TORONTO — Police began kicking down doors before dawn on a chilly May morning while gang members in Toronto's Jamestown neighborhood still slept. By lunchtime, officers had made 106 arrests, collected 33 guns and announced that they had broken an international gun ring run by the notorious Jamestown Crew.
The raid was a shot across the bow from newly elected Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who says his Conservative Party government is going to spend its money on crime control, not gun control.
The sweep came two days after Harper announced plans to dismantle Canada's controversial gun registry -- a system reviled by conservatives and gun owners, but lauded by others for reducing homicides and helping police.
Canada's low crime rate and unique gun-control system has played into the country's identity as a peaceful, progressive place, in contrast to its neighbor to the south. The Canadian Constitution does not specify the right to bear arms, so the policy debate is much less heated than in the United States.
Canada created the gun registry in 1995, the result of persistent lobbying after 14 female students were killed at l'Ecole Polytechnique in 1989, in an attack known as the Montreal massacre. Handgun owners had been required to license their guns since the 1930s, but the registry put new restrictions on who could have them, required all guns to be recorded and banned assault weapons.
Catherine Bergeron, whose sister was gunned down in the Montreal massacre, is fighting the repeal of the registry.
"I find it incredible this debate still persists," she said. "Possessing a gun is a privilege, not a right."
Compared with the United States, where there are 220 million guns among 300 million people, and 10,800 gun-related homicides in 2004, Canada is a peaceful backwater, with 7.1 million registered guns and only 175 gun homicides that year. Los Angeles alone had 416 gun-related killings that year.
But Canada's gang-related killings have gone up fourfold in a decade, along with the growth of gangs largely imported from the U.S. that attract what police and social workers describe as young black males from mostly West Indian immigrant families. And with the gangsta culture come the guns.
"If you want a gun, you can get one in a day, a couple of hours maybe," said Andrew Bacchus, 30, founder of Toronto's Vice Lords gang who is now working with Breaking the Cycle, a gang-exiting program. "The gun registry hasn't made any difference on that."
