A HANDY 'SHOPPING LIST' FOR CRIMINALS OUT TO STEAL GUNS -- AND BULLETS

A HANDY 'SHOPPING LIST' FOR CRIMINALS OUT TO STEAL GUNS -- AND BULLETS
Date: Jan 22, 2006 12:30 PM
PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun
DATE: 2006.01.22
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: 10
ILLUSTRATION: 2 photos
BYLINE: MARK BONOKOSKI
COLUMN: Page Ten
WORD COUNT: 823

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AMMUNITION RECORDS LISTING LEGITIMATE GUN OWNERS MAY PROVIDE A HANDY
'SHOPPING LIST' FOR CRIMINALS OUT TO STEAL GUNS -- AND BULLETS

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In the pre-election panic of seeing his Liberal party plummeting in the
polls, Prime Minister Paul Martin jumped on the tragedy of Toronto's
Year of the Gun and vowed to ban all handguns in this country -- his
crosshairs obviously focused on legal collectors and sport shooters.

Illegal handguns, after all, are already banned.

His target, therefore, became the law-abiding citizen.

The prime minister was aided and abetted by Toronto Mayor David Miller,
who, despite proof to the contrary, took to the podium to nonetheless
state that "about half" the handguns bringing blood and crime to the
streets of this city were stolen from legal gun owners.

If that were the case, then "about half" of those guns would have had to
have been already seized. Otherwise there is no way of knowing whether
they had once been legally registered.

But this has not happened.

What made the political bullets truly fly, however, was the high-profile
story of a well-known Toronto gun collector and firearms instructor
named Mike Hargreaves whose North Toronto apartment broken into while he
was away visiting his son in Florida. Thirty-five high-powered weapons
were stolen -- from Glock handguns to machineguns.

The true hook on which the story hung, however, was the fact that one of
those stolen guns was used last September in a triple homicide involving
suspected gangbangers.

Hargreaves, in a phone call from Florida, remembers getting a call from
a senior officer at 41 Division.

"Where's your Glock?" he was asked.

"Why?" Hargreaves replied.

"Because it's sitting here on my desk," said the officer.

Hargreaves admits to being "devastated by the news" that the gun had
been involved in a homicide and almost as devastated by the fact there
is now a warrant out for his arrest for unsafe storage of those weapons
-- despite the fact they were stored in a 771-kilo concrete-and-steel
safe and that it took the industrious thieves two days using blowtorches
and sledge hammers to gain access to it.

"I went far and beyond what was legally required," said Hargreaves,
indicating the vault was so heavy "that the elevator dropped 15 cm when
the safe was loaded on."

"It was hardly unsafe storage," he said.

The fact that one of Hargreaves' guns ended up in the hands of a gang
member, however, seemingly came as no surprise to Insp. Dave McLeod,
head of the Toronto Police's newly minted urban organized crime squad.

"We know (gangs) are gathering intelligence on gun owners," McLeod is
quoted as saying. "But we don't know how they are doing it."

Flashback to 1994, and a quick and emotionally driven response by
Premier Bob Rae's NDP government over the shooting death of a young
Toronto police officer.

On July 23 of that year, one month after the on-duty murder of
25-year-old Const. Todd Baylis, Ontario became the toughest place in
North America to buy ammunition as Bill 181 went into effect, requiring
all ammunition retailers to keep records of all transactions -- the name
and age of the purchaser, his or her address, the date and time, the
type of identification used, plus any serial number and the type and
quantity of ammunition purchased.

It was called the Baylis Bill and, according to those representing legal
gun owners, the book in which all those transactions are kept has
evolved into a treasure chest of information for gangbangers looking for
targets to case and then rob.

"It's become a shopping list," says Larry Whitmore, executive director
of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

"Those books, in the wrong hands, provide a lot of information as to who
has guns, where they live, as well as what calibre of ammunition they
are buying.

"They can be photocopied by a clerk running with a bad crowd. They can
be sold for a price. Those books, quite often, are simply left on the
counter," he says.

"If the police are looking for where gangs are getting their information
on gun owners, this is definitely one place to look -- thanks to the Rae
government."

William Hargreaves agrees.

"Is it possible (ammunition) records at retail outlets are being used by
gangs? Absolutely," he says. "Considering what happened to me, these are
obviously not stupid people.

"And what about the gun registry itself? If hackers can get into the
Pentagon's computer, then who is to say they have not been able to hack
into the federal gun registry?

"It's a government-created mess."

For years, Hargreaves purchased a great deal of ammunition at Ontario
Sporting Supplies on Hwy. 7 in Vaughan.

In September 2002, however, as many as six masked bandits stormed the
gun shop, smashing display cases, stealing between 75 and 85 handguns,
and then shooting employee John Fullerton without provocation.

Fullerton, 40, died 24 hours later at Sunnybrook Hospital. Mike
Hargreaves, a friend of 20 years, was at Fullerton's bedside -- along
with Fullerton's mother, father and brother -- when the heart monitor
flat-lined.

Could the ammunition record book have been stolen as well on that day in
September when Ontario Sporting Supplies was hit and John Fullerton
shot?

"You can't discount anything," says Hargreaves. "It doesn't take
Einstein to figure that (ammunition) records could be a prime source of
information."

According to Det.-Sgt. Doug Quan, head of the Toronto Police guns and
gangs task force, the favoured handguns of today are either 9-mm or
.45-calibre.

A black-market .22-calibre pistol costs $300 to $500, a .45-calibre
handgun $800 to $1,000, a Tech 9 "point-and-spray" rapid-fire pistol
$3,000.

Since Ontario requires ammunition buyers to have an ownership licence
and then have their information recorded at point of purchase, Quan has
indicated that gangbangers now pay up to $10 a round -- with the ammo
"usually" coming from "domestic break-ins" -- and that his squad last
year seized about 18,000 illegal bullets.

Guns, after all, cannot kill unless loaded. Every time a bullet is
legally purchased, it leaves a paper trail -- a trail that has the
potential of leading to a law-abiding citizen and a prime target for the
gangs who abide by no law at all.

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NEWS RELEASE - January 10, 2006
NUMBER OF LEGAL GUNS STOLEN IS NO MORE THAN 16% - NOT 48%
"It's time to make criminals pay a heavy price for stealing guns," saysBreitkreuz.
http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/election/2006/news_release/jan_10b.htm