Canada Shmanada

Um. Wow. Canada really is lost. Stumbled across this Sunday.

"This gun thing has been a scourge in our communities. I liken it to something as bad as the AIDS epidemic or drugs," said Ron Stalling, a 32-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service, who was among the more than 700 police officers attending an international conference presented by the National Black Police Association in Scarborough this week.

The gun "thing." Aye chiuaua. You took most of the law abiding citizen's guns away. You mean some people still have guns? Gasp! How could that be? You don't think perhaps the criminals refused to turn theirs in do you? Also, I'm not going to rant about this too much but... Can you imagine if there was a National White Police association? Good Lord. There would be riots in the street. Seriously. There would be.

"We knew what the problem was when we came in here this morning," said Stalling, who served as the moderator of a session about the impact of gun violence at the Delta Toronto East on Kennedy Road Friday. "No one remedy is going to fix this broken thing that we face here. But this doesn't take rocket science...we need to get involved to evolve."

LOL! Ok, I'll try to be as race sensitive as possible here. Why do so many black speakers feel they need to use corny rhymes like,"...we need to get involved to evolve." in their speeches and addresses?

"We learned that communities can solve this problem," he said, noting that people have to overcome their fear and know that it's okay to express an anti-gun view.

And how exactly will that benefit them should they find themselves staring down the barrel of one?

"It's okay to say no to guns...that's the starting point," he said, noting that it's also essential that the broader community begin to understand that gun violence is not a black-on-black crime.

In Toronto it is.

Sain quoted statistics from 1998 telling her colleagues that there were more than 30,000 deaths attributed to gun violence in the United States that year.

I searched the web for a half an hour trying to confirm that statistic. I found about ten different answers. What Sain doesn't mention is a LOT of those deaths are suicides. According to the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence 17,108 of the deaths were the result of suicide. I'm ok with someone buying a firearm to blow their own brains out. Just don't do it on my property and don't hurt anyone else in the process.

However, should a decision be made to issue firearms to every London bobby as a result, then Rhoden would leave the force, he said.

"I do not want to carry a firearm," he said. "I do not want every officer to carry a firearm."

Why are you in law enforcement? For chrissakes become a park ranger or something. (Not that there is anything wrong with being a park ranger.}

Canada and Europe fascinate me because if we're not careful, we are on the road to being just like them.