An escalation of gun violence in Toronto has again raised the issue of guns in the political arena. Having grown up in rural Ontario, I believe a ban on hunting rifles and long guns cannot be justified. But I don’t share that same view for handguns. The vast majority of gun-related crime is carried out with handguns, not long guns. Unlike long guns (which are used for hunting), handguns serve no other purpose than to kill people. Sport shooting? There’s nothing to prevent you from using a long gun if you want to shoot at a range. As this morning’s Star reports, there are over 582,000 handguns registered in Canada, 220,000 in Ontario alone. And countless more that go unregistered. Yet, the Conservative government says we’ve done all we can do — that handguns are effectively banned already. Yet, 30% of weapons seized by police are legal handguns that have been stolen from their rightful owners (famously, a stolen gun was involved in the 2005 Boxing Day shooting on Yonge St. that killed 15-year-old Jane Creba, an innocent by-stander). The other 70% seized by police have been smuggled in from the U.S.

At heart, the question of a total outright ban on handguns is a question of rights — and more specifically — whose rights are impinged the most and what is the gravity of either decision? While there is no specific right in Canada to “bear arms” as there is in the U.S., a total ban on handguns is still an infringement on individual rights as established by jurisprudence in Canada, specifically countering the claim in Harrison v. Carswell (1975), 62 D.L.R. (3d) 68, that:

“Anglo-Canadian jurisprudence has traditionally recognized, as a fundamental freedom, the right of the individual to the enjoyment of property and the right not to be deprived thereof, of any interest therein, save by due process of law.”

So, there is no doubt that banning handguns infringes enjoyment of property. But this question must be put up against another important right in Canada — the right to personal security. Some might argue that we *need* handguns to ensure our own personal security. I don’t buy that — safety and security is one of the few tasks that most of us agree should be the state’s responsibility (whether local or provincial police, or national defense). In fact, a society where each of us weapons up to defend ourselves is a far less safe place. I would argue that the dissemination of assault weapons whose sole purpose is to deprive people of personal security is an infringement of the right to personal security. And while property rights are generally granted through common law and jurisprudence, the security of person is an explicit right in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 7:

“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

So, the question for me comes down to this: what is the gravity of depriving a person of their respective rights (the enjoyment of property or personal security)? To me, the answer is quite clear: the gravity of not having personal security is greater than that of not being able to enjoy the recreational use of handguns. Ergo, the right to personal security trumps the right to have a handgun (particularly since long guns would still be legal, but controlled).

None of this, of course, should be taken to mean that we shouldn’t also be significantly increase efforts to block the smuggling of handguns from across the U.S. border, which is in some ways, the biggest problem. A total ban on handguns *and* ramping up controls at the border are *both* necessary. These two options are not mutually exclusive. Nor should harsher sentences for gun-related crimes, although that mostly relates to a sense of justice (ensuring that those criminals stay off the streets longer), but tougher sentences are not a deterrent of gun-related crimes (as the evidence from the U.S. clearly shows). And of course, we also have to recognize and address the factors that drive people to crime in the first place (poverty, disempowerment, etc). So there’s no one solution. Banning handguns will not lead to zero gun-related crime. But, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the gulf between American and Canadian crime rates has a lot to do with the relative accessibility to handguns. By targeting the handguns that are now legal, we cut down on the 30% of gun-related crimes committed with stolen handguns. And, to me, since the gravity of not ensuring the right to personal security is greater than the gravity of not ensuring the right to enjoyment of property, an outright ban on handguns is something we should seriously explore.