Sgt. Mark Tonner Column: A finger that's in jail can't pull a trigger:

Sgt. Mark Tonner Column: A finger that's in jail can't pull a trigger:
Date: Jan 8, 2006 11:43 AM
PUBLICATION: The Province
DATE: 2006.01.08
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Unwind
PAGE: B6
COLUMN: Out of the Blue
BYLINE: Sgt. Mark Tonner is a Vancouver police officer
SOURCE: The Province
ILLUSTRATION: Colour Photo: CanWest News Service File Photo / A
growingnumber of victims of public gun violence are being buried in
Canadian cities, but there seems to be no matching flow of perpetrators
into jail.
WORD COUNT: 607

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A finger that's in jail can't pull a trigger: Get the shooters off the
streets and the weapons will follow

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My New Year's resolution was to stop writing such career-hazardous law
enforcement columns.

That lasted all the way through the first sentence of this one -- when I
began thinking about handguns, and what else politicians might consider
banning for 2006.

Clearly, crystal meth and crack cocaine should go. The two C's claim
lives by the thousands. With all the hurt and loss out there, we'd be
mad not to add assault and theft to the list.

But wait -- these things have already been banned, and they're still
epidemic!

Yes, it is hard to resist smart-mouthing when outlawing of pistols is
paraded as a fix for urban violence. Murder is already against the law,
as is blasting away on city streets.

The handguns themselves? I can't remember the last time I dealt with
someone shot by a legal one. What is fresh in memory is courtroom
disappointment.

A B.C. Provincial Court justice was recently presented with a Mr. T.,
who was caught with an illegal handgun. He'd jumped into False Creek
during a fight at the Plaza of Nations' Plush nightclub. VPD people
fished him out and discovered a pistol in his waistband. The gun was
traced to Washington state, making it a result of cross-border smuggling
-- almost certainly part of the dope-for-guns trade.

Mr. T. chirped that he'd found the handgun on the pavement outside the
club, and picked it up out of worry it might be used to hurt someone. A
responsible citizen, no less. The judge bought it and set him loose.

The judicial mindset seems to be that heavy-handedness from our courts
is no solution. The problem centres on this misperception. The laws in
Canada are strong, but

getting our judiciary to live up to them seems near impossible. Until
we're able to vote for our judges -- until we have the will of the
people expressed in our courts -- thinking up new ways to ban things is
pointless.

After all, as everyone knows, guns don't kill people; hands do. That was
the sarcastic flavour of remark at any number of Christmas sessions,
police and otherwise. Trigger fingers should be impounded at adolescence,
we decided, and re-issued under licence, to those promising to use them nicely.

So there goes any hope of swearing off cynicism for 2006. Cliches are
something I'll promise to avoid, but the "people kill people" truism is
worth a moment.

Analyse the human urge to kill deeply enough and you're left
without an answer. No community-based or problem-oriented
policing model will ever make it go away. Society is called upon to
arrange things so that those with homicidal feelings are afraid to
indulge them. In Canada, we're expected to believe that our legal system
provides that deterrent.

Anti-Americanism tends to impair Canadian hearing, but I've listened to
some interesting arguments in favour of deterrence through a

better-armed populace. I know state troopers who maintain that America
needs more guns still. An armed society is, by and large, a polite
society -- or so the theory goes. Knowing that anyone you attack may
have the means to respond lethally makes violence less appealing.

That's crazy talk, by Canadian standards -- unless you consider how
sharply crimes of violence decline in states where concealed weapons
permits are granted more freely.

Carrying of loaded handguns is something no one is proposing for Canada.
Legitimate owners in these parts just want to be left alone. What I'm
listening to now is griping from people who decided to comply with the
latest gun registry rules. Their worry was that the government would move to
confiscate firearms once they figured out where they were.

That may be paranoia proven right. My fear is that banning handguns will
create criminals where there were none before. It's standard wisdom that
when you have enemies in your midst, you don't turn on your friends.
Jailing of bad guys is the answer, not finding new ways to ban things
already illegal.

Sgt. Mark Tonner is a Vancouver police officer whose column appears
every two weeks in Unwind. His opinions aren't necessarily those of the
city's police department or board.