that might aid in removing the gangs from the streets, even though the residents of the area themselves are the most vulnerable victims of the gangs and guns, but withhold aiding police for fear of repercussions.

Close to a dozen shootings took place in Toronto over the long weekend just over. At a packed nightclub in north Toronto, the District 45 nightclub saw seven people injured on a crowded evening.
An at-capacity crowd in the nightclub saw gunshots fired and two men and three women were injured. Later that same day another two people brought themselves to hospital for attendance to their own gunshot wounds, at yet another nightclub; one male victim in life-threatening condition. Suspects? None, as yet.

Another two men were sent to hospital, a vehicle riddled with bullet holes a little later that early Monday morning in the wee hours over Sunday on the Civic Holiday weekend. “They’ve been saying, ‘We’ve been trying to get the guns off the streets for as long as I can remember. If they had a solution, they would have implemented it by now”, observed Ryerson criminology professor Tammy Landau.

Canada's laws are  stricter than those in the US.

• All gun owners have to be licensed, and all handguns and most semiautomatic weapons have to be registered.
• Handguns can't be carried out of the home, either concealed or openly, except with a specific license, which is usually only given to people who need guns for work.
• Licenses require training in gun safety and an extensive background check.
• Guns have to be kept locked and unloaded.

Handgun regulations are much stricter in Canada. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)

Figures for 2016 register approximately 7,100 victims of crimes involving guns in Canada, which includes 223 gun homicides. The same year, there were 2,026,011 firearms licenses in Canada.
 On the other hand, according to Statistics Canada, there has also been a steady increase in reports of thefts of firearms. There were 1,116 reports of break-and-enters committed to steal firearms in 2016, a considerable increase from 276 in 2009.