Thank you for having me, sir. I'll try to cut right to the point.
As the chair has just indicated, I started out as an author. I was a journalist for many years, which culminated in a book about gun culture and violence from a hip-hop perspective, titled Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent. We had a co-author who allocated a lot of the book to what's called “diversion”. Diversion is a process by which legal guns turn into illegal guns, largely through theft.
As I did research for the book, diversion became, somewhat surprisingly, such a huge factor in the availability of illegal firearms. I presumed—and it's still a factor, obviously—that most guns were coming from the United States. They're trafficked across the border, but I think about 50% of crime guns start as legal guns owned by legitimate Canadian gun owners. They are then stolen or otherwise find themselves into the black market and become crime guns to be used for crime.
As a criminal defence lawyer, I've seen that problem manifest repeatedly over the 11 years that I've been practising. When guns are found in my clients' hands or at crime scenes, I tend to think I'm going to see that they're traced back to the U.S., but what I see most of the time is that those guns came from legitimate Canadian gun owners.
My view of the situation is the one way that Parliament can really address gun availability, because that's the easier side of the gun crime problem, is through a complete ban on handguns. Handguns are implicated in the crime gun problem in Toronto 95% of the time and up. There is simply no legitimate, arguable reason that I have heard in researching the book and thinking about this issue over time, that justifies the possession of handguns merely for sport and collection purposes, when the downside risk is that those guns fall into the hands of criminals and end up being used to create the kind of carnage that we see on Toronto streets and in other cities around the country.
It's an unfortunate reality, but diversion is an extremely significant issue and the only way to address it is by cutting out the availability on the legal side. They may be coming from theft from production facilities, as we saw at Para Ordnance many years ago, truck theft, as we saw just a few days ago in Peterborough—fortunately those guns were recovered—or primarily theft from legitimate gun owners, who keep safe stocks of firearms. They become targets for break and enters to be stolen and to be turned over to criminals at elevated prices to be used in all sorts of crime.
Diversion is the biggest thing that Parliament can focus on to address the gun crime issue. Again, the way you address that issue is by following up on the assault rifle ban with a handgun ban. There is simply no reason that I can think of that would justify the possession of handguns on the scale that we have in Canada by legitimate gun owners when the risk to our society is theft of those guns to be used in crime. It's a big problem and I see it everyday as a criminal defence lawyer; my client is in possession of guns that started out as being legitimately owned, but are now being used to carry, shoot and kill people on the streets of my city.
If not to go that far, Parliament could consider a cap on handgun ownership. It's one thing that you can argue for sport shooting purposes. People may have a pastime, they may enjoy it, they may wish to go to the shooting range and open fire with a handgun, and that's something to be considered. The value you put in that is one thing, but them having five, 10 or 20 handguns defies any rational argument when the risk is that those guns will be stolen in aggregate globally and then become crime guns on the street.
I've talked to weapon—