Council votes on bylaw that would crack down on guns

Council votes on bylaw that would crack down on guns

By IAN ROBERTSON AND JENNY YUEN, SUN MEDIA

It's open season on gun clubs in Toronto.

City council, which starts a two-day meeting today, is set to vote on a bylaw that would prevent new firing ranges and firearm manufacturing within Toronto's borders.

"To try to hold these honest, law-abiding people to this (proposal) is over the top," Councillor Doug Holyday complained last night.

"For (Mayor) David Miller to come along and try to force something onto the citizens of Toronto that he's doing something about the gun crime by stopping these people from following their sport is ridiculous," he added. "This is a political statement that does absolutely nothing except cost these people a lot of money and inconvenience."

After protests from two clubs long-established on city-owned property, the mayor backed down from his proposal to cancel their leases.

At a meeting of the city's executive committee, he agreed three weeks ago to permit the Scarborough Rifle Club and the CNRA Handgun Club to carry on shooting where they are -- as long as they seek new sites at private ranges.

Established in 1964, the Scarborough club moved into the Don Montgomery recreation centre 12 years later. Since Union Station opened in 1921, at a time when such ranges were heavily used for militia training, the CNA's range has been hidden away on top of the Front St. building.

The city bought the railway passenger terminal in 2000 from Toronto Terminals Railway Company Ltd.

CNRA's 130 shooters include lawyers, doctors, Bay St., executives plus athletes such as Avianna Chao and paralympic competitor Karen Van Nest.

After holstering his tougher proposal at the June 3 meeting of the executive committee, Miller told reporters "my preference would be to have no gun clubs in the City of Toronto."

"It's only fair we at least give a chance" to the two clubs, he said, suggesting members could join private ranges.

Critics accuse the mayor of focusing too much on legal firearms owners, and insist he should lobby Ottawa for tougher gun possession laws.

Firearms have been targeted politically for almost 20 years in the wake of increased shootings and the establishment of U.S.-style, drug-related street gangs in Toronto.

On May 28, 1991, Toronto council shelved several anti-firearms resolutions by then-councillor Jack Layton, now head of the federal NDP, for a gun zone and armouries for storing legal owners' collections.

Critics pointed out such armouries would be tempting one-stop shopping sites for criminals to raid.

Homicide investigators, meanwhile, have traced evidence from cartridge casings found near where Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin were murdered June 13 on Richmond St. W. to records of a handgun used in a previous crime. No details have been released.

At a Toronto Police Services board meeting last Thursday, Chief Bill Blair released the force's first compilation of firearm seizures.

Of the 2,603 guns seized in 2007, 817 were linked to crimes -- 366 were pistols or revolvers, he said. Some not directly tied to criminals are classified as "crime guns" since they had their serial numbers removed.