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Toronto bullet ban gets shot down, and with good reason

There are a lot of things in life that sound good in theory, but fail to deliver in the 'real world.'

A ban on bullets is one of those things.

On Monday, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's executive committee indefinitely deferred a motion that would see the sale of ammunition prohibited within city limits. Essentially, the Bill has been shot down.

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On the surface, a ban on guns seems like a rational idea: ban bullets, limit the fatalities due to gun violence.

In a recent interview with Yahoo! Canada News, Ward 27 councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam argued that stricter gun control is one of the solutions to a safer Toronto.

"There [is] really little to no reason whatsoever for bullets to exist in the possession of Torontonians unless they're going to be shooting or hunting for game," she said.

"We don't do that in this city. They do that out in the rural areas so that's where they can keep their bullets."

Reasonable?

Unfortunately, real world examples of bullet-bans and gun bans illustrate that they don't work.

They don't work because — as the old adage goes — criminals don't obey the law.

Los Angeles, for instance, is one of the few cities in the United States that requires a permit to buy ammunition but still has the fifth highest murder rate in the country.

The National Post's Matt Gurney recently wrote about the failure of gun bans in the United States and Australia.

"Chicago and Washington both banned handguns and saw increases in gun violence, as criminal enterprises did not hesitate to simply illegally acquire their pistols elsewhere," he wrote.

"And Australia, the only country in the world to have an entire continent to itself, saw no appreciable change its levels on gun crime after a sweeping ban on firearms."

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In another column, Gurney argues that a bullet-ban in Canada is useless, especially since we share a border with America.

"Until proponents of banning bullets and firearms can come up with some glimmer of proof that smuggling rings operating across the U.S.-Canadian border won't be able to easily step up to fill any gap in Toronto's illegal guns-and-bullets trade that such bans would potentially create, they don't have an argument, let alone a logical or evidence-based one," he wrote.

Even Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair says that a ban on bullets wouldn't curb Toronto gun violence.

"I can understand the concern there, but I don't see that would be a solution to the problem," he recently told the Globe and Mail noting that most of the ammunition sold in Toronto is for long-guns and not handguns.

The bullet ban might have looked good on paper, but it's not going to work in the real world. It's time for policy makers to go back to the drawing board.